Too Many Women

Rating:
Summary: Archie in his favorite element
Review: An employee of a very large corporation dies in a hit-and-run accident. Rumors abound that it was murder, disrupting morale. Nero and Archie are hired to either scotch the rumors or find the truth re: the mysterious death. These circumstances put Archie smack dab in the middle of hundreds of young working women -- many of them suspects, most of them of interest to Archie on other levels. This case gives him a chance to put many steak and wine dinners and many evenings of dancing on the old expense account, while he is in search of clues in this particularly confounding case. Neither the police nor Wolfe have much luck solving it for the longest time, and even Archie is frustrated by their lack of success (if not by the scenery he encounters along the way). This is very much Archie's story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I figured out the mystery myself rather early on -- something I'm proud of, since that seldom happens to me in Wolfe stories. Still, I had a wonderful time with this book, and especially got a kick of Wolfe's snorting dismissals of Archie more personal interest in the ladies. I also enjoyed reading about women in the workplace in those long ago days. How times have changed! All the women seemed to be in administrative positions. If they wanted power within the corporation, they got it through working for progressively more powerful men -- or in the case of Mrs. Pine, installing her husband on the board of directors. In that regard, this was a bit like unearthing a time capsule.

Rating:
Summary: Wolfe steps back
Review: Every Wolfe book is really about Archie Goodwin, but this is especially true of Too Many Women. For the first time, he is given the role of sex magnet. Although the plot is only so-so, the result is one of the more entertaining and humorous Wolfes.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Wolfe's!
Review: With my reading of this, I have read every Nero Wolfe novel. This is one of the best, in my opinion. Archie is sent to investigate whether a company's employee was murdered, or it was an accident. His interactions with one of the owners, a vegetarian with a taste for the exotic, are worth the price of the book alone. Archie also gets to put on his charm, and literally wine and dine plenty of women in this story, not to mention engage in his virtual warfare with Wolfe, until finally the mystery is solved. All of our favorites, from Saul to Fritz to Cramer are also present in this story. I was kept guessing until the very last page; I was suprised at how the end turned out. For me, that's the hallmark of a good mystery. The Wolfe books are all fairly formulaic, and this is a classic of that formula, but it works quite well.