Rating: 
Summary: A Toast to the Host Makes the Guest a Ghost
Review: A guest on a radio talk show drops dead after taking a drink of the sponsor's beverage. Everyone involved lies through their teeth. Most lie to protect the host's embarassing secret, but one lies to escape the gallows. Nero Wolfe, who usually avoids cases, uncharacteristically seeks employment. He undertakes to solve the case on a contingent fee basis--no solution, no pay. Of course, he solves the case and earns his fee, but manages to please nobody in the process.Wolfe is his usual gruff, eccentric, mercenary self. He is easy to dislike, but his powers are hard to disrespect. Archie Goodwin and the ensemble of regulars help to cushion Wolfe's rough edges. In this book we first meet Wolfe's nemesis, Arnold Zeck. Zeck is a shadowy figure of immense wealth, untold political power, and criminal bent. One might say he is New York's "Napoleon of Crime." He plays only a small part in this book, but he comes into homicidal conflict with Wolfe in two later books, "The Second Confession" and "In the Best of Families."
Rating:
Summary: A Toast to the Host Makes the Guest a Ghost
Review: A guest on a radio talk show drops dead after taking a drink of the sponsor's beverage. Everyone involved lies through their teeth. Most lie to protect the host's embarassing secret, but one lies to escape the gallows. Nero Wolfe, who usually avoids cases, uncharacteristically seeks employment. He undertakes to solve the case on a contingent fee basis--no solution, no pay. Of course, he solves the case and earns his fee, but manages to please nobody in the process. Wolfe is his usual gruff, eccentric, mercenary self. He is easy to dislike, but his powers are hard to disrespect. Archie Goodwin and the ensemble of regulars help to cushion Wolfe's rough edges. In this book we first meet Wolfe's nemesis, Arnold Zeck. Zeck is a shadowy figure of immense wealth, untold political power, and criminal bent. One might say he is New York's "Napoleon of Crime." He plays only a small part in this book, but he comes into homicidal conflict with Wolfe in two later books, "The Second Confession" and "In the Best of Families."
Rating:
Summary: Confound it.
Review: All the Nero Wolfes books I have read have been above par. But this one was excellent in every way. The characters are brilliant, the banter between them as clever and as witty as always. The plot is better than some of the other books and the ending is a surprise. All these books are worth reading but this one is well worth seeking out. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Wolfe meets his Moriarty
Review: Also titled More Deaths Than One, this is the first and best of the Arnold Zeck trilogy. If you want to read it in order, follow this with The Second Confession and Even in the Best Families, although personally I rate the latter a very poor Wolfe. None of this stops And Be a Villain from being one of the better stories, with Stout having lots of fun at the expense of the commercial world, a frequent theme during his post-war period.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed first-time Stout reader
Review: I'm an occasional whodunnit reader, and this was my first Rex Stout book. I wasn't terribly impressed. A few amusing vignettes, granted, but the writing (apart from literally one or two good lines) was middling at best, and the plot was hardly original or surprising -- although perhaps Madeline Fraser's secret would have been much more shocking in 1948 than it is today. But the worst thing about this book was Wolfe himself. I just didn't find him convincing at all. (The other characters, though, were much more so, especially Archie, who admittedly was the narrator, which must work in his favour believability-wise.) That's the problem with eccentic geniuses, I guess. You need to be a very good writer to pull them off. And Stout just ain't quite there. (Conan Doyle, whose Holmes & Watson Stout's Wolfe and Goodwin seem to be poor imitations of, was more successful with his great detective. Holmes, though equally eccentric, was somehow always palpably real. The character of Nero Wolfe, on the other hand, just seems artificial and contrived.) That said, the episodes with Nancylee were funny. And the glimpses of the big-money sponsors' machinations were quite diverting too. Same goes for Archie and the way he reveals to the reader his frustrations with the "genius" Wolfe. It's just a shame the supporting characters are so much more compelling than the central one.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: In my opinion the best of the Wolfe opus. Plot, dialogue and that magical relationship between Nero and Archie are absolutely first rate. If you haven't yet read it I envy you!
Rating:
Summary: One of the best in the series
Review: Is it just me, or did you also like the way wolfe bullied that irritating little girl in this story? nevertheless, true-blue wolfe fans will agree that this is one of the best in the wolfe series. once again,you will marvel at how wolfe can summon murder suspects to his house, manipulate members of the police force, and push his lips in and out to come up with the murderer. an added bonus: read how wolfe rejects a fat fee from a client because its name is "Sweeties!"
Rating:
Summary: One of Wolfe's Most Difficult Cases
Review: It's been almost a week since guest Cyril Orchard was poisoned on the popular Madeline Fraser radio show. The police haven't solved the case and, at the rate they're going, they never will. Luckily for everyone but the killer, Nero Wolfe needs money and is quite willing to allow himself to be hired to solve the mystery. Our suspects are Madeline Fraser herself, her scripwriter, her straight man, her manager, another guest, and the representatives for the agency and the sponsers. Nancylee, the high school student fan, is a serious pest instead of contender for the role of poisoner, but she could know something useful. However, she's not available for questioning. Where did she go and why? How does the mysterious Zeck, master criminal, fit in? Archie doesn't know. What he does know, and it's driving him crazy, is that Wolfe seems determined to do as little work as possible on the case. Of course, this is Wolfe's normal attitude toward work, but this time the case is taking weeks instead of days. It's Archie's job to prod Wolfe into earning his fee. The method he uses in this case isn't quite as dramatic as the ones in NOT QUITE DEAD ENOUGH or "Invitation to Murder" (THREE MEN OUT), but it's one of his best tricks. I rank the scene where he sets it up and gets Wolfe hooked right up there with the scenes where Wolfe rejects "Sweeties" and puts Nancylee in her place. (I must admit that the scene where Wolfe triumphs over Deputy Commissioner O'Hara's attempt to force his hand has considerable charm of its own.) The introduction was written by persons who actually lived through the period in which this book takes place. Those readers who, like myself, hadn't even been born, might find their comments interesting. The piece of memorabilia in this edition is tied with that in the most recent edition of THE SECOND CONFESSION. The two together are not likely to make sense unless you know that in the book club edition of AND BE A VILLAIN, the poisoned drink is called "Starlite". It's back to "Hi-Spot" in the 1950 first paperback edition, so whatever problem might have caused the temporary name change must have been cleared up. Chapter 22, page 199, paragraph 3, line 7: checking back with a couple of earlier editions makes it clear that the "tired" in that line is supposed to be "tried," as you would expect from the context. For purists, yes, that "blindman's bluff" on page 216 WAS correctly spelled "buff" originally, but the error had already crept in as early as that 1950 paperback. Similarly, the ninth word in the fifth line of the first paragraph of chapter 26 was properly hyphenated before. I bother to mention these because I've read that Rex Stout was noted for turning in manuscripts that had no errors, so it's only fair to his memory to let the readers know that he wasn't responsible for these. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: One of Wolfe's Most Difficult Cases
Review: It's been almost a week since guest Cyril Orchard was poisoned on the popular Madeline Fraser radio show. The police haven't solved the case and, at the rate they're going, they never will. Luckily for everyone but the killer, Nero Wolfe needs money and is quite willing to allow himself to be hired to solve the mystery. Our suspects are Madeline Fraser herself, her scripwriter, her straight man, her manager, another guest, and the representatives for the agency and the sponsers. Nancylee, the high school student fan, is a serious pest instead of contender for the role of poisoner, but she could know something useful. However, she's not available for questioning. Where did she go and why? How does the mysterious Zeck, master criminal, fit in? Archie doesn't know. What he does know, and it's driving him crazy, is that Wolfe seems determined to do as little work as possible on the case. Of course, this is Wolfe's normal attitude toward work, but this time the case is taking weeks instead of days. It's Archie's job to prod Wolfe into earning his fee. The method he uses in this case isn't quite as dramatic as the ones in NOT QUITE DEAD ENOUGH or "Invitation to Murder" (THREE MEN OUT), but it's one of his best tricks. I rank the scene where he sets it up and gets Wolfe hooked right up there with the scenes where Wolfe rejects "Sweeties" and puts Nancylee in her place. (I must admit that the scene where Wolfe triumphs over Deputy Commissioner O'Hara's attempt to force his hand has considerable charm of its own.) The introduction was written by persons who actually lived through the period in which this book takes place. Those readers who, like myself, hadn't even been born, might find their comments interesting. The piece of memorabilia in this edition is tied with that in the most recent edition of THE SECOND CONFESSION. The two together are not likely to make sense unless you know that in the book club edition of AND BE A VILLAIN, the poisoned drink is called "Starlite". It's back to "Hi-Spot" in the 1950 first paperback edition, so whatever problem might have caused the temporary name change must have been cleared up. Chapter 22, page 199, paragraph 3, line 7: checking back with a couple of earlier editions makes it clear that the "tired" in that line is supposed to be "tried," as you would expect from the context. For purists, yes, that "blindman's bluff" on page 216 WAS correctly spelled "buff" originally, but the error had already crept in as early as that 1950 paperback. Similarly, the ninth word in the fifth line of the first paragraph of chapter 26 was properly hyphenated before. I bother to mention these because I've read that Rex Stout was noted for turning in manuscripts that had no errors, so it's only fair to his memory to let the readers know that he wasn't responsible for these. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Or as Archie calls it ever afterward, the Orchard case
Review: Meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
- Hamlet, Act I, scene 5, soliloquy before swearing vengeance As with all of Stout's Wolfe mysteries, the setting is contemporary with the time of its writing - in this case, 18 March - 3 April 1948, which makes it a period piece today. Radio, rather than television, was the dominant communication medium in the United States. Commercials were live, rather than pre-recorded; in the case of a talk show, the host would participate in the commercial in front of a live studio audience. (This persisted even into the early years of television. A Timex commercial that went seriously wrong, wherein the watch couldn't even be *found* after the it's-still-ticking test, persisted for decades in Johnny Carson's list of funniest incidents on his show, for example.) And at that time, a national income tax was a relatively new feature of life in the United States, and fell due on the 15th of March. All these factors matter in setting the stage for this story. Hi-Spot, one of the sponsors of the Madeleine Fraser show, revelled in her live commercials for their product, wherein she and her guests would drink 'the drink you dream of.' But the PR dream turned into a nightmare when someone spiked one glass with cyanide, and Cyril Orchard, one of the show's guests in a discussion of gambling, died 'live' on the air. But was the editor of _Track Almanac_ the intended victim? Among the suspects - some of whom may have been intended victims - emotions, blood, and money may have become entangled. Deborah Koppel, Fraser's business manager, is also her sister-in-law through Fraser's late husband - and her principal beneficiary. Does she blame Fraser for her brother's death? Bill Meadows is her on-air sidekick - did he want a promotion to top billing? Or did he resent being kicked off the show recently, despite his reinstatement? Tully Strong represents the sponsors' council, and there'd been some bad blood over shifting accounts between shows, and retaliation by persuading accounts to change agencies. Nancylee Shepherd, an overgrown schoolgirl who's obsessed with Fraser, may be more than an annoying tagalong running a fan club. In the background, a rumour of anonymous letters taints the atmosphere, with a whiff of possible blackmail. Most unusually, Wolfe solicits this case, rather than waiting for clients to come to him (granted, due to prodding by Archie, after he prepared Wolfe's form 1040). Another uncommon feature is that they have not one client, but a group; each individual or corporation owes a percentage of the fee, which is contingent on Wolfe's finding the murderer with evidence to convict. (Typically, when Wolfe's client is a corporate entity, the client's real goal is to control a serious publicity disaster - which results in friction where it clashes with Wolfe's goal of catching a culprit, and this case is no exception.) The group in this case consists of several corporate sponsors and Madeleine Fraser herself. (As Archie points out, Wolfe's fee is tax-deductible.) Wolfe, ever true to his principles, refuses to allow one sponsor to join the client list - because he and Fritz tried their product, and it's awful. Archie won't let Hi-Spot even try to get Wolfe to participate in some PR photos, and quashes Fraser's hope of getting Wolfe on her show. The surviving guest from the fatal show, a professor specializing in probability, has an unrealistic opinion of his ability to predict things. The continuing character of Arnold Zeck makes his first major appearance in this story...and his interests don't align with Wolfe's. Deputy Commissioner O'Hara, horning in since it's a high-profile case, makes the mistake of ordering Archie's arrest as a material witness late in the story - and Wolfe's payback is beautiful to see.
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