Short Story Wednesday: "Die Like a Dog" by Rex Stout

I am continuing my reread of Rex Stout's novellas. "Die Like a Dog" is a 66-page novella in the Nero Wolfe series. It is one of three stories in Three Witnesses, published in 1957. 

I have featured some of my favorite novellas by Stout in previous posts in the last year. However, this story might be my absolute favorite of Nero Wolfe stories in shorter format.

It is unusual because it has a dog as a prominent character. Archie walks in the rain to a man's apartment to return a raincoat that the man had left at Wolfe's brownstone. What had happened is that the man had an argument with Wolfe, stormed out of Wolfe's office, and grabbed Archie's raincoat instead of his own. Archie wants his raincoat back.

When Archie gets to the apartment building, he sees a crowd around the building and some police cars in front of the building. He also sees Sgt. Purley Stebbins walking into the building. Stebbins is in the homicide department, working under Captain Cramer. Both Stebbins and Cramer are suspicious whenever Archie shows up near a murder. Archie knows that if Stebbins sees him, he will assume that Nero Wolfe is somehow mixed up in whatever crime has taken place, so he turns around and leaves. There is a dog outside the building, wandering around, looking lost. The dog follows Archie back to Nero Wolfe's brownstone, where Archie lives with Wolfe, Fritz the cook, and Theodore the horticulture expert. Archie takes the dog into the house, planning to call the ASPCA to come and get him. However, it turns out that there was dead body in the building and the police want to use the dog as a sort of witness.

In the rest of the story, Captain Cramer and Nero Wolfe spar about how involved Wolfe is in the case, and whether Wolfe has to turn the dog over to the police. Wolfe and Fritz have developed a definite affection for the dog.

Archie does some legwork investigating leads for Wolfe, even though the dog and Archie's missing raincoat is truly their only connection to the murder. It is a fun story, especially for a fan of the Nero Wolfe series. 

As usual, Archie Goodwin narrates the story. This story has a very good depiction of Archie's relationship with Wolfe.

The other two novellas in Three Witnesses are "When a Man Murders..." and "The Next Witness."  

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals, 2025

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's topic is Bookish Goals for 2025. You can check out other Top Tuesday blog posts here. 

This is the third year I have come up with a list of goals for reading and blogging in the next year. The goals for 2025 have been informed by my experiences in 2023 and 2024.

My goals for the year:

1. Aim at reading mostly books that I owned before January 1, 2025. My goal is 48 books.  This ties in with my next goal...
2. My husband and I have a joint goal to not buy any print books before the Planned Parenthood book sale in September. That means 9 months of not buying books.  
3. Read more graphic novels. We have a lot of unread graphic novels in the house. In 2024, I read one graphic memoir and one graphic novel. I will aim for 8 or more this year.
4. Read more novels or short stories in the fantasy genre.  Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb is definitely on the list. Also books by Terry Pratchett and Ben Aaronovitch.
5. Read more ebooks. I have two incentives to read more ebooks: I have a lot of ebooks, many of which I forget I own, and I bought a Kindle Scribe last year. I read two novels on my Kindle in 2024 and some short stories from a few collections. I need to do better.
6. Increase my short story reading. I think I have read more short stories each year over the last four years but I haven't tracked my reading. This year I want to keep track of what I read each month. 
7. Write shorter book reviews. This has been a goal for several years but I am not giving up. It might help if I come up with template for a mini review to use as a framework.
8. Read some longer books. Except for the nonfiction book The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, most of the books I read in 2024 were between 250-350 pages. I am intimidated by long books and tend to let them sit on the shelves unread. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (650 pages), Fellowship Point by Alice Elliot Dark (600 pages), and The Charm School by Nelson DeMille (750 pages) are some possibilities for 2025.
9. My last goal, but an important one, is to review this list several times a year and make an effort to catch up in some areas that I have been neglecting. In 2024, I don't think I came back to review this list at all. 

Addendum: 

I have some authors I want to read more books by. I obviously won't finish the series mentioned any time soon, but I can use this post as a reminder to keep working on them.

• Ross Macdonald (13 remaining books in the Lew Archer series.)
• Ross Thomas (Mostly standalone books; I have only read 3 of his books.)
• Victor Canning (3 remaining books in the Birdcage series.)
• Anthony Price (12 remaining books in the David Audley series.)
• Reginald Hill (10 remaining books in the Dalziel and Pascal series.)
• Ann Cleeves (I will continue reading books from three of her series: the George and Molly Palmer-Jones birdwatching series; the Vera Stanhope series; and the Shetland series.)
• Catherine Aird (20 books in a 29 book series left.)
• Bill Crider (I have 17 more books in the Sheriff Rhodes series to read, but I want to try his other series too.)
• Robert Barnard (He wrote over 40 crime fiction books and I probably have read half of them.)
• Thomas H. Cook (Cook is a new author to me. He was born in Alabama, and several of his books are set in Alabama. I have not read anything he wrote.)
• Thomas Perry (Author of the Jane Whitefield series and The Butcher's Boy series, he has also written a lot of standalone novels.)
• Donald E. Westlake (He wrote a lot of crime fiction, under his own name and under pseudonyms. I have read six of his books.)

Books Read in December 2024, Plus Stats for the Year

 

December was a good reading month and three of my reads were Christmas books. I included some notes on my reading in 2024 at the end of this post. 

Here is my list of books read:

Fiction

Tom Lake (2023) by Ann Patchett

This was a very good book and an enjoyable read. Basically it is the story of a woman telling her daughters about a summer love affair she had with a famous actor before she married their father. The daughters are in their twenties and all of them are living with their parents because of the pandemic. I like books about families and relationships. From beginning to end I was absorbed in this story.

A Redbird Christmas (2004) by Fannie Flagg

This book is set in Alabama, my home state, in a small town near Mobile. I could not quite figure out what time it is set in, sometime after World War II, but I don't think it really matters. Oswald T. Campbell lives in Chicago but he is very ill, has emphysema, and his doctor says he will have to move to a milder climate if he wants to live much longer. So he finds a place to live in a tiny town in Lost River, Alabama. I have never read anything by Fannie Flagg, but Kathy at Reading Matters recommended this book and December was a great time to read it. It is a Christmas book, but it is about so much more, and it was a wonderful read.

Gothic Horror

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by Shirley Jackson

This is a classic gothic / mystery or horror story. I had put off reading this for years but the story was not nearly as scary or tense as I expected it to be. There was a sense of foreboding and waiting for something horrible to happen. The beauty of the story was in the way Jackson very slowly reveals small bits of the plot. My review here.

Fantasy

The Wood at Midwinter (2024) by Susanna Clarke

This is a fantasy story about a young woman, Merowdis, who loves animals and nature. She has many dogs and many cats, and a pig, plus other assorted animals. She prefers to spend her time in the woods alone, and she has a sister, Ysolde, who understands her and aids and abets her in her escapes to the woods. The rest of her family wants her to marry and be normal. My review here.

Crime Fiction

Elegy for April (2010) by Benjamin Black

Benjamin Black is a pseudonym used by John Banville. This is the third book in the Quirke series; I read the second book, The Silver Swan, earlier this year. The series is set in Ireland in the 1950s; Quirke is a pathologist in a hospital and gets involves with crimes or possible crimes often. I like the slow pace of the writing and the emphasis on the characters as much or more than the crime investigation. I will be reading the next book, A Death in Summer, in 2025.

The Unfortunate Englishman (2016) by John Lawton

I have been a fan of John Lawton's writing for years. His Inspector Frederick Troy series consists of eight novels published between 1995 and 2017. Those novels are a mix of police procedural and espionage, and are set between 1934 and 1963, with many of them covering multiple timelines. The Unfortunate Englishman is the second novel in the Joe Wilderness series. That series (so far) has focused on English / Russian / German relations in Berlin following World War II. The books in this series are really good spy fiction, but also complex and confusing. I love the focus on Berlin and the wall. You really have to read the first and second books in the series; this one doesn't stand well alone.

Mom Meets Her Maker (1990) by James Yaffe

Between 1988 and 1992, Yaffe wrote four mystery novels about Dave and his Mom. Mom Meets Her Maker is the 2nd of the four novels. Dave is an investigator for the Public Defender's office in a small town in Colorado. The book is set at Christmas, and it was the perfect read for me at this time of year. My review here.

A Bird in the Hand (1986) by Ann Cleeves 

As far as I can tell, A Bird in the Hand was Cleeves' first novel and the first book in the George and Molly Palmer-Jones series. Because I knew that it was focused on birdwatching and birders, I have been looking for a copy to read for years. George is the amateur sleuth. He has retired from the Home Office, which gives him some credibility and access to some records when he needs them. He is a "twitcher," a birder who travels to various parts of the English countryside, following reports of rare birds as they show up. His wife Molly is not that interested in birds but she enjoys the chase. Before retiring she worked as a social worker. The book is not as good as Cleeves' later books, but satisfied me in every way. I liked the characters, the setting, and the birdwatching.

End of Year notes

I read 89 books in 2024. That is very close to the number I read last year. The longest book I read was 834 pages:  The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. The average number of pages for the books I read was 302, which was about the same as last year. 

• Of the 89 books I read, 68 books were from my TBR pile, which surpassed my goal of 48 books. I will continue to aim at 48 books from my TBR in 2024. 
• I read less mysteries than last year, 48 as compared to 65 in 2023. Seven of the mysteries were espionage novels, and I enjoyed all of those. Eight of the mysteries were published before 1960.
• I read eight nonfiction books. Two were books about books, two were memoirs, and one was a travel/adventure book.
• I read eight books in the science fiction or fantasy genres, so I did better in that area than I thought I would. Three of those books were about time travel.
• I read 15 novels that I categorize as general fiction. And four short story books. 

The photos above and at the top of the post are from a couple of photo excursions. The bird was at the Santa Barbara Zoo, but we don't know the location of the other two photos. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Short Story Wednesday: Flair for Murder by Frances and Richard Lockridge

 

I bought this book, published in March 2024 by Crippen & Landru, on a whim, on the last day of 2024. It has such a lovely cover. The introduction to the book by Jeffrey Marks is very interesting and gives a good overview of the various series that Frances and Richard Lockridge wrote. 

In years past, I have read some mystery novels in the three series written by the Lockridges: the Mr. and Mrs. North series, the Captain M.L. Heimrich series, and the Nathan Shapiro series. The books in those series were published between 1940 and 1980.

Only one of the stories in the book features Mr. and Mrs. North. The others are Captain Heimrich stories, set in Westchester County, New York. 

I read the first three stories in the book. They were all good reads but I liked the two Captain Heimrich stories that I read best. Per the back of the book, this book contains all of the mystery short stories that the Lockridges wrote.  

Only one of the stories is a Pam and Jerry North story, "Pattern for Murder." 

In this story, a woman attends a dinner party which brings together a group of old schoolmates. The woman dies at the foot of a steep flight of stairs. Of course, Pam and Jerry North attend the party. And the policeman who is called in to investigate the death is their friend, Lt. Bill Weigand of the NYPD.

The remaining eleven stories are Captain M.L. Heimrich stories. The first of those is "Nobody Can Ask That."

Heimrich is interviewing a man who has confessed to a murder that took place five hours ago. They talk about how the man was caught in such a short time and the murderer explains how and why he killed the victim. There were a couple of surprises at the end. The story was pretty short, just 6 pages long.

The next story, "The Searching Cats," was more detailed but still only about 8 pages long. Heimrich thinks he has the culprit for a murder, a young man who had previously committed a similar crime. That young man has money that was missing from the dead man's home, but he claims that the dead man loaned him the money that very day. Somehow two cats lead Captain Heimrich to a different solution. 

Six Degrees of Separation: From Orbital to Station Eternity

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. For once, I have actually read the book. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the International Space Station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen.

Reading Orbital motivated me to read more about life on the International Space Station. I want to know how astronauts are selected for this type of mission and how they train for it.  I don't even like to fly in an airplane (of any size) but I would love to know more about the lives of people who live in the space station.

1st degree:

My first book is from my husband's shelves: Lonely Planet's The Universe. This book has a wealth of information about Earth and the other planets, and other parts of the known universe. Photos on every page. There are smaller sections on the manned space flights and the International Space Station. A lovely book to dip into now and then.

2nd degree:

I am sticking with the space station theme throughout, and my next book is Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, by Scott Kelly with Margaret Lazarus Dean, a memoir published in 2017. Per his website: "A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS." 

I have purchased a copy of this book to read sometime this year. 

3rd degree:

My next link is a short story, "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight, which I read in Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg. The story is about a race of aliens that were so massive and repulsive to humans that the contact has been sparse and only occasionally do the aliens visit a space station that is set aside especially to enable that visit. When one of the aliens comes, it is for one purpose, to provide a substance for the humans which the humans have come to rely on. The story focuses on the one human who is on the space station to facilitate the exchange with the alien being. He is alone on Stranger Station until the alien arrives, although he can communicate with a computer AI called "Aunt Jane." 

"Stranger Station" was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1956, but has been included in a good number of anthologies since then.

4th degree:

Since reading Orbital, I have been looking for fiction set on a space station, and I found that my son has several books that fit that category. This is one he read: Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathlyn Rusch. The heroine of the book explores derelict space vehicles, sometimes for salvage, sometimes as a historian. The book consists of three connected novellas and at least one of them is about The Room of Lost Souls, which is an abandoned space station which most people consider a myth.  It sounds great and I will be reading this book.

5th degree:

The fifth link in my chain is to The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher. From the description on the back of the book:

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

This one sounds good too, so I will add it to my TBR list.

6th degree:

My sixth book is a genre blend of mystery and science fiction: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty, first published in October 2022. 

From the back of the book:

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

Unfortunately for Mallory, that doesn't last very long. I love mystery and science fiction mixed, so I will probably read this one too.

My Six Degrees started in space and it stayed mostly in space. It started with a novel about our International Space Station, but took me to science fiction worlds set in the future. It also added four books to my "To Read" list.

The next Six Degrees will be on February 1st, 2025 and the starting book will be a classic – Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Short Story Wednesday: The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke

I bought this small hardback book consisting of one short story because it was pretty, very appealing, and with lovely illustrations. And apparently a Christmas story. For its size, it was expensive, not exorbitant, but an indulgence.  I bought it at our lovely independent book store (at a 50th anniversary sale, so I got 20% off).

Previous to reading this story, I had read nothing by Susanna Clarke and I had no idea what to expect. 

I loved the story. It is a fantasy story about a young woman, Merowdis, who loves animals and nature. She has many dogs and many cats, and a pig, plus other assorted animals. She prefers to spend her time in the woods alone, and she has a sister, Ysolde, who understands her and aids and abets her in her escapes to the woods. The rest of her family wants her to marry and be normal.

As the story begins, Ysolde takes Merowdis out to the woods in the chaise, dropping her at the gates to the wood, leaving her to walk alone in the woods with two of the dogs and the pig, named Apple. 

The story begins a few days before Christmas and there are mentions of the Christmas season, but I hardly noticed the connection to Christmas the first time I read it. 

I loved the Afterward too, where the author talks about her inspiration and sources for the story. It was as good as the story, and I found both the story and the afterword moving.

The story takes up 42 pages of the book but there are a lot of illustrations, so it is really about 30 pages long. The illustrations by Victoria Sawdon are gorgeous and the writing is magical.