In April, I read the first four stories in Nearly Nero by Loren D. Estleman. See my comments on those stories here. This week I finished reading the remaining six stories in the book.
The subtitle for this book is "The Adventures of Claudius Lyon, the Man Who Would Be Wolfe." Between 2008 and 2016, Estleman wrote nine short stories about Claudius Lyon, a man who is obsessed with emulating Nero Wolfe in all ways, and his assistant, Arnie Woodbine. Six of these stories were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. One was published by the Mysterious Press, one by the Mysterious Bookshop, and one was published by Crippen & Landru. The last story in the book ("Wolfe Whistle") was written for publication in this book.
The last six stories are:
“Wolfe Trap”
“Wolfe in Chic Clothing”
“Wolfe in the Manger”
“Wolfe and Warp”
“Peter and the Wolfe”
“Wolfe Whistle”
Two of those stories were set at Christmas, "Wolfe Trap" and "Wolfe in the Manger." Those were my favorite stories in the book.
In "Wolfe Trap," Captain Stoddard of the Brooklyn Bunco Squad asks for Lyon's help because his niece has been accused of theft. She works at a successful bookstore and was the only person around when $200 went missing at a Christmas party. Otto Penzler is a character and the crime took place at his book store.
I found that the later stories in the collection were more imaginative, developed some of the characters to a greater extent, and had more interesting puzzles. It is also much clearer in those stories that Claudius Lyon is intelligent and a good solver of puzzles. He may be a nut case who wants to model his whole existence around another person's life, but he is clever at the right time and place.
The book also includes:
- An excellent introduction by the author, discussing Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries and Estleman's decision to write a humorous version of Wolfe and Goodwin in these stories.
- The introduction that Estleman wrote for the 1992 Bantam paperback edition of Fer-de-Lance.
- A Recommended Reading section.
Also see this review at George Kelley's blog.
6 comments:
Thanks for including the link to my blog! I've read Loren D. Estleman for over 40 years. Estleman's work is consistently entertaining. He's willing to take risks in writing a variety of books in different genres. I'm glad you're enjoying NEARLY NERO.
George, I have not read much by Estleman, only one of his Amos Walker books. But I have books in several of his series, and I want to try more of his writing. And a couple of other books of his short stories too.
This sounds interesting, Tracy. There are a lot of Nero Wolfe fans out there, and I could see one of them becoming that obsessed. And, as you say, he gets the job done. It's interesting that you think the later ones are better developed. Maybe it takes time to 'settle into' a set of stories?
That is what I was thinking too, Margot. Initially I thought these stories should be read with time in between each one, since there are necessarily some repetitive parts in each story. But the more I got into them, I enjoyed reading several at a time.
So were the stories humorous? It seems sort of funny to try to emulate Nero Wolfe. What an interesting idea for the stories.
Good question, Susan. I see that I did not make it clear here that the stories were humorous, although these last six stories in the book were more successful in having an interesting plot and resolution than the first set I read. I guess I just had to get used to the premise.
The protagonist who strives to imitate Nero Wolfe is definitely a bit off and the stories cannot be taken seriously at all. Thus mainly only Nero Wolfe fans would be even interested.
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