meganbaxter

I haven't read a Rex Stout book in quite a while - maybe that's why I was taken aback by all the casual racism and misogyny in this book. The misogyny I can get past, in that it appears as one character's personal quirk, rather than a general attitude, but the casual racism did make me uncomfortable, even though again, I think perhaps we were supposed to take that as the attitude of several asshole characters rather than of the author, in that the black characters, when we actually met them, rather than heard them talked about, were better-rounded and spoken than I had been expecting, given the first part of the book.

But still, it gave me difficulties. But the mystery in the book was well-handled, and enjoyable, and Nero Wolfe is as cranky as he has always - perhaps more, since he'd been forced to leave his apartment for a weekend, even a weekend of gastronomic delights.