Death of a Dude

Death of a Dude, by Rex Stout. A Nero Wolfe mystery.

Nero Wolfe? At a dude ranch in Montana? Will wonders never cease. It's a fun one.

The Father Hunt

The Father Hunt, by Rex Stout. A Nero Wolfe mystery.

A delight. Excellent characterization. Mysterious money coming in for 22 years, a client with no past looking for her father, and a hit-and-run accident that might just be murder.

The Five Red Herrings

The Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy L. Sayers. A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery.

Up in Scotland, an artist is dead. It may be murder, and none of the erstwhile suspects have good alibis, and more than one is simply missing.

I enjoyed it, as I have the others, but so far (with all 4 of these Wimsey books I've read to date) I don't feel as engaged as I have when reading the work of more contemporary-era novelists such as Sue Grafton/Sara Paretsky/Ian Rankin/P.D. James, or works set another umpteen years back in time such as Sherlock Holmes mysteries. I'm not sure if it's me or Sayers or the timeframe. I like Wimsey, I think, most of the time. And some bits in Five Herrings were terribly clever, I enjoyed the re-creation of the crime very much.

I did note to a friend of mine who is not a big fiction reader and who was speculating on her enjoyment of early science fiction and disregard for contemporary SF that the blatant sexism in the early SF is easier to ignore than that in modern SF -- the context being old, and, basically, feeling (culturally) obsolete to a modern reader.

Fiction set after WWI, such as these Wimsey mysteries, may just be too close for me to ignore the sexism and racism in the text and simply enjoy the story as it was written. Not so old, not so obsolete. Or maybe I just have a thing for pre- or very early- Industrial Revolution stories and these are too recent in that regard.

But then, I like Nero Wolfe stories, set in an indefinite 30's/40's/50's timeframe in New York. So. *shrug*

Will I read more? Oh, yeah, sure. All of them (Sayer's Wimsey novels), right away? No, I doubt it.