Rex Stout didn’t create the concept of the armchair detective, such as Nero Wolfe, who remains in one place while others bring him the threads and pieces of a mystery for him to solve. Nor, of course, did he invent the hardboiled, smart-mouth detective which Wolfe’s assistant, Archie Goodwin, personifies so well. What Mr. Stout did do is merge the two genres into something new and never successfully duplicated. In Death Of A Dude, as with The Black Mountain and Some Buried Caesar, the brilliant heavyweight champion of detection, Nero Wolfe, reluctantly leaves his well regulated home with it’s gourmet meals, plant room full of orchids and cold beer on demand for someplace less…comfortable. In this case Wolfe goes to the Wild West, in the form of Montana, to help a vacationing Archie clear a friend of a murder. Unlike the short stories staring Wolfe, which are some of the cleverest mystery puzzles in the genre, Mr. Stout’s novels, including Death Of A Dude, are not really written to be solved by the reader. The point of the novels is to watch Archie and Wolfe go through their paces, in this case dealing with an unwed mother, tightlipped cowboys and a corrupt small town police force, while trying to corral a desperate murderer. In fact, even Nero Wolfe doesn’t so much deduce the identity of the killer, but exposes him through the persistent digging in the past of the suspects. Still, Death Of A Dude is classic Stout filled with interesting and off beat characters, snappy dialogue and, of course, Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe; whose strong, if acerbic, partnership is always a joy to read.Average Grade: A+
