I love Nero Wolfe mysteries for so many reasons. The banter between Wolfe and sidekick, feet-on-the-street Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's genius and Goodwin's street smarts, the conjuring of an era (roadsters, sedans, switchboards, 1930's attire, etc.), food, orchids, snappy dialogue and the supporting characters both in the brownstone and outside.In this one Wolfe is becoming desperate for work and takes a job against his better judgment. Fifteen middle-aged men are frightened out of their wits that a...

COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American CrimeBOOK 170 (of 250)Just think of all the books this 'college-hazing-pranks' gone wrong must have inspired.HOOK - 3: "Wolfe and I sat in the office Friday afternoon...Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes (as in snow, not politics) in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia (yes, it used to be a country). I was reading the morning paper...I do read books, but I never yet got any real satisfaction out of one; I always ha...

4.5 stars.Not quite there yet as Stout is still working on things. Cramer makes his first visit to the brownstone smoking a pipe and calling Archie "sonny". Later when Archie visits Cramer at his office Cramer is finally working a cigar. The more irritating version of Cramer hasn't jelled yet.Lon Cohen at the Gazette hasn't appeared yet. Lily Rowan doesn't show up until book 6.Good solid mystery. I had one element figured out but was off on the rest.

I am not going to retell the book's blurb as it contains too many spoilers - in my opinion. Nero Wolfe found himself without a job for quite some time - and with his money running out. Pestered by Archie Goodwin who is a man of action and cannot stand the prolonged absence of it, the great New York detective decides to take a case he rejected some time ago, only this time he chooses to involve more people as his clients: a group of people known as The League of Frightened Men thorough the book.I...

The first Nero Wolf book I ever read.

OK, this is the second ever Nero Wolf story. It's not quite as enjoyable as the first one. I think the reason was twofold. First, in order to pull off the phycological battle between Nero and the murderer Stout had to make Archie dumber. He did that mostly by making Archie jumpy and grouchy not at all like the urbane yet coiled spring we see in later works. Second of all is the phycological battle that makes up the bulk of the adversarial relationship in this book. In order for it to work there

The second Nero Wolfe novel is one of Rex Stout’s best. Two men, part of a large group of college friends with a tragedy binding them together, have died. One was ruled to have passed on by accident and the other by suicide, but someone is mailing the rest of the friends poems that lead them to believe that these two men were murdered and they are next on the list of intended victims. They are in terror, but guilt over the earlier mentioned tragedy in which a foolish college prank led to the cri...

3.5 starsI read almost every Nero Wolfe book when I was younger and I still enjoy going back and reading them on occasion although they may not have the same attraction that they once did. The Nero Wolfe books were written between 1934 - 1975 and this was the second book in the series. Reading this book was like stepping into a time capsule. Roadsters, pay phones, cigar stores, etc. And the 1930's slang ... "gat", "lob", etc. At first I found this annoying. Even Wolfe had to ask Archie what he m...

This episode of the Nero Wolfe Mysteries find Nero and Archie investigating an apparent murder at a Harvard Reunion. Thrity years before, the friends talk Paul Chapin (now a famous author) into doing something dangerous, it all goes wrong and Paul is left crippled. Back in the present of the 1930's, the friends begin to die in suspicious ways followed by murder notes to the survivors. Is it Paul taking revenge or is it a set-up? Only Wolfe and Archie can uncover the truth!

I've decided I should be reading these in close to publication order. There were a couple of references in The Red Box to earlier cases, one of which I knew was one I'd read. It wasn't exactly a spoiler, but I became leery of what Stout might throw in another. There were references to earlier cases in this one, too, but I laughed (even at myself) for knowing Stout had not yet written about them and was just making up Wolfe's history of genius as he could.This one starts out with no case and Arch...

Rex Stout's second novel in the Nero Wolfe series - nice mystery

5 Stars. They've felt guilty all these years but it's so much more than that - the two dozen men have anticipated a murderous retaliation in one form or another by Paul Chapin over that same time. "The League of Frightened Men" is an appropriate title for this masterpiece. Who better to serve as the novel's centrepiece than Nero Wolfe, the astonishing private detective with so many eccentricities. They keep coming at you, like orchids, big fees and resolute schedules. The informal "League" came

I hadn't read this one since childhood, so I remembered almost none of it. In a way, I loved it. But not necessarily as a detective story. I'm not into looking for plotholes, yet I noticed two or three which took me out of the story briefly. No, what I loved was how absorbing the language and dialogue is. I think Stout tightened things up in later books, and that's good. But this early story has something later ones are missing; a love not only of language, but of thinking about language. Which

Definitely earns the praise it gets for being an involved, psychology-filled story. A lot of the details are either too obscure or intricate for me to follow. That's okay with me - I read for entertainment, trusting that detectives and cops and heroes in stories are capable and skilled. They don't need me back-checking their work. Anyway, Archie is great. Nero is great. And I have sympathy for Fritz. And Nero makes beer sound so good. Overall, a character-driven story with lots of misdirections

Rex Stout is another of those authors that I have come to late in my reading life. My first experience was with one of his last books, a short story collection, Death Times Three, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I've been trying to find his first book, Fer de Lance (1934) but so far with no luck. But I did find this book, The League of Frightened Men, his second book, originally published in 1935.From being someone who enjoyed my first experience of the great detective, Nero Wolfe, I now find my se...

This was long, round-about and there were lots of missed opportunities to elevate this story up and above what it is. Nothing particularly original either. Mr. Wolfe is basically a less genial and less interesting, for that matter, Mycroft Holmes.Now, I wikipedia-d it (Yolo) and this seems to be one of the better of the Rex Stout books . So, will I read the rest of the series? That's a no from me .

This is arguably the first Nero Wolfe novel and probably the best. The author Rex Stout thought so himself. Across 47 Wolfe novels and anthologies, Stout kept up a remarkable quality, especially as he never edited a word. His later novels might be accused of digression, twittering dialogue that went nowhere, and loose structure. (Robert Heinlein exhibited the same faults in his dotage.) But this is ingenious, crisp and as sharply crafted as an Aztec crystal skull. No point in reviewing the plot....

I have always collected classic mysteries, even though I prefer adventures about curiosities that have more panache than crimes. I liked the first Rex Stout novel much better, despite it also receiving 3 stars. He had a long career with ample time for growth. I readily express pleasure with 5 stars. It is a shame this volume bored me. I waited since 2013 to read this sequel, finally acquired as a new birthday gift a few years ago. The last 25% of this story was action packed but too much narrati...

An early Nero Wolfe novel, and he’s doesn’t have the groove yet. But it’s a good effort. Archie, in particular, seems pretty unfinished. He’s definitely not as polished as “peak Archie,”Somebody keeps killing off members of a group of Harvard chums. Suspicion falls to Paul Chapin, one of their members. But things are rarely as they seem. Even when one more disappears and another is murdered. These books normally last 4 or 5 days but this one took 45 days or so. This is because there was a terrib...

College hijinks lead to the lifelong crippling of a young man. Those who felt responsible for the terrible accident banded together to do all they could to make amends for their foolishness to that man, who as the years have passed has become a successful author.One by one, members of the group, or league, are found dead under suspicious circumstances. To make matters worse for the league, each of them has received anonymous lines of verse taking credit for each death in turn and intimating that...