Book Note: Rex Stout, Three For The Chair

This note contains spoilers for the book.

I can't believe this is the first "three" title I've booklogged. There are so many of them. 1955 is a good jump forward from the late 30s books I've been reading. The red leather chair is in place. I imagine Cramer doesn't light his cigars, but we'll see.

This has one of the few stories that I figured out as I read it (I think; I did this time but of course even though I didn't remember details from before, it doesn't count because I certainly had read it before). In "A Window For Death", I was pretty sure that the pneumonia had been helped along just like the case in the past, and that the water bottles were involved. The detail that they were used to protect the skin from dry ice, rather than being used to contain ice-water say, doesn't discourage me. The icecream was obviously relevant too.

In "Immune to Murder", Wolfe leaves his house to cook trout for an ambassador. Who turns out to be a murderer, and who gives himself away by bringing in not-fresh trout from his morning session. That's pretty good. Doing things to help his country seems to be one of Wolfe's weaknesses -- look at the silly things he gets up to during WWII.

And in "Too Many Detectives" a very clever man gets heavily involved in the early days of wiretaps.