Some Talent in the Detective Line

I met a new detective recently. 

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sherlock Holmes is still at the top, but this new guy made me smirk as I read his stories and really enjoyed the pacing of the writing.  Watson's narratives are so trustworthy and reliable that you can always count on a well-told story that will display Holmes' strengths while Watson's modesty forces him to downplay his own.  But this was a nice change of pace.

And sure, Watson has left us all of the trifles to pick apart.  The chronology.  The unpublished cases.  The layout of 221B.  Etc.  But for those of us who have read and reread the 60 stories over and over again, that flush of fresh adventure is gone.  And that's okay for most of us.  Sherlockians have invented our own subculture to keep us coming back to these masterpieces of storytelling. 

But I'm babbling.  I started out talking about the new guy.

School started back up this week, and if you know any teachers, you'll know we aren't able of much mental stimulation outside of work during the first week of school.  So I picked up what I expected to be a light read off of my TBR shelf, "Too Many Cooks" by Rex Stout.  I've heard about Wolfe plenty in relation to Holmes throughout my years as a Sherlockian, but this was the first Nero Wolfe story I've ever read.  And I loved every page of it (except for the outdated racial attitudes of the 30's, but that's a whole other discussion).

But Nero Wolfe isn't the interesting character in this story to me.  Archie Goodwin is my man!  Granted, I've only read one story so maybe I'm completely off here.  But his wry wit and boots on the ground activities were a delight to read.  In Watson's narratives, Holmes gets to do all of the deducing and the legwork, leaving Watson to be astonished at the reveal.  In Goodwin, we get a sidekick who isn't afraid to call his partner on his crap while being active throughout the story.  I've already ordered my next Nero Wolfe book to revisit these two again.

So I'll be revisiting Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe again, but at the end of the day, they are a nice diversion from my true literary interest: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.