# Favorite novels - jmiked



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

I'm stealing the idea from from Bacardi Jim...... here are my 10 favorite novels... all 13 of them. 

Some of them aren't on the Kindle yet, and may not be for quite some time. But I'm still going to dig them out and read them.

My criteria here is that these are the books I read over and over. I'm not claiming any literary superiority for them. I'll probably be posting them over the next few days. Unless I get a cease and desist order. 

13. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Despite Holmes being absent for a goodly portion of the novel, I think this is the quintessential Holmes story. It's certainly been made into more movies than any other Holmes story.

It's got a mysterious moor, a family legend of a ravening monster, characters haunting the night fog, you name it. It may be the Holmes work that allows for the most character development, as arguably the short stories don't allow much room for that.

The Sherlock Holmes Complete Illustrated Collection







was one of the first things I downloaded for the Kindle. I slipped up and didn't get the Mobilereference version the first time but I intend to rectify that soon, as it has the original Sidney Paget illustrations. There are a number of free editions out there, but I don't know that they offer the illustrations, which to me are critical to setting the atmosphere of the stories.


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## KBoards Admin (Nov 27, 2007)

Sherlock Holmes was a boyhood favorite of mine; I read them over and over again. 

Looking forward to the rest of the "ten"..!!


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

12.  *Mr. Glencannon Ignores the War* by Guy Gilpatric
"Our hero tries to ignore World War II only to find it won't ignore him"

Not yet on Kindle.

Published in 1945, this is one of the few novels that Guy Gilpatric wrote about Glencannon (if memory hasn't failed me; my printed books have all been packed up and in a storage facility for a while, so I can't check). I've read the entire collection and didn't find any that failed to entertain me.

Colin Glencannon is a feisty Scottish chief engineer (and notorious tippler) on board the S.S. Inchcliff Castle, a decrepit cargo ship out of Scotland. He always seems to have some scheme going to transfer money from everyone else's pocket to his. Mostly they don't work out all that well. This is a series at which I frequently laugh out loud.The Glencannon series stretches out over several decades or so, and were immensely popular when they were first printed. The short stories were almost always published in The Saturday Evening Post and were a huge draw. These days they might be called a wee bit politically incorrect by some.

These stories have never failed to please anyone I've recommended them to, including my aged mother and my youngest brother.

There was a TV series in the UK around 1957-59 (39 episodes) with Thomas Mitchell as Glencannon. Probably lost forever, sigh.

Unfortunately, none of the Glencannon works are available in an e-book format, although the print editions are still around in used book stores (including Amazon) and some expensive reprints from specialty presses. Maybe this will change someday, if Jeff Bezos lives up to his promise.










You can find e-text of three of the short stories from The First Glencannon Omnibus at:

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/gaslight/glencann.htm

Where you can copy and paste into a file to send to your Kindle if you like.

Guy Gilpatric's writing career was tragically cut short in 1950 when his wife was told she had inoperable terminal cancer, and they went home and both ended their lives. Shortly afterwards, it was discovered that her record had been confused with someone else's and she had been fine.

Mike


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

11. *The Little World of Don Camillo*







by Giovanni Gaureschi (1950)

Not yet on Kindle (I'll specify that for those who don't want to read about things that can't be read on the Kindle).

This little gem of a book was first published in Italy in 1950. The English translation is of the highest order, in my opinion. Essentially a collection of short stories, it is the first of a series of 6 or 7 books that relate the continual feud between Don Camillo (village priest) and Mayor Peppone (leader of the local Communist party), neither one of which is the "bad guy." These stories are filled with a very gentle humor. As one reviewer on Amazon said: "This book is very Italian and very Catholic . . . but you needn't be either to enjoy it (I'm not)." They do give some insight into the political situation in Italy during the post-WWII era. The stories are sprinkled with little humorous line drawings that add to the charm (I believe they were done by the author).

They are very much tales of a long-gone and simpler era. Whimsical might be the operative word here. They are tales from a small village in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the later books go into the early 1960s. They are probably best read as a chapter every day or two.

I stumbled on this series in a small bookstore, and spent the next 10 years finding the rest. This was in the 1970s, before the internet, so I had to actually go to book stores. This is one of those series that seems to always be well-received when I make a recommendation.

There have been at least two movies made from the books (they are in my Netflix queue at the moment).

There are 21 reviews on Amazon.











Mike


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

10. Dune







by Frank Herbert

At last, here's another novel that someone has heard of.......

Certainly one of the best-known works in the Science Fiction field. I first read it in paperback loaned to me, and liked it so much I went and ordered the hardcover, which was still in print (and ended up with a pristine first edition).

An epic story in a very detailed universe for which Herbert spent years developing the background. This book made an immediate impression on me. I'd read a number of his previous works and thought they were only so-so, but Dune knocked my socks off. It won the Hugo for best Novel in 1966. I can't recall that Herbert ever wrote anything outside the Dune universe afterwards.

Dune is the story of Paul Atreides, from a young man being suddenly uprooted from his home on a water-rich planet and moved with his family to a desert planet, to being the chosen one of the people of the desert planet, to being ruler of the known universe. There's a lot of ecological and political subtext in this book, more so than I can recall in any previous work in the genre. I think that Herbert did a particularly good job at contrasting he cultural differences between the Atreides clan and the natives of Arrakis, the sand planet they have been moved to by the political maneuvering of their enemies.

There's a lot to keep track of in this book..... fortunately it has an appendix to help the new reader keep things straight (sometimes it helps the repeat readers, also). Herbert does a pretty good job of explaining what you need to know as the story progresses, This is, though a book that almost demands a second reading to appreciate and understand more fully what is going on.

There is a Kindle version of this book, which I have purchased but not read. I'm told that it has many typos and other errors, unfortunately. But it costs less than $2.00!

Mike


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

9. *The Caves of Steel







* by Isaac Asimov

Not available for the Kindle (but given all the other Asimov works already on the Kindle, it shouldn't be long before it shows up).

One of the classics-- a science fiction mystery novel, with emphasis on the mystery aspect.

Set in a time 3000 years in the future where the human race has moved out to other worlds, the earth has become insular and people live under huge steel domes. A scientist from one of the "Spacer" worlds has been murdered (prior to the beginning of the novel) and an Earth policeman has been assigned to investigate the murder, accompanied by a human-like robot partner (R. Daneel Olivaw) from the Spacer worlds. The presence of robots has been tightly controlled on Earth, and there is immediate antagonism towards the robot from Elijah Bailey, the Earth detective.

This novel shows its origins of being written the the 1950s.... the novel is set 3 millennia in the future, where contact lenses exist but are removed from the eye with a suction cup on a small stick, just as they actually were in the 1950s. Not a major point, but enough to pop me out of the story momentarily.

I first read this in the early 1960s, and it made a big impression. It combined the two genres I liked to read: mysteries and science fiction. This may be the first example of that kind of cross-over writing, certainly the first I came across. This is one of Asimov's better attempts at characterization, in my opinion. He does seem to dwell a bit more on characters and their daily lives than in most of his other stories.

Followed by a sequel, The Naked Sun







, in which Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw are teamed up once again, this time on a spacer planet, where Bailey goes out on the unprotected surface of the planet (hence the title).

Reportedly, this book was written because someone said that the two genres would never work together, and Asimov decided to prove they could.


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## Guest (Nov 8, 2008)

^^ Love the first two books in this series. However, I was a tad disappointed with The Robots of Dawn, the series finale. It seems that after 40 years of being criticized for not having any sex or romance in his novels, Asimov went overboard to shut his critics up in his last few books. And, sadly, he handled sex/romance awkwardly when he tried his hand at it.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Bacardi Jim said:


> ^^ Love the first two books in this series. However, I was a tad disappointed with The Robots of Dawn, the series finale. It seems that after 40 years of being criticized for not having any sex or romance in his novels, Asimov went overboard to shut his critics up in his last few books. And, sadly, he handled sex/romance awkwardly when he tried his hand at it.


If, despite being disappointed, you'd like to see The Robots of Dawn on Kindle, you can click here

Betsy


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Bacardi Jim said:


> And, sadly, he handled sex/romance awkwardly when he tried his hand at it.


Ain't it the truth.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

8. *The Flying Sorcerors







* by David Gerrold and Larry Niven

Not on Kindle yet.

Published in 1971, this is the story of an anthropologist that lands on a distant world and his travails there. He immediately makes an enemy of one of the most powerful sorcerers (a legend in his own mind) in the land who decides to make a small moon come down and crush the anthropologist, whom he regards as a competitor.

The story is sometimes fall-down-laughing funny. The native sorcerer, named Shoogar, is unrelenting in his efforts to kill the newcomer (who seems not to perceive Shoogar's enmity). The narrator, a bone-carver named Lant, has two sons that carve bicycles for a living. The two sons are named Wilville and Orbur. I think you can see where this is going, heh. They later help to build a flying machine.

There are various gods that the locals believe in. Two of them are Rotn'bair (the god of sheep), and Elcin, (the small god of thunder and other loud noises). Think about it (you have to be a SF fan to get it).

The teaming of Gerrold and Niven is to my mind, an unusual one but has hilarious results.


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## Guest (Nov 8, 2008)

^^ Never heard of it, but it sounds like a must-read for me. I think the only Niven I've read is Footfall, one of his many collaborations with Jerry Pournelle. Thanks for letting me know about this one.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

7. *You're Stepping On My Cloak and Dagger







* by Roger Hall

Not on Kindle, and don't hold your breath.

Recently re-issued after long being out of print, this is the very tongue-in-cheek story of a WWII army officer assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was the precursor of the CIA. First published in 1957, this book was extremely hard to find for a number of years. I finally found a hardcover first edition back in the 1980s and was immediately offered 4 times what I paid for it by an acquaintance who owned a book store. It was re-published not too long ago, and I've heard rumors of a movie deal.

Based on the author's own experiences, this is the tale of his training experiences to become a spy/intelligence officer. One of his first training assignments was to be sent in a car with blacked-out windows to a secret training facility to learn to navigate unfamiliar territory at night, which turned out to be the country club where he had been a golf caddy for a number of years when he was growing up. He confessed this to his training officer, who immediately closed the office door and told Hall to forget about it, don't tell anybody, and pretend he had never seen the place. He had to spend quite a while pretending to stumble over things.

This book became a favorite of ex-intelligence people by all accounts, some of whom said it was probably closer to the truth than many "serious" books.

Hall wrote in an engaging style, he was one of those authors who just didn't get the breaks for some reason. He wrote two other books, one a general fiction novel All My Pretty Ones (1959), and the other an intelligence novel titled 19 (1970), probably the only book ever named after a breakfast cereal ("good old 19, you can always count on it"). I liked 19 almost as much as Dagger.

After I wrote this, I found his obit: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/arts/28hall1.html?partner=rssnyt


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

jmiked said:


> 7.  *You're Stepping On My Cloak and Dagger*  by Roger Hall
> 
> After I wrote this, I found his obit:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/arts/28hall1.html?partner=rssnyt


I do believe I read this book many years ago and loved it. Thanks for posting the obit. I clicked on "I'd like to read this on my Kindle." Perhaps, since it was recently reissued, there's a chance it will be Kindled!

Betsy


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## Teninx (Oct 27, 2008)

jmiked, regarding Don Camillo: You have the first of his stories, published in 1948. There are several others including
Don Camillo e il suo gregge (Don Camillo and His Flock, 1953) 
Il Compagno Don Camillo (Comrade Don Camillo, 1963) 
Don Camillo e i giovani d'oggi (in USA: Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children, 1969.

There's a Don Camillo story written by Guareschi in English called Don Camillo and the Devil.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Teninx -

I have the full set of English Don Camillo hardcovers in "fine" condition. One of the places of honor in my 4,000+ book library.

I also have his The House That Nino Built, which is biographical, and not part of the series.

Mike


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

6. *The Time Masters







* by Wilson Tucker

Not available for Kindle.

A relatively short novel published in 1953, and one one immersed in its time: the Cold War era. The title refers not to someone traveling through time by artificial means, but through being long-lived.

The novel opens with one of the most heart-wrenching scenes of any SF novel I've read: the sudden almost unheard of failure of a starship in a remote area. Some of the crew make it to survival suits, and are scattered in all directions by the explosion - "like dandelion seeds." Their short, hopeless farewells to each other as they drift out of communication range are affecting.... or at least they were to me. But then, I cry at card tricks. 

One of those survivors makes landfall (that's some survival suit!) on a hospitable planet. Thus ends the prolog, which pretty much gives away the entire plot.

Forward 29 centuries to the 1950s. A private detective named Gilbert Nash becomes the subject of a government investigation. A nuclear scientist has hired him, and the feds want to know why. There are some pretty improbable coincidences here and throughout the book, but if you suspend some disbelief it's an entertaining story.

It's revealed pretty early that Gilbert Nash is a survivor of the starship accident all those centuries ago, and regards the intervening 29 centuries as mere decades in his lifespan. The similarity of "Gilbert Nash" to the name "Gilgamesh" is no accident.

From information revealed by the scientist, Nash suspects there may be another survivor from the starship (more suspension of disbelief required, heh).

Again, not great literature, but solid writing from a writer that didn't have a high output, although highly regarded by other SF writers. His book  The Year of the Quiet Sun was a Hugo and Nebula runner-up, and probably his masterpiece. I concede the point, but it was so bleak and grim that I couldn't ever bring myself to read it again. It has a revelation late in the book that threw all the previous events into a new light.

From a literary standpoint, his book  The Long Loud Silence , about the aftermath of a biological outbreak that leaves half the US in quarantine is superior to The Time Masters, as is  The Lincoln Hunters . But they aren't the ones I reread.

I couldn't find a cover picture anywhere. All my books are in storage, or I'd do a quick scan and post it.

I know some will complain about most of these books not being available for the Kindle, but I hope that they will be at some point and people will read them with as much enjoyment as I did. Or even get the printed version. Most of them can be bought as used books from Amazon or the like for a nominal sum. Or use your imagination.

Next time I'll have one you can actually purchase for the Kindle!!

Mike


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## Teninx (Oct 27, 2008)

Very nice, jmiked. I've always loved those stories and started reading them as a youngster.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

5.  *The Witches of Karres*  by James H. Schmitz

AVAILABLE FOR THE KINDLE!! Baen books webscriptions has it.

I can't do better than quote the description from Baen books:

"NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED . . .

Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned-but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous.

Unlucky in love, unsuccessful in business, he thought he had finally made good with his battered starship Venture, cruising around the fringes of the Empire and successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes which no one else had been able to sell. He was all set to return home, where his true love was faithfully waiting for him ... he hoped.

But then he made the fatal mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). They were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancee, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango-and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space.

And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres. A rollicking novel from the master of space adventure."

This is one of the most-read books I have. I don't think that Schmitz ever wrote anything I didn't like. Okay, they tend to be a bit on the space-opera side, but so what?

Schmitz also wrote  The Demon Breed , also recommended. It's not around as an ebook, though.

Curiously, although Witches is sold by Baen, it's not on Amazon as are (some of?) his other things.

Mike


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

4. *The Problem of the Wire Cage







* by John Dickson Carr

Not available on the Kindle

Published in 1939.

A prime example of the "locked room" sub-genre from the Golden Age of mysteries. John Dickson Carr was the prime exponent of this type of mystery. I have great fondness for the "impossible crime" story. It's a shame that no one is writing them these days.

The Wire Cage in this mystery surrounds a tennis court. A body is found in the center of the court, with only a single set of footprints leading to it. The task set to Dr. Gideon Fell is to figure out who did it.

Gideon Fell is one of the two main protagonists of Carr's stories (the other being Henry Merrivale). Fell is a typical storybook detective, in that he refuses to let anybody know what he is thinking, all the while dropping hints that the solution is child's play, except for that one elusive point. In real life, of course, such a detective would have long since been shot dead by aggravated friends and co-workers who had been pushed past the limit. Fell's main occupation, when not solving crimes, seems to be research for a book he is writing on the drinking habits of the English.

Typical of the day, not much time is spent on characterization. This may irritate some, but you get a good idea of what Fell is like over the series of novels he is in. The puzzle is, of course, the main draw in these novels, of which Carr wrote almost a hundred, with various main characters. He used several pen names throughout the years.

I like this particular one- it seems to have a goodly portion of all the things that make this rather old-fashioned type of story work: a brilliant but eccentric detective, a cast of other characters who may have a good motive for murder while dashing around doing stupid things such as picking up the murder weapon, etc.

But it's good fun. This probably is the least likely of the books on my list to appeal to very many other people that aren't hard-core vintage mystery fans. I'll concede that nostalgia plays a big part in my enjoyment of this work.

And yes, Columbo is one of my very favorite TV shows. Clever of you to guess. 

Mike


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## Guest (Nov 10, 2008)

Lots of classic sci-fi on this list.  I heartily approve.


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## Angela (Nov 2, 2008)

Bacardi Jim said:


> Lots of classic sci-fi on this list. I heartily approve.


I love sci-fi, detective/mysteries, etc. Your list intriques me jmiked.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

I’m sure people have noticed that the books that I reread as favorites are pretty much all older works. I could write an essay on that, I guess, but it might distill down to the things that you read during a certain period of time imprint themselves on you and you follow them around as chicks do a mother hen. I do know that even though I read a lot of contemporary works by such as Robert Crais, David Morrell, Dean Koontz, Lee Child, Sue Grafton, Aaron Elkins, J. K. Rowling, Jack McDevitt, Elizabeth Moon, etc., there are very, very few of them that I will read a second time, despite having enjoyed them. Quite a few of the older things I have read a number of times over the years.

There’s probably some subtle difference that I’m not seeing between the older things and the newer things. I’m not a person that is very analytical about things I like. Musically, I tend to listen to guitar instrumentals almost exclusively, mostly classical guitar. Why? Haven’t the foggiest. Doesn’t seem important.

Mike


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

3. *Nine Princes in Amber*







by Roger Zelazny

Not on Kindle yet

I suppose this qualifies as classic fantasy.... it was published 40 years ago, in 1970. I keep coming back to this series every few years, I've probably read the entire original set five or six times.

Nine Princes in Amber is a the first of 5 novels in the original Amber series. It begins with Carl Corey, who wakes up in a hospital with no memory of who he is and, of course, why he's there. Gradually he discovers his true identity and finds himself embroiled in a dimension-spanning war for succession to the crown of Amber, the city at the center of Reality. Carl, whose real name is revealed as Corwin, is helped and hindered by various brothers and sisters along the way. There's a very mild cliff-hanging ending.

There's probably not much here that has not been done before, but it's never been done in quite this way. Arguably the Harry Potter series was nothing new, either. Zelazny was one of those writers like Ray Bradbury or Rex Stout whose writing is just several cuts above everyone else's. And like Bradbury or Stout, I can pick up a Zelazny book on a whim and just read a chapter or few pages at random and enjoy the writing.

I met Roger once at a book signing in Austin around 1985. He was a very quiet person, and we had a short discussion on the possibility of the Amber series being filmed. He said the series had been under option several times, but had never made it to the production stage. With the current capabilities of CGI, maybe it will come to pass.

The series ended up at 10 novels, 5 each with two different protagonists. A third series written by another author after Zelazny's death with yet another protagonist.

This, like all my favorites on the list, is a book/series that I would re-purchase in a heartbeat if it were available for the Kindle.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

2. Way Station by Clifford D. Simak

Not on Kindle yet.

Published in 1964, it won the Hugo for Best Novel. Much more of an 'ideas' book than an action novel, It's pretty much typical Simak in that it features a protagonist that feels apart from society. Enoch Wallace lives in an isolated farm and has little interaction with others except the mailman. He's a Civil War vet and has not aged at all in the intervening years, although his neighbors pretend not to notice. He has come to the attention of a federal intelligence man because of his 100 year old subscription to various magazines (along with other inconsistencies), who noses around and finds the body of an extraterrestrial alien buried in Enoch's family cemetery. For some reason, this arouses his curiosity.

Enoch is custodian of a way station (get it?) of a galactic transit system. Aliens from various places stop over at his relay station before being transmitted along their route.

There's a lot of interior dialog in this novel, just as in most Simak works. You don't really notice this until afterwards, if then. Simak's works tend to have more characterization than most SF, particularly those of the period. The Cold War is evident in the atmosphere of the novel.

This may be the most re-read single novel in my library. Simak also wrote other acclaimed SF works, including City, a collection of short works linked by a common thread.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

1.  The Doorbell Rang  by  Rex Stout 

Not yet on Kindle. Random House currently has publishing rights, so I hope these books will be part of their announced plans to digitize more books.

Published in 1965, this may be Stout's most-known work. Because of the portrayal of the FBI it certainly didn't endear him to J. Edgar Hoover, who already had Stout on a watch list.

Rex Stout had about 50 Nero Wolfe volumes published in the period 1940 to 1975. Many of them were novels, but there were a fair number of short story and novella collections also. These were very popular at the time, spawning several movies and TV series. The series remains popular today and is still in print, unlike the work of many of his contemporaries.

The Nero Wolfe books aren't very action-oriented (nor are the plots very complicated), focussing mainly on the byplay between Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin. Wolfe is a genius (just ask him) and prefers reading and spending time in the greenhouse with his orchids to doing any actual work. Part of Goodwin's job is to make sure that Wolfe actually does some detective work and earn money. Goodwin is the active part of the team as Wolfe weighs a seventh of a ton (130kg/285lbs), and refuses to leave the house on business.

The Doorbell Rang concerns the efforts of Wolfe to investigate whether the FBI is harassing his new client. Soon there is an associated murder to investigate, with eyewitness reports of FBI agents leaving the scene prior to the police arriving. This puts Wolfe in the sights of both the police and the FBI, and he has to find a way of solving the case despite the recalcitrance of both organizations.

The Doorbell Rang has been filmed for TV twice, once in 1977 as a series pilot (postponed for two years when the actor playing Wolfe died), and once in 2001 as a pilot for the excellent A&E series.

As an aside, at the Bouchercon (the world's largest mystery convention) in 2000, Rex Stout was named Best Mystery Writer of the Century, and the Nero Wolfe series was voted Best Mystery Series of the Century.

This series is one in which I can literally pick up just about any volume in the series and start reading at random and enjoy it. The dialogue is wonderful and erudite and the main characters well-drawn. Not much is ever learned about their past. I'm currently re-watching the A&E series courtesy of Netflix and enjoying it again.

My alternate Stout book would be The Black Mountain, in which Wolfe not only leaves his house on business, but travels to Montenegro.










Just in case anybody read this far.... you can go to http://www.randomhouse.com/newsletters/ and sign up to be notified when Random House issues ebooks.  It's under Author Alerts.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

jmiked said:


> This series is one in which I can literally pick up just about any volume in the series and start reading at random and enjoy it. The dialogue is wonderful and erudite and the main characters well-drawn. Not much is ever learned about their past. I'm currently re-watching the A&E series courtesy of Netflix and enjoying it again.
> 
> My alternate Stout book would be The Black Mountain, in which Wolfe not only leaves his house on business, but travels to Montenegro.
> 
> ...


Love Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Still remember one of the books had Archie and Nero in a disagreement on the proper way to cook scrambled eggs; I still think of that whenever I make scrambled eggs. I read the Montenegro book with interest as my grandparents were from the former Yugoslavia though not from Montenegro.

Betsy


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Love Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Still remember one of the books had Archie and Nero in a disagreement on the proper way to cook scrambled eggs; I still think of that whenever I make scrambled eggs. I read the Montenegro book with interest as my grandparents were from the former Yugoslavia though not from Montenegro.
> 
> Betsy


That was The Mother Hunt when they were hiding out at the clients house. Wolfe maintains it takes 40 minutes to properly scramble eggs where every particle is firm yet moist.

Random House tells me they have no plans in the near future to convert any of the Nero Wolfe series to e-book. I've got Rex Stout on my Random House watch list.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

gertiekindle said:


> That was The Mother Hunt when they were hiding out at the clients house. Wolfe maintains it takes 40 minutes to properly scramble eggs where every particle is firm yet moist.
> 
> Random House tells me they have no plans in the near future to convert any of the Nero Wolfe series to e-book. I've got Rex Stout on my Random House watch list.


I knew someone would know which book it was. I read it SOOOOOO long ago. They were my older brother's books. (No book was safe in our house).

Betsy


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I knew someone would know which book it was. I read it SOOOOOO long ago. They were my older brother's books. (No book was safe in our house).
> 
> Betsy


It's my favorite Wolfe book. I only have 26 of them and I think there are 46 all together. They've been reissuing them and I may have to resort to dtb copies to get the rest. Ah, the sacrifices we make to read our fave authors.


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## ScottBooks (Oct 28, 2008)

All of you Rex Stout fans may want to skim through the Insomniac's Mystery Thread on Amazon. I think we mention Nero or Archie every 15th post or so.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

ScottBooks said:


> All of you Rex Stout fans may want to skim through the Insomniac's Mystery Thread on Amazon. I think we mention Nero or Archie every 15th post or so.


I'm not surprised. You can't talk mystery without including Rex Stout. I'm going to have to go to fictionwise and get the full list of his works so I can complete my collection.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2008)

Bump for badandy


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