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Nov. 15th, 2020 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stateless82I've just finished re reading all 47 of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. I started with the first one, Fer-de Lance at the end of May, and ended with the last, A Family Affair, a couple days ago. In between I read them in no order, just as the came to hand from my shelf or from the stack I borrowed from a friend. I don't know how I don't have all of them. I would have sworn I had a complete set back in the nineties.
I've been reading and re reading Nero Wolfe since the early 70's. The first one I read was one of Stout's own favorites, Some Buried Caesar. It belonged to my mother but it moved from her book case to my room and has stayed with me since.
This time through there was one passage in one of the stories that struck me- so I copied it out.
It's from Cop Killer in the book Triple Jeopardy written in 1951.
"Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn't make me want to smile back. "A policeman asking questions." he said in the level tone he had used before, "has a different effect on different people. If you have a county like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman's questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I - we do not have one."
I've been reading and re reading Nero Wolfe since the early 70's. The first one I read was one of Stout's own favorites, Some Buried Caesar. It belonged to my mother but it moved from her book case to my room and has stayed with me since.
This time through there was one passage in one of the stories that struck me- so I copied it out.
It's from Cop Killer in the book Triple Jeopardy written in 1951.
"Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn't make me want to smile back. "A policeman asking questions." he said in the level tone he had used before, "has a different effect on different people. If you have a county like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman's questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I - we do not have one."
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Date: 2020-11-15 08:03 pm (UTC)I really should read those.
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Date: 2020-11-15 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-16 12:51 am (UTC)HUGS!