{"id":142,"date":"2002-06-11T17:24:08","date_gmt":"2002-06-11T21:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=142"},"modified":"2002-06-11T17:24:08","modified_gmt":"2002-06-11T21:24:08","slug":"stout_rex_08_wh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/06\/stout_rex_08_wh\/","title":{"rendered":"Stout, Rex: (08) Where There’s a Will"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Yesterday, I took a round-trip train ride to New York City, and one can only do—actually, one can only carry<\/em>—so much bar review material around the city. [1] For the same reason, I also didn’t want to bring my hardcover Freedom and Necessity<\/cite>. I chose a paperback by staring at the Nero Wolfe shelf until I spotted a novel that I remembered nothing about; this turned out to be Where There’s a Will<\/cite><\/strong>. Of course, my sleep-fogged brain picked a book with, oh joy, legal bits! Note to self: Rex Stout was not<\/em> writing fact patterns for a bar review essay . . .<\/p>\n

Legal nitpicking aside (of which I could do plenty, so be glad I spared you), this is a reasonably good one, with some nice dramatic and melodramatic bits. However, the definitive piece of evidence does get withheld from the reader in a particularly annoying way, which a later book (or maybe short story; I forget) tries to make up for. The solution is deducible without it, though, and for a change I actually did (though I have read this before, so it’s not a fair test). Anyway, a perfectly good train-and-lunch book.<\/p>\n

[1] I now have a job for the fall, which I am happy about, but my anxiety over the final formal interview was not helped by the realization that this would be the first time I was above-ground in New York City since the summer. (I’d transferred from Penn Station to Grand Central and back a few times, but always on tight schedules, so I stayed underground.) I happened to walk up Broadway a few blocks from the site; I didn’t detour, wanting to be neither a ghoul nor an emotional wreck for the rest of the day, but I did look down side-streets. Really, all I can say is that it was Very Strange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I took a round-trip train ride to New York City, and one can only do—actually, one can only carry—so much bar review material around the city. [1] For the same reason, I also didn’t want to bring my hardcover Freedom and Necessity. I chose a paperback by staring at the Nero Wolfe shelf until … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Stout, Rex: (08) Where There’s a Will”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,6,7],"tags":[400],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mystery","category-nero-wolfe","tag-stout-rex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}