{"id":150,"date":"2002-07-23T15:07:58","date_gmt":"2002-07-23T19:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=150"},"modified":"2002-07-23T15:07:58","modified_gmt":"2002-07-23T19:07:58","slug":"stout_rex_16_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/07\/stout_rex_16_th\/","title":{"rendered":"Stout, Rex: (16) Three Doors to Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

So there I was, minding my own business, dutifully doing practice bar exam questions, when I come across this one:<\/p>\n

\n

When Sandra graduated from high school, her elderly Aunt Mildred asked her to come and live with her in the large, three-story brownstone owned by Mildred in Manhattan. Mildred . . . needed assistance in caring for the several thousand orchids she cultivated in her rooftop greenhouse [and orally promised Sandra that she would leave Sandra everything if Sandra came and helped her].<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At which point I put a little (!) in the margin.<\/p>\n

Two paragraphs later, I read<\/p>\n

\n

Mildred had devised her orchids to a Nero Wolfe, also residing in Manhattan, and [everything else to Mildred’s daughter]. When Sandra refused to vacate the brownstone or surrender the orchids, Cramer, now representing Mildred’s daughter, brought action for possession of the house.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which, clearly, was A Sign that it was time for me to take a break and write up the most recent Wolfe anthology I’d read, Three Doors to Death<\/cite><\/strong>. (Or maybe I was just sick of law. The last days of studying for the bar exam seem to consist, for me, of wild veering between confidence, panicked despair, and being so sick of law as to not care any more. Never fear, I’m not going to chuck it all; I will be brief.) Alas, these are not actual New York bar questions, but ones written by a bar review course.<\/p>\n

Three Doors to Death<\/cite> is far more satisfactory than Trouble in Triplicate<\/cite><\/a>, fortunately. Ignoring the slightly awkward introductory note, it opens with “Man Alive,” in which a man who faked his suicide comes back to life and is promptly murdered (of course). It features a truly lovely bit of pure deduction by Wolfe, who figures out the solution and browbeats proof out of a witness in something like half an hour, with impressively little in the way of facts to go on. We are also given Archie’s age: 32 in 1947; that would make him sixty in the last book, A Family Affair<\/cite>, published in 1975. He’s a very sprightly sexagenarian . . .<\/p>\n

In “Omit Flowers,” the second story, a once-brilliant cook has been charged with murder, and Marko Vukcic has enlisted his friend Nero to get him cleared. It has a great Archie-being-clever section, which makes up for the forced title, and the very Archie line,<\/p>\n

\n

Never to find yourself in a situation where you have to enter a big department store is one of the minor reasons for not getting married. I guess it would also be a reason for not being a detective.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(I was moderately traumatized by the whole wedding registry experience.)<\/p>\n

The last story, “Door to Death,” is in my opinion only so-so. It takes considerably less genius to solve a murder by poking a stick into an ant hill, and I’m not as amused as I used to be by Wolfe’s reaction to the outdoors. I was interested to note that it isn’t just Wolfe who believes in keeping people in the dark, though. For all that Archie bitches when Wolfe won’t tell him what’s going on, he was perfectly happy to leave us<\/em> unenlightened about the plan until it was executed. Not that there’s very much suspense about what’s going to happen, but I found it amusing nevertheless.<\/p>\n

Oh, in case you’re wondering: the answer was “C”, “The Statute of Frauds will not bar enforcement of Mildred’s promise because her promise induced Sandra to perform, and injustice can be avoided only by enforcement.” Right—back to the grind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So there I was, minding my own business, dutifully doing practice bar exam questions, when I come across this one: When Sandra graduated from high school, her elderly Aunt Mildred asked her to come and live with her in the large, three-story brownstone owned by Mildred in Manhattan. Mildred . . . needed assistance in caring for the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Stout, Rex: (16) Three Doors to Death”<\/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":[6,7,117],"tags":[400],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mystery","category-nero-wolfe","category-short-fiction","tag-stout-rex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","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=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}