{"id":256,"date":"2004-02-28T18:32:09","date_gmt":"2004-02-28T23:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=256"},"modified":"2004-02-28T18:32:09","modified_gmt":"2004-02-28T23:32:09","slug":"stout_rex_36_ga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2004\/02\/stout_rex_36_ga\/","title":{"rendered":"Stout, Rex: (36) Gambit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"107801112946674648\"><\/a> <a name=\"link_107801112946674648\"><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>The very last Nero Wolfe book we didn&#8217;t own, <strong><cite>Gambit<\/cite><\/strong>, arrived at the end of January as a present, and I read it shortly thereafter. This is the one that opens with Wolfe burning the third edition of <cite>Webster&#8217;s<\/cite> page by page, as his latest client lays out the situation. I was rather tickled by this exchange at the end of the chapter:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. when I finished there was no more dictionary except the binding.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Will this burn?&#8221; he asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sure; it&#8217;s buckram. It may smell a little. You knew you were going to burn it when you bought it. Otherwise you would have ordered leather.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is also the chess one, as the title suggests. It&#8217;s nice to be able see the solution to the mystery at the same time as Archie and Wolfe, but I don&#8217;t believe the revelation that allows the mystery to be solved: that it would have happened at all, I mean, not that it would have been revealed at that time.<\/p>\n<p>A minor Wolfe, but there could have been a worse one to be last into the collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The very last Nero Wolfe book we didn&#8217;t own, Gambit, arrived at the end of January as a present, and I read it shortly thereafter. This is the one that opens with Wolfe burning the third edition of Webster&#8217;s page by page, as his latest client lays out the situation. I was rather tickled by &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2004\/02\/stout_rex_36_ga\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Stout, Rex: (36) Gambit&#8221;<\/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-256","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\/256","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=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}