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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Villano" data-source="post: 3018751" data-attributes="member: 505">Oh, I forgot to add that you should stick to the Rex Stout books and skip the all the Robert Goldsborough ones except the first, Murder In E Minor.Goldsborough continued the series about 10 years after Stout's last novel.  The first one is pretty good, with only a few bits of uncharacteristic moments.  For example, Inspector Cramer continually calls Goodwin "Archie", and, at another point, Goodwin sits at Wolfe's desk (in a Stout story, Wolfe had gone missing and Archie still wouldn't sit at his desk).The 2nd book isn't terrible, but isn't nearly as good as the first. Wolfe takes a job pro bono to help save Lon Cohen's newspaper, The Gazette, from a takeover.  Wolfe also meets the manufacturer of his favorite beer.  It reads too much like fanfiction.  The rest of the series is downhill from there (I've read the first 5 of his 7 novels).   As the series progresses, Goldsborough stops aping Stout's style.  Since Goodwin narrates the stories, it effectively changes his "voice".  Another problem is his black & white characterizations.  Unlikeable people are evil and the seemingly good actually are good.  This really hurts in the case of mysteries.  To give you an example, The Bloodied Ivy deals with a murdered conservative college professor.  All the conservatives in the book are evil, the liberals good.  Want to take a guess who the murderer will be?  Oh, and Wolfe leaves his house and visits the college during the investigation.   That's not Nero Wolfe! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /> The worst book (so far) is The Last Coincidence.  It's the first time I've ever read a book and felt angry.  It was so horrible.  I'd swear that he took another book and just changed the names to fit the series.  The characters are all old (Archie is late middle age and it mentions that Purley Stebbins was a detective when LaGuardia was mayor...that would be sometime between 1934 to 1945!  Keep in mind that this book was written in '89, meaning Stebbins would have to be in his 70s at least).  And, for some bizarre reason, Goodwin calls Saul Panzer, a fellow P.I.,  for info on a local, minor celebrity rather than Lon Cohen.  :\ What's even worse is how Wolfe discovers the identity of the killer.  It's so ridiculous, I couldn't believe it.   Don't read the following spoilers if you plan on reading the book (which you shouldn't anyway <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ), but [SPOILER]the story concerns Lily Rowan's niece being date raped.  The rapist, a millionaire playboy, is found murdered.  Wolfe determines that the victim's obnoxious, loudmouthed and totally unlikeable friend (who's barely in the book, btw) did it because he was in love with the niece.  His reasoning?  The niece says that he was always nice to her.  That's it!  The "reveal" at the end is horrible as Wolfe simply produces a duplicate of the murder weapon, causing the jerk to suddenly blurt out a confession.  I don't mean that Wolfe snares him in a clever trap.  Nope, it's just "weapon" and "I did it!"[/SPOILER]The next book is Fade To Black, which was marginally better.  Unfortunately, it still sticks to his black & white characterizations.  If you want to figure out who the killer is, just find the most unlikeable person.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> Anyway, I'll eventually get to the last 2 books (I have them already...I won the whole lot on eBay), but I don't have any expectations that they'll live up to the quality of the original series (or even Goldsborough's 1st book).  Goldsborough is a good example of letting a series die with its creator.</blockquote>

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