“Easter Parade” by Rex Stout

To accompany my prompt on how photography can influence our writing, I’m recommending a mystery novella in which photography plays a major role, “Easter Parade” by Rex Stout from the collection, And Four to Go.

In 1950’s New York City, Nero Wolfe, 275 lbs. of gourmet tastes and detective genius, also cultivates ten thousand orchids in rooftop greenhouses on his brownstone. When he hears that another amateur orchid grower, Millard Bynoe, has achieved a Vanda orchid with pure pink coloring, he must see it. Now. Wolfe also learns that Mr. Bynoe won’t display the orchid until he enters it into an international flower show, but his wife is wearing several blossoms as her corsage for Easter Sunday services.

When Wolfe tells his right hand man, Archie Goodwin, about this, Archie tells Wolfe to take a camera to Fifth Avenue on Sunday morning with thousands of other photographers crammed together to take photos of wealthy people leaving church services on Easter. Archie knows Wolfe will never do this because his boss dislikes shaking hands with people, much less pressing up against strangers. But Archie states:

“Instead of scowling or growling, or both, he was merely nodding thoughtfully, as if the idea of rubbing elbows, not to mention other parts of his anatomy, with his fellow beings in the Fifth Avenue Easter mob wasn’t repellent at all. Envy broadens a man.”

Wolfe asks Archie to hire someone to steal the blossoms off Mrs. Bynoe as she leaves the church. Archie contacts a petty thief he knows, Tabby. Archie also attends the Easter Parade with a camera, positioning himself outside the Bynoe’s church with hundreds of other photographers. When Mrs. Bynoe has an attack on the sidewalk after leaving the church, Tabby moves in and swipes the flowers. Mrs. Bynoe dies, and the autopsy reveals its strychnine poisoning, delivered through a needle, possibly fired from a camera that had been altered to be a weapon.

Wolfe is desperate to uncover the murderer before the depths of his orchid envy are revealed and the cops figure out who hired Tabby.

Not only is a camera suspected of being the murder weapon, the photographs Archie takes Easter morning become the key clue to solving the mystery. The novella includes four photos readers can study to see if they can spot what Wolfe notices.

I always enjoy reading mysteries set at specific holidays. “Easter Parade” is the only one I’ve found that takes place during Easter and incorporates a unique feature of how Easter was celebrated long ago. Mr. Stout wrote the story in the 1950’s, so the description of the Easter Parade is from a person of that time. I love how the novella gives readers a peek into history.

What books have you read that uses photography as a key element?

For more prompts and tips from this month’s theme of using other arts in our writing, click here.

April 24, 2025 0

Review of “Christmas Party” by Rex Stout

I titled this a review of “Christmas Party” by Rex Stout, instead of a book review, because it’s a short story and might even qualify as a novella. So I can’t really call it a book review. But even in its short form, it’s one of my favorite Christmas stories because it’s from my all-time favorite mystery series, the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Never heard of him? Allow me to introduce you.

Armchair Detective Meets Hard-boiled P.I.

Nero Wolfe and his faithful, often exasperated, bodyguard-secretary Archie Goodwin, debuted in 1934. Mr. Stout brilliantly combined the two main styles of mystery fiction of the time: the intellectual detective, like Sherlock Holmes, and the tough-guy private investigator, like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Nero Wolfe is the Sherlock Homes side. Weighting a seventh of a ton, he rarely leaves his brownstone home in New York City and never for the detective work that supports his luxurious lifestyle. The exorbitant fees he charges pays for his gourmet tastes, voracious reading, and the ten thousand orchids he grows in a greenhouse on the fourth floor.

While Wolfe sits back and uses his genius, Archie Goodwin is the two-fisted assistant with a terrific sense of humor who carries out his boss’s instructions. It could be anything from cajoling a witness to come to the brownstone for an interview with Wolfe to collecting evidence and heckling cops.

When Mr. Stout died in 1975, the series, according to Wikipedia, consisted of 33 novels and 41 short stories and novellas.

Christmas and Nero Wolfe

“Christmas Party” is one of my favorite Nero Wolfe stories because it shows a more human side to the genius detective. Archie informs Wolfe that he can’t take Wolfe to meet another orchid grower on Long Island because he’s been invited to an office Christmas party. When Wolfe tells him he’ll have to cancel his plans, Archie produces a marriage certificate and say he has to go because his fiancee has invited him.

At the party, Archie chats with Margot Dickey, the woman who invited him to the party, and her colleagues at the interior design firm where she works. When the owner, Kurt Bottweil is poisoned, the cops are sure the guilty party is the man dressed as Santa who was hired to tend bar. No one knows who Santa was because Kurt hired him, and Santa disappeared during all the commotion when Kurt collapsed.

When Archie returns to the brownstone, it becomes clear that he and Wolfe have to figure out who actually killed Kurt.

And Four to Go is the book in which “Christmas Party” originally appeared, but it’s a popular Christmas mystery and can be found in many anthologies, like The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries.

What kind of detective do you prefer: the armchair detective or the hard-boiled one?

For posts on Christmas, writing, and stories, click here.

December 12, 2024 1

Review of “A Scandal in Winter” by Gillian Linscott

I’m reposting this review of “A Scandal in Winter” by Gillian Linscott because this month’s theme is love and friendship. It’s one of my favorite Christmas mysteries. I first found it in the anthology Holmes for the Holidays. It’s also been collected in The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. Sherlock Holmes and romance seem like polar opposites, but Ms. Linscott writes a very convincing romance, fitting perfectly in the Holmes canon. Maybe that’s why I like it so well. It’s a romance that makes sense.

In 1910, tween age Jessica is spending the Christmas season at a Swiss resort with her wealthy family. Her family stayed at the resort the previous year when another guest fell to his death. Jessica was the only witness. The official verdict declared the death an accident, but both guests and staff believe the victim’s wife has gotten away with murder.

Jessica and her sister Amanda notice two elderly men they nickname “Silver Stick” and “Square Bear”. They are the only two guests who are polite to the widow when she returns to the resort. Silver Stick questions Jessica about what she saw, and Jessica, who savors the attention, plays amateur detective. Why Sherlock Holmes is on the case gradually comes clear through Jessica’s observations.

Jessica’s voice is distinct. It was the first aspect of the story to hook me. She’s a privileged child, but she’s old enough and smart enough to question the privileges and conventions she’s been raised in. Ms. Linscott also has some wonderful descriptions. I picture Jessica’s mother perfectly — “Then Mother arrived, wafting clouds of scent and drama.” And the widow — “This year she was thin, cheekbones and collarbones above the black velvet bodice sharp enough to cut paper.”

In the end, Holmes proves his devotion to the widow in his own way. And his understanding of what’s most important to Jessica.

To read my other posts on writing about love and friendship, click here.

What romances have you read that surprised you, maybe providing fresh twists to the rules of the genre?

February 1, 2024 1

Which Children’s Books Do You Still Love?

As I researched my posts from seven years of blogging, I found that this post had the most comments, not including guest posts and giveaways. So I hope I can start another conversation. Which children’s books do you still love?

The McBroom Saga

The McBroom books were a series of longer picture books written by Sid Fleischman. The narrator of the stories is always Josh McBroom, the father of the McBroom clan, which consists of his “dear wife” Melissa and eleven redheaded children. They live on a “wonderful one-acre farm” with soil so rich that they can grow a whole corn crop in a matter of days. The farm is so unusual that many of the plots concern the underhanded tactics the family’s neighbor Heck Jones deploys to steal their farm.

I still love these books for the same reasons I did as a kid. First, Mr. Fleischman wrote them in dialect.

Beasts and birds? Oh, I’ve heard some whoppers about the strange critters out here on the prairie. Why, just the other day a fellow told me he’d once owned a talking rattlesnake. It didn’t talk excactly. He said it shook its rattles in Morse code.

Well, there’s not an ounce of fact in that. Gracious, no! That fellow had no regard for the truth. Everyone knows that a snake can’t spell.

MCBROOM’S ZOO BY SID FLEISCHMAN

The dialect reminds me of how my grandparents talked. Small rant here: for some reason I can’t figure out, publishers hate it when authors write in dialect. I understand that we can overdo it and make the dialogue almost gibberish. But when done well, it makes characters stand out. My oldest is a huge fan of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Certain tribes of animals talk with specific dialects. My oldest was eleven when he started the series and had no trouble understanding what the characters were saying. So why can’t authors include dialect in YA and adult books? It’s one of life’s unsolved mysteries. Okay. Rant over.

The second thing I loved about this series was the big family. When Josh McBroom wants all his children to gather round, he calls “Willjillhesterchesterpeterpollytimtommarylarryandlittleclarinda!” I thought it would be fun to grow up with so many brothers and sisters.

The Three Investigators

The Three Investigators was a mystery series begun in the 1960’s by Robert Arthur. Three fourteen-year-old boys run a detective business in California and sometimes get work with the help of their friend, Alfred Hitchcock. These books are a step up from the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. The three boys, Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews, have more distinct personalities than the Hardy Boys, especially Jupiter. The brains of the business, he lives with his aunt and uncle in a salvage yard where the boys have converted an old trailer into their office, hiding it amid all the junk. He’s always described as “stocky”, he’s relentlessly logical, and the few illustrations included in the books always show him wearing Hawaiian shirts.

The mysteries are more complicated. In The Mystery of the Scar-Faced Beggar, the boys thwart a gunrunning operation with international repercussions. I had a lot of fun introducing my youngest to these, and he fell in love with them, using them for a book report.

What children’s books do you still love?

For reviews of more of my favorite books, click here.

December 14, 2023 2

Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse

This month, on Thursdays, I’m reposting my most popular posts from the last seven years. This post, “Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse: by G.K. Chesterton as received the most views and is one of my all-time favorite short stories.

To tie in with my theme of digging deeper into our senses when writing, I chose the best example of writing about color that I’ve ever read. No author used color like G.K. Chesterton, and in his short story, “The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, color not only brings the setting and characters to vivid life but is the crux of the plot.

This story was first published in 1935, but the characters discuss a political event that took place years before when European armies still relied on horses and dressed in the uniforms of their regiment rather than in fatigues that allowed them to blend in with their surroundings.

A Prussian unit, the White Hussars, is encamped at one end of a raised stone road, the only road through a huge, desolate swamp. Other Prussian troops occupy the Polish town at the other end of the road. The Prussian officer in this town will release a Polish nationalist he is holding prisoner unless he gets a message to execute him from Marshal Von Grock, who is camped with the White Hussars.

Von Grock sends a solider on horseback with the execution order. He leaves by the stone road. When the Prussian prince comes into camp a few minutes later to review the troops and learns what the marshal has done, he sends a second rider with an order that countermands the marshal’s. The prince fears international opinion if the Prussians kill the prisoner, who is also a famous poet and singer. Once the prince leaves, Von Grock sends a third solider, not with a message but with a rifle to bring down the prince’s messenger.

As Mr. Pond, who is telling the story, says, “The whole thing went wrong because the discipline was too good. Grock’s soldiers obeyed him too well; so he simply couldn’t do a thing he wanted.”

The plot hinges on the white uniforms with a “flame-colored baldrick” (I had to look this up: it’s a belt worn over the shoulder). All three soldiers on horseback wear it. These uniforms stand out against the dark swamp as do their white horses, which is the standard for the regiment. The descriptions of the swamp as the riders ride along the lonely road at night are so vivid that my mental picture is engrained in my brain.

“The grey-green blotches of flattened vegetation, seen from above like a sprawling map, seemed more like the chart of a disease than a development; and the land-locked pools might have been poison rather than waste. “

“The moon had risen over the marshes and gone up strengthening in splendor and gleaming on dark waters and green scum.”

Mr. Chesterton also uses color to contrast the marshal, wearing a white uniform, with the prince, who is wearing a black and blue uniform with a dark cloak.

I found this story in the collection Thirteen Detectives. What stories have you read that uses color, or one of the other sense, so effectively?

For more posts on my favorites stories, click here.

December 7, 2023 2

Category: Favorite Stories