Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Rex Stout, Bad For Business: A Tecumseh Fox Mystery

 Bad For Business:  A Tecumseh mystery (1 of 3)

Rex Stout, (c) 1940.  

I think all three of the Fox booksare better than they are generally considered to be.  Fox is a nicely conceived character (even if his name is fairly obviously borrowed from Nero Wolfe.  The owner a gourmet food company, Arthur Tingley, is murdered in his office, and his niece is assaulted.  His adopted son (but there’s a surprise coming about him), a financier with an interest in a rival food company, and a VP in yet another food company have been on the premises.  Fox, a PI whose home base is in upstate New York (but all the of his recorded cases—the others are Double For Death and The Broken Vase—take place in New York City.  I think all three of the Fox books are well above average. [As are the other non-Wolfe bools--The Hand in the Glove (Dol Bonner—who appears sporadically in the Wolfe bools); The Red Threads (Inspector Cramer, and The Sound of Murder (Alphabet Hicks). The crucial clue takes a while for Fox to recognize, but overall the story is taut and moves right along
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