More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
one in the kitchen,
Nope! Fritz wouldn't allow it.
He took time out for a friendly glance at me, to include me in the Society of United Citizens for Not Getting Don O’Neill Wrong.
Stout always, in every book, has a few phrases that tickle me.
That seemed to me to be overdoing it a little, since he wasn’t paying Kates’s wages;
Slightly heavy-handed foreshadowing.
“I’ll explain it to you. Finding that I am smarter than he is, he decided to pick on you, and he certainly got documentation for his statement that you’re a sap. In fact, you’d better be going. Leave him to me. I may see you at the office tomorrow.”
I'm not sure there's any one-shot character in the whole series I like as much as Phoebe Gunther.
On the way to the elevator I explained, “I didn’t say I didn’t think you were beautiful. I said—” “I heard what you said. It stabbed me clear through. Even from a stranger who may also be my enemy, it hurt. I’m vain and that’s that. Because it just happens that I can’t see straight and I do think I’m beautiful.” “So do—” I began, but just in time I saw the corner of her mouth moving and bit it off. I am telling this straight. If anyone thinks I was muffing everything she sent my way I won’t argue, but I would like to point out that I was right there with her, looking at her and listening to
...more
A good passage. Gunther likes Archie but won't stop toying with him (he might interfere with her plans), and Archie keeps falling for it.
“Because I didn’t feel like it. I was tired and I didn’t know who would be here. Between the police and the FBI, I have answered a thousand questions a thousand times each and I needed a rest.” “But you came with Mr. Goodwin.” “Certainly. Any girl who needed a rest would go anywhere with Mr. Goodwin, because she wouldn’t have to use her mind.”
Ouch.
“She has no difficulty explaining anything. That young woman has no difficulty explaining period.”
:)
I counted ten. Then, still without turning, I said distinctly, “My dear sir, try getting her to meet you any time whatever, even at Tiffany’s to try things on.”
I always like it when Archie gets fed up and gives Wolfe what he's got coming.
I agree with you that if you had broken your promise to Miss Gunther she would probably not have been killed, but it was she who asked you for the promise, so the responsibility is hers. Besides, she can afford it; it is astonishing, the burden of responsibility that dead people can bear up under.
True enough.
they know that Wolfe has never yet had a murderer for a client,
They often say that in these books, but it isn't true. See, for example, Over My Dead Body, published less than a decade before this. Oh, spoiler alert, by the way.
What made me use up a month’s supply of profanity in a measly two hours was not that all I could see ahead was ignominious surrender. That was a hard dose but by no means fatal. The hell of it was, as I saw it, that we were being bombed out of a position that no one but a maniac would ever have occupied in the first place.
You would expect Archie to have more confidence in Wolfe after all this time.
“The silent speaker.
Roll credits!
“But you left one thing out. Miss Gunther.” “What about her?” “She was dead. As you know, I detest waste. She had displayed remarkable tenacity, audacity, and even imagination, in using the murder of Mr. Boone for a purpose he would have desired, approved, and applauded. In the middle of it she was herself murdered. Surely she deserved not to have her murder wasted. She deserved to get something out of it. I found myself—by hypothesis—in an ideal position to see that that was taken care of. That’s what you left out.”
I love Wolfe the most in this moment.
