Mereda Hart Farynyk’s Reviews > A Family Affair > Status Update

Kind of surreal to be reading the last book Rex Stout wrote before he died so soon after Dad died... when Dad is the one who introduced me to Nero Wolfe mysteries back in the day by letting me listen to the audiobooks along with him... 💜

“… Were they? Sent by you?”

“Yes,” Wolfe said.

“You admit it?”

Wolfe wiggled a finger. That was regression—I just looked it up. He had quit finger-wiggling a couple of years back. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Calling a statement an admission is one of the oldest and scrubbiest lawyers’ tricks, and you’re not a lawyer. I state it.”

"He answers nearly all real letters, especially handwritten ones, because, he once told me, it is a mandate of civility."

"But first I want to confess. I'm here under false pretenses. I came because I need help."

She nodded. "Certainly. I knew that when you said the top of the afternoon to me. You only remind me that I'm Irish when you want something."

"Tradition should be respected but not sanctified."