The Black Mountain

Wolfe goes abroad on a cold war spy mission. Of sorts. Kind of. Not a good story. Fails on so many levels. ( )

Sometimes mystery writers try to go outside their area and put beloved characters into a spy novel rather than a mystery. Sometimes it works, but not this time. The whole mystique of Nero Wolfe is that he never leaves his house. Putting him in a physically demanding setting and having Archie handicapped by language issues makes for a frustrating story. It was comforting to know that Archie was equally frustrated. ( )

The Black Mountain (1954) (Nero Wolfe #24) by Rex Stout. When the closest friend that Nero Wolfe ever had is murdered, the detective vows to find the killer. That it would involve sending Archie to Montenegro, where Wolfe was born, would seem extreme. But Wolfe himself leaves his favorite chair, travels about New York on the night the body was discovered, and ends up climbing mountains and fighting Russians in Albania.
The seemingly impossible happens. Wolfe, loyal to his friends, deadly to his enemies, takes on this mission of retribution seeking the killer no matter the cost to himself.
Fans of Wolfe and Goodwin are used to the latter doing all the footwork. Here, despite his massive size and lack of conditioning, Wolfe is compelled to face all odds and all enemies in an undercover operation in the torn world of Yugoslavia and the Balkans.
It is wonderful to read about true loyalty. ( )

While this entry in the Nero Wolfe series is more of a thriller than a mystery, it also features Wolfe voluntarily leaving his New York brownstone to return to his native Montenegro in order to find the killer of his close friend Marko Vukcic. As Archie comments, he and Wolfe end up exchanging positions (primarily because Archie doesn't speak Italian or Serbian or any other foreign language). ( )

Kudos to Rex Stout for grappling with the Poirot Problem: What do you do when your series detective, to whom you whimsically gave an exotic foreign background, becomes so popular that fans demand to know about his past? Agatha Christie created Ariadne Oliver to vent. Stout tops her by killing off Nero Wolfe's oldest friend, forcing the sedentary sleuth not just out of his house but onto a plane to Montenegro.

This has to be the oddest book in the Wolfe/Goodwin series. Nero Wolfe, the legendary couch potato, transformed to a mountain goat? Archie -- posing as his son -- carries the luggage along with the narrative, which he's reconstructed after the fact from Wolfe's translations. I learned more than I could absorb about the geography and politics of that volatile region, which would soon explode into larger wars than the one our sleuths must navigate. The story is action-packed, full of disguises, deceptions, betrayals, and violence, suspenseful all the way back to New York.

So, more of a thriller than a Golden Age mystery. No women, except for the occasional glimpsed-from-afar wife or daughter. I enjoyed The Black Mountain, and I'd love to ask Rex Stout how he came to write it, but I'll be happy to rejoin Wolfe and Goodwin in Manhattan. ( )