The Doorbell Rang - Reviews and Commentary

Reviews and Commentary

• Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime — The plot is transparent and the detection is fairly simple, but one or two of the dodges practiced here by Wolfe are new (for him). The scene in which the New York head of the FBI is "rated" in Wolfe's office and told he can't have a set of credentials belonging to one of his own men is rich. The anti-"bugging" scheme is also amusing.
• Harper's, Books in Brief (December 1965) — One always feels that Mr. Stout is having fun with his Nero Wolfe and Archie, but never has it been more apparent than in this complicated but easily followed tale. It's a story of sleuthing, harassment, murder, the FBI — very especially the FBI — and the police, with the usual delicious decor of orchids, fine foods, and happily unconventional and pungent dialogue. Almost everybody's role is unexpectedly askew and you don't see how they can all possibly get their deserts, but they do, convincingly and rather hilariously.
• The Nation — No doubt about it — the best civil liberties mystery of all time.
• Nancy Pearl, Book Lust — When Stout is on top of his game, which is most of the time, his diabolically clever plotting and his storytelling ability exceed that of any other mystery writer you can name, including Agatha Christie, who invented her own eccentric genius detective Hercule Poirot. Although in the years since Stout's death I find myself going back and rereading his entire oeuvre every year or two, I return with particular pleasure to these five novels: The Doorbell Rang; Plot It Yourself; Murder by the Book; Champagne for One; and Gambit.
• Terry Teachout, About Last Night, "Forty years with Nero Wolfe" (January 12, 2009) — Rex Stout's witty, fast-moving prose hasn't dated a day, while Wolfe himself is one of the enduringly great eccentrics of popular fiction. I've spent the past four decades reading and re-reading Stout's novels for pleasure, and they have yet to lose their savor ... It is to revel in such writing that I return time and again to Stout's books, and in particular to The League of Frightened Men, Some Buried Caesar, The Silent Speaker, Too Many Women, Murder by the Book, Before Midnight, Plot It Yourself, Too Many Clients, The Doorbell Rang, and Death of a Doxy, which are for me the best of all the full-length Wolfe novels.
• Time, "The Grand Race" (book review) (November 5, 1965) — Stout once said all that he thinks is important to say. A good mystery writer, he wrote, merely tells the reader: "Let's run a race. Here goes my mind, I'm off, see if you can catch me." In Doorbell, even FBI fans will have to admire his agility.
• Dilys Winn, Murder Ink: The Mystery Reader's Companion — Most Overrated Wolfe.