Too Many Cooks - Reviews and Commentary

Reviews and Commentary

• Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime — The masterpiece among three or four by Stout that deserve the name. In addition, it is the most amusing, thanks to such incidents as Nero's being shot in yellow pajamas, the altercation over saucisse minuit, and the triangle of Archie, the young lawyer, and the beautiful girl.
• Agatha Christie — I have enjoyed a great many of his books. Archie is a splendid character to have invented and his first person remarks and descriptions are always most entertaining to read. I must also reveal that greed and the general enjoyment of food is one of my main characteristics and the descriptions of the meals served and prepared by Nero Wolfe's cook have given me a lot of pleasure and a great wish to have occasionally tasted these suggestions myself. Perhaps for that reason, I particularly liked Too Many Cooks.
• Nora Ephron — Best meal in English literature? The banquet in Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout.
• Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker — Nero Wolfe, bigger and better than ever, is a guest of Les Quinze Maîtres, a society of world famous chefs, at a West Virginia spa. As murder is Mr. Wolfe's business, the polite chefs oblige. By far the best and funniest of Mr. Stout's books.
• M.F.K. Fisher — I think I have read everything Mr. Stout has written about Wolfe and Goodwin, and I have a standing offer for second-hand copies of Too Many Cooks; it is more comfortable to give them to people than to know who has stolen mine, which happened three times before I learned that trick.
• Marcia Kiser, Nero Wolfe: A Social Commentary on the U.S. — Referring to Wolfe's speech to the staff at the spa, " '... the ideal human agreement is one in which distinctions of race and color and religion are totally disregarded.' Please note Wolfe does not include 'sex' in his list."
• John McAleer, Rex Stout: A Biography — Too Many Cooks is one of the finest Wolfe stories. It is the closest thing to a locked-room mystery that Rex wrote. Accounting for his failure to work in this area, Rex said: "Since the interest is focused on one spot, Nero Wolfe would have to go there, and he wouldn't like that."
• Time (August 29, 1938) — Of last month's 13 mysteries, five stood out as best bets: Too Many Cooks — Rex Stout — Farrar & Rinehart ($2). Smooth concoction of crime and cooking in which Nero Wolfe, assisted by faithful, wisecracking Archie Goodwin, solves the murder of one of the world's 15 best chefs.
• J. Kenneth Van Dover, At Wolfe's Door — The occasion of Wolfe's brief foray beyond the walls of his brownstone produces an unusual variety of characters and a very unusual non-urban setting. It also results in the fullest portrait of his gastronomical interests. The chefs are all temperamental artists, and there is much incidental discussion of the fine points of gourmet cooking. Wolfe delivers a formal address on the supremacy of native American cuisine. Race relations become an issue. Archie, prosecutor Tolman, and Sheriff Pettigrew casually employ denigrative epithets ... Wolfe condescends to the black service staff no more than he does to anyone else, and he even surprises one of the waiters, Paul Whipple, by citing a line from Paul Laurence Dunbar. Tolman and Pettigrew protest Wolfe's misguided decency. ...