Too Many Cooks
by Rex Stout
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Book Summary Information
Author: Rex StoutEdition: Audio Cassette
Published: 2000-06-06
ISBN: 0736654623
Publisher: Books on Tape, Inc.
Book Reviews of Too Many Cooks
Book Review: Stout imitates Christie... badly
Summary: 1 Stars
Nero and Archie travel by train to a meeting of great chefs. Wolfe is something of a guest of honor and only the lure of such exquisite food could tempt him out of his brownstone. One of the chefs is universally despised by the others and it is no surprise when he is murdered. Wolfe tries to avoid involvement in the case, but of course it will be up to him to unravel the mystery.
Too Many Chefs appears to be an attempt by Rex Stout to emulate an Agatha Christie novel. He gathers a number of eccentric well-to-do people, puts them in a remote location, and gives virtually all of them a motive. The only thing missing was a little Belgian with a fancy mustache. Sadly, we learn that while Rex Stout is great at writing Nero Wolfe novels he is a very poor substitute for Dame Christie at writing Hercule Poirot novels. He introduces nearly a dozen chefs and their wives in a single paragraph, making them forever unrecognizable from that point forward. The repartee that is so sharp when Stout is at his best is so poor here that I would almost swear that someone else wrote the book.
Worst of all, the level of racism spewed out in the book is really above and beyond anything I need to see. Plenty of "n" bombs are tossed, and even Archie uses terms that are offensive. Lest African Americans feel singled out for attention, Archie also opines that women from China and "Japs" are all the same anyway. One can try to argue that the book was written in the 1930's and things were different back then. The problem is that I've read many Nero Wolfe novels, including the very first and none of them were choked with racist garbage. I'll give Stout the benefit of the doubt that he was trying to make a point, but I don't think he did it well or that it justifies the approach.
I can't recommend Too Many Cooks to either Nero Wolfe fans or newcomers to the series. There are too many other Wolfe books that are excellent such as Some Buried Caesar and Over My Dead Body to waste time on this one. It's a poor imitation of an Agatha Christie novel combined with a racism screed gone wrong. Avoid it like the plague.
Summary of Too Many Cooks
When the greatest chefs in the world gather for a meeting, Nero Wolfe is their honored dinner guest. It is a rare vacation for the gourmet sleuth - until a four-star killer serves a side dish of murder. Then the half-baked local law cooks up an unappetizing entree. Corpulent Wolfe and sidekick Archie begin mixing the ingredients for their inimitable souffle of detection and deduction, while the killer decides that Wolfe's prix should be permanently fixed...and that his last meal should be his just desserts. A landmark Wolfe mystery for the true fan."It's always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore." (New York Times Book Review)
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