One Bear's Opinion -- Book Review

Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout

My housemate’s mother has been reading the Nero Wolfe series for as long as I can remember. She works through the series in varying order every two years. Nero Wolfe has become almost a family member to my housemate. He has always been there, popping in at least once a month for a visit. But for reasons she cannot accurately explain, my housemate resisted reading the Nero Wolfe books, despite her mother’s assurances that she would enjoy them.

Then last year, as part of the 2015 Popsugar Ultimate Reading Challenge, she decided to give the series a try with a book she picked up on sale for her Kindle. We read Murder by the Book, and just as her mother predicted, she really enjoyed it. After which, she decided to pick up a few more Nero Wolfe books as they came on sale for the Kindle. I think she is enjoying sharing the books with her mother.

We are currently reading Guns, Germs and Steel, but together we deiced we wanted something fun to read as an alternative to the heavier book. And after consulting with me, she decided to give another Nero Wolfe story a try. Because I prefer to read the series in the order the author intended, she agreed to go with the earliest book in the series we have, which is not the first book in the series, but the sixth — Some Buried Caesar. My housemate’s mother, along with other reviewers, assures us that it is not necessary to read this series in order, so I am not as concerned by the fact that we didn’t start at the beginning.

As I mentioned, I am not unfamiliar with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. We thoroughly enjoyed the far too short-lived series Timothy Hutton did for the American cable network A&E. (I must get my housemate on finding that series on DVD. I could watch them over and over and I would love to share them with our newest housemates.) So we know the characters, and while my housemate declares that Nero Wolfe annoys the heck out of her, she does really like Archie Goodwin and the other supporting characters. This episode in the series introduced a recurring character, Lily Rowan, and it was nice to see how Archie and Nero met her.

What I discovered was that the book, originally written, or at the very least copyrighted, in 1938, really stands up and does not feel as dated as more modern mystery novels do as little as five years after they were written. I also agree with my housemate’s parents: Rex Stout does have a way with language. I had to check the dictionary quite a few times, and was, quite frankly, disappointed to find that the words we needed to look up were not in the onboard dictionary on the Kindle. What good is a dictionary that only includes words you already know? Poor form Amazon.

I honestly enjoyed this book, though I will admit to being nearly two-thirds through the book before I realized that the title did not mean that a number of people buried someone named Caesar, but instead referred to (misquoted) a line from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, discussing a plot of land where a caesar was buried:

I sometimes think that never [grows] so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled.

The title made more sense when I realized what it referenced.

The book was a fun and easy read, at least as long as I had a handy dictionary, and I am definitely going to encourage my housemate towards reading more of Nero Wolfe. She has another two novels and a novella on the Kindle, but I may have to gently steer her towards violating her self-imposed Kindle spending limit to get more. We need far more visits with Nero and Archie.  It's delightful there are 45 books for us to discover and re-read.

One Bear’s Opinion: Five bottles of beer with five plates of Chicken Fricassee and Dumplings from the Methodist Tent at the North Atlantic Exposition

Happy Reading Everyone,
Oliver