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aris_tgdWell! I was going to post this last week, but Real Life intervened! So let's start this week off right with some Nero Wolfe and the villainous Arnold Zeck!
Original post for And Be a Villain
Original post for The Second Confession
I love both these books so much! I love the radio show on And Be a Villain, it feels like such a real world. Stout uses the trope of Archie going and investigating an office or an organization pretty often, and I feel like he always nails the small-town feel of personalities and petty office intrigues and shenanigans that happen when you have a group of people working together for a long time, especially when some of them happen to be artists or other creative types. I find myself less interested when Archie has to investigate a family or a group of strangers brought together by circumstance; the family stuff is similar but I feel like Stout doesn't quite have the same voice with family drama as he does with workplace drama.
And then The Second Confession! Danger! Murder! Zeck! THE PLANT ROOMS! That scene still gets me every time.
What do you guys think about our first exposure to Arnold Zeck? Did Stout do enough work building him up for the final showdown? Does he feel more like a pulp villain, a crime boss, or a supervillain? And if you were to pick any other Big Bad from popular culture to go head to head in a battle of crime and wits with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, who would it be?
Original post for And Be a Villain
Original post for The Second Confession
I love both these books so much! I love the radio show on And Be a Villain, it feels like such a real world. Stout uses the trope of Archie going and investigating an office or an organization pretty often, and I feel like he always nails the small-town feel of personalities and petty office intrigues and shenanigans that happen when you have a group of people working together for a long time, especially when some of them happen to be artists or other creative types. I find myself less interested when Archie has to investigate a family or a group of strangers brought together by circumstance; the family stuff is similar but I feel like Stout doesn't quite have the same voice with family drama as he does with workplace drama.
And then The Second Confession! Danger! Murder! Zeck! THE PLANT ROOMS! That scene still gets me every time.
What do you guys think about our first exposure to Arnold Zeck? Did Stout do enough work building him up for the final showdown? Does he feel more like a pulp villain, a crime boss, or a supervillain? And if you were to pick any other Big Bad from popular culture to go head to head in a battle of crime and wits with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, who would it be?
