Gambit (edition 1964)

This is one of those mysteries where the reader really should figure it out, but Stout has the red herrings coming so fast and furious that I really lost track of the obvious suspect. I guess that's why these are fun to read again and again. ( )

Gambit is the first Nero Wolfe mystery that I've read. The thing that I found most interesting about it were the characters. Nero Wolfe is every bit the enigmatic genius that he is purported to be. It was hard to imagine a private detective who never leaves his house, and has another detective who does all of his leg work, but Wolfe manages to make it work. I also enjoyed the character of Cramer, who comes off as the cool, tough guy. He's a bit more stereotypical than Wolfe, but he is still well developed .

The aspect of the book that I found least interesting was the actual mystery part of this. Not being a chess player, I had no concept of the runners and go-betweens that were critical to the novel. My concept of chess is two people sitting in front of a board facing each other. All of these extraneous people seemed pointless. Also, the killing and motive for killing seems so thin and weak. I think it takes something extraordinary for a regular person to kill another. In this case, it seemed like Stout wanted to come up with a murder surrounding a chess game but ran out of good reasons to have one human being kill another and what resulted was this flimsy garbage. All the same, it was not a bad read, more in terms of character than plot.
Carl Alves - author of Two For Eternity ( )

Gambit is about a murder at a chess tournament in which supposedly only a small number of people had opportunity to commit the crime. This novel was irritating because from the beginning to virtually the climax Wolf steadfastly ignored the person I figured had the best opportunity. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how the murderer could have planned the murder in advance, which was necessary for the plot. Wolf is a genius—he should have spotted the most likely suspect and been working on the “how” from the beginning instead of waiting to be told the how before coming up with the who. In spite of my irritation--any Nero Wolfe is better than no Nero Wolfe! ( )