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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. Tecumseh Fox has a sharp eye for solving murders—but this time he's seeing double. Fox has been hired by the headstrong niece of a man charged in the shooting of wealthy financier Ridley Thorpe. The Problem is that there are two gorgeous suspects, two powerful motives, two hotheaded suitors, and two murder weapons. And to top it off, Ridley Thorpe, or someone claiming to be him, is not only alive and well but has an airtight alibit for the night of the show more shooting. Only one thing is certain: Fox doesn't have long to put two and two together before the real killer strikes again. show lessTags
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I didn't realize that Rex Stout had a second series of detective novels (although with only three novels featuring Tecumseh Fox, he obviously wasn't as popular as Nero Wolfe). While there are still flashes of Rex Stout's writing style in this novel, its much different than his Wolfe stories. Its a decent story, but the characters are hard to pin down and I finished the book without really grasping what Fox's motivations were or the relationship between him and his right hand man.
Mediocre. Like pretty much all of Stout's non-Nero Wolfe novels. It brings home once more that Stout's great and enduring success is due almost entirely to one inspired creation -- the narrative voice of Archie Goodwin.
The brief Tecumseh Fox series doesn't live up to its kindred Nero Wolfe mysteries. Notably, it's lacking both the strong inter-character interactions that fuel and bolster the Wolfe series - and the comic voice. If you'd like to read one, however, this is the first and best. It focuses more on Fox's peculiarities and his eccentric abode - the Zoo - than the mysteries that follow it, lending more of the situations and material Stout used so well. The Broken Vase, a later Fox mystery, invloves some marvelous ideas, thinly written. (** or ** 1/2)
Stout created the Tecumseh Fox series. I think this was before Nero Wolfe. A rich man, Ridley Thorpe, is killed and a man, Alan Grant, and his niece Nancy are suspected. Nancy climbs out of a window of police headquarters and gets to Fox's home to ask for home. He figures out that Thorpe wasn't dead. He had someone double for him and go to an isolated home while the real Ridley spent time with his mistress. He must manage a way to get Thorpe to return to life without revealing why he was gone. However, then someone kills the real Thorpe with Fox's gun. It is up to Fox to solve this problem. I like Wolfe better but this was okay.
I like this, not as well as the Nero Wolfe series, but as well as lots of other mysteries.
Lesser work. Easy-to-solve mysteries. Tec Fox seems awkward, unconvincing.
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Author Information
376+ Works 50,231 Members
Author Rex Stout was born on December 1, 1886. A child prodigy with a gift for mathematics, Stout drifted as he became an adult, holding odd jobs in many places---cook, cabinetmaker, bellhop, hotel manager, salesman, bookkeeper, and even a guide in a pueblo. But his true talent lay in storytelling; he sold his first story, about William Howard show more Taft, in 1912. His most famous creation is Nero Wolfe, a 286-pound detective genius who, with sidekick Archie Goodwin, can often solve a case without leaving his room. It is the way in which the puzzle is solved that intrigues Nero Wolfe, who is much like Sherlock Holmes in his ability to use deductive reasoning. More than 60 million copies (in 24 languages) of Stout's books have been sold. Stout writes quickly, drawing upon a lifetime of impressions. He neither uses an outline nor revises; he lets his characters take over as the story develops. The classy, erudite Nero Wolfe presents for readers an alternative to the hard-boiled branch of the genre. He died on October 27, 1975 (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Rex Stout has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Tweemaal Vermoord
- Original title
- Double for Death
- Original publication date
- 1939
- People/Characters
- Tecumseh Fox
- First words
- A man, with brown cheeks smoothly shaven and wearing a clean denim shirt because it was Monday morning, chaperoning his herd of Jersseys across the paved road from the barn side to the pasture side, saw a car coming and cusse... (show all)d.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Tecumseh Fox pitched a horseshoe.
- Disambiguation notice
- This book was the first book of the Tecumseh Fox series, and it was originally published in 1939 in hardcover by Farrar & Rinehart.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- 324
- Popularity
- 97,488
- Reviews
- 9
- Rating
- (3.50)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, Estonian, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 16
