The Hand in the Glove

Rex Stout is best known for the magnificent series of mysteries featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, but early on he experimented with other detective characters. One of them was Tecumseh Fox, who rated three books between 1939 and 1941, including one (Bad for Business) whose plot was lifted nearly wholesale by Stout and re-set in the Wolfe universe. I've only read one of these and it was fine; no match for the majesty of Nero and Archie in my eyes.

The other detective Stout created, Theodolinda Bonner, only has one book in her own name, but she lived on as a supporting character in several of the Wolfe stories. There are enough promising elements in this, her one star turn, to make me sort of wish she had gotten another shot at the show more spotlight later on. "Dol" is a young woman whose life takes an abrupt left turn when her affluent father loses all his money and kills himself. Determined to never again rely on a man for anything, Dol sets herself up in business as a licensed private detective, with the help of her friend and partner, the still-affluent (though not yet of age) Sylvia Rattray.

Sylvia's guardian, P.L. Storrs, disapproves of her foray into such a tawdry occupation as private eye and pressures her to give it all up. She reluctantly agrees to do so, and when the guardian turns up dead suspicion falls on Dol, who would seem to be the main victim of his social prudishness. But it turns out there are other folks scattered around the wealthy enclaves of upstate New York who might have had their own reasons for wishing themselves rid of Mr. Storrs.

To be honest, the plot in this one is a bit of a mess but the characters of Dol and Sylvia were engaging enough that I would have willingly read more of their adventures. Alas, it was not to be, and I had to settle for making Archie Goodwin my first and still favorite literary boyfriend. show less

Rex Stout is best known for his iconic Nero Wolfe character, but he also created the female detective Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner, who came to being in the standalone novel "The Hand in the Glove" in 1937, one of the very first female private eyes.

Although Stout only gave Bonner one solo outing, she also guest-starred in some of the Nero Wolfe stories, one of the few women Wolfe tolerated perhaps because she herself claimed to have been "inoculated against" men, even her suitor, the newspaperman Len Chisholm. Although The Hand in the Glove is a contemporary of the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin titles, it was written in the third person narrative, not Archie's sarcastic first-person. Even so, it still has some of the hallmark wit that graces show more the Wolfe/Goodwin novels.

In the book, a religious charlatan has charmed the wife of wealthy industrialist, P.L. Storrs, who decides he needs a private investigator to look into the man and hires Bonner, even though he doesn't approve of female detectives. But when she arrives at Storrs' country estate, she instead finds the body of her client and a garden party filled with a bouquet of suspects.

Bonner isn't quite the fully realized, tough-as-nails P.I. of the 21st century, sending out mixed messages about her ability to do the job as a woman, perhaps mirroring the changing-but-still-traditional views of women in Stout's day. Bonner begins the novel as part of a two-woman firm, Bonner and Raffray, although the Raffray half soon dissolves, Bonner being disgusted about Raffray's submissiveness to her fiancée.

Yet, Bonner concedes she herself decided to be a detective on flimsy grounds, adding, "I made a long list of all the activities I might undertake on my own. They all seemed monotonous or distasteful except two or three, and I flipped a coin to decide between detective and landscape design." Although she's a smart cookie and solves the crimes where the male detectives in the case don't, she's also squeamish about seeing corpses and faints after she shoots a criminal. show less

One of Stout's earliest mystery novels. I had never even heard of his detective, Dol Bronner. She is the epitome of the independent woman of the 1930s (Stout as a feminist seemed strange, but a lot of his women in the Wolfe stories are quite strong, especially Archie's girlfriends).
The mystery is a fair one (as always): plenty of clues salted among the chaff, and the characters are to be expected from that milieu: a very rarified one but par for the course when aristocratic elites & sleuths were considered more interesting than on-the-street police procedurals.
Today, Dol would never get away with what the police and DA allowed.
I was intrigued by the brief appearance of Inspector Cramer, who is also a figure in the Wolfe saga, which was show more only on its 3rd or 4th book in 1937. He didn't do much more than just show up, however.

Although the story gives the impression that there ought to have been a prior Bonner book, it does not exist. However, she is hired by Wolfe for several of his exploits.
See Wikipedia.
"Lady Against the Odds" is a 1992 TV adaptation of "The Hand in the Glove."
(2025-04-22 not yet shown in LT Common Knowledge.)

This review most closely echoes my impressions: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1622238376
Mildly satisfying murder at a Connecticut mansion in 1937. Dol Bonner is sort of a grown up Nancy Drew. ...Seems more dated; in at least one of Dol's monologues I can clearly hear the voice of a young Katherine Hepburn in one of those earnest 1930s movie roles.

"--I could work with you, Mr. Sherwood, if you would let me. I think I'm clever. I'm quite young, and it may turn out that I'm merely conceited and my pride has been hurt, but I think I'm clever. I'm going to try to be." show less

Man, I keep reading [a:Rex Stout|41112|Rex Stout|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1201136975p2/41112.jpg] novels that are not Nero Wolfe stories, hoping that they'll be just as great, and I keep getting disappointed. This is better than the others I've read, I suppose, but still no where nearly as satisfying as a Wolfe. I'd been thinking that the problem is that the main character here - Dol Bonner, a female detective who plays a minor recurring role in the Wolfe novels - doesn't really show the qualities or competence that have garnered her Wolfe's & Goodwin's respect. But on reflection, I think my main complaint is that Stout himself is not nearly as engaging a narrator as Archie Goodwin, and that might be the problem with all his show more other books. show less

I heard the Audio Partners version of this which didn't quite work because the woman narrator didn't have enough voices to make all the males sound different. However, I found the mystery very interesting, one you should be able to figure out yourself, except Stout is so clever about the misdirection.

Dol Bonner's mystery, which is kind of silly. I'm not sure that Stout knew what to do with women characters.

This story introduces the woman detective Dol Bonner as an independent main character. She also appears in the Nero Wolfe novelette "Too Many Detectives" as a secondary character and I believe may be mentioned elsewhere. I think she is more interesting that Stout's other non-Wolfe detective Tecumseh Fox, but as with Fox, Stout did not develop her very far. This story begins with an investigation of brutal attacks on animals in a estate belonging to a fried of Bonner's partner Sylvia Rattray
(who is actually the point of view character, though not telling the story first person like Archie Goodwin) and later graduates the murder of a human being.