The League of Frightened Men

Enjoyable but not perfect. The middle drags but the ending sews it all up quite nicely. Stout drops little bits of memorable, specific characterization into most conversations, even with minor characters, which gives the novel's New York a wonderful sense of being lived in. The primary antagonist, a rather Ahabish character, is a disability stereotype, but I find him--and his wife--quite compelling nonetheless. Let's just say he's a crime novelist who aptly displays the complexities of the relationship between crime, truth, and fiction. Comparisons could be drawn to Harriet Vane in the Peter Wimsey series.

What does a good private detective do when clients are scarce? He uses his skills to find clients! A newspaper article about an obscenity case in which the book’s author claims to have committed a murder leads to a potentially very lucrative case for Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin. The author in question had been injured in a hazing incident at Harvard. The group of men responsible for his injury had formed a league to atone for their youthful sin. Two league members had died recently, and other league members received threatening poems following the deaths. All of the men are edgy, and their nervousness increases after another of their number disappears. Wolfe will match wits with a very clever suspect who has managed to show more commit murders while being closely watched without leaving a trace of evidence.

Wolfe’s esoteric eccentricities and Archie’s sarcasm are a great combination. The Depression provides a backdrop for this case, as does New York City. Several of the league members are hard up for work, as are Wolfe, Archie, and several of the detectives they frequently employ to assist with the leg work. It may read like a period piece now, but it probably seemed very modern to Stout’s contemporaries. show less

Wolfe on the Prowl
Review of the Bantam Kindle eBook edition (April 28, 2010) of the Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. hardcover original (August 14, 1935)

The roof of the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street where he had lived for twenty years, and me with him for the last seven of them, was glassed in and partitioned into rooms where varying conditions of temperature and humidity were maintained—by the vigilance of Theodore Horstmann—for the ten thousand orchids that lined the benches and shelves.

This is my second read of a Nero Wolfe mystery and I do not enjoy this character or his Watson. Wolfe is arrogant about his deductive powers, obsessed about orchids, beer and food and gives the appearance of being mostly disinterested in show more justice. A lot of that arrogance rubs off on Archie Goodwin who does the legwork for the housebound detective while running about town in his “roadster” (I don’t remember the specific car model ever being identified). Quirky and confident is not always appealing.

This case begins with the deaths of two Harvard alumni in suspicious circumstances. A large group of Harvard men had brought about the crippling fall of a Harvard freshman in a hazing incident. This same group now thinks that the disabled man, who has become a popular author in the meantime, is taking his late revenge on them all. First by committing the murders and then by following them up with threatening notes.

The mercenary Wolfe brings all of these frightened men together as the league of the title and proposes to them that he will solve their various fears and concerns for fees which will be adjusted to each man’s ability to pay. Most of them agree, and you already suspect that the situation is not quite what it appears to be. In a sense, Wolfe is scamming his clients. Saying anything further would be a spoiler.

See cover at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
The cover of the first edition hardcover published by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. in 1935. Image sourced from Goodreads.

Although I usually enjoy reading classics from the Golden Age of Crime, the Nero Wolfe mysteries don’t provide enough enjoyable protagonists or sufficient mystery for me to continue the series.

On the Berengaria Ease of Solving Scale® I would rate this as a 3 out of 10, i.e. "a reasonably easy solve", as it becomes evident fairly early on that Wolfe’s explanation for the situation is going to be drastically different from what the plot seems to suggest.

Trivia and Links
See poster at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/League_of_frightened_men.jpg
Promotional poster for the 1937 film adaptation. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

This 2nd Nero Wolfe book was adapted as the 2nd Nero Wolfe film The League of Frightened Men (1937) directed by Alfred E. Green and starring Walter Connolly as Nero Wolfe. You can see the entire film on YouTube here. Author Rex Stout disliked the film’s portrayals of his characters so much that he refused permission for further screen adaptations for over 30 years until a first Italian language TV series adaptation in 1969 and then several TV movies & series thereafter. show less

While in college, years ago, a fraternity of men pulled a prank that left one of their brothers horribly handicapped. The fraternity men spend the rest of their lives trying to make amends to Paul Chapin, until years later, one by one, brothers are winding up dead or missing. Has their scarred-for-life brother finally decided to seek revenge? It certainly seems that way when poems appear after each death, cryptically pointing the finger back at the group and the accident suffered so long ago. Nero is hired to find a missing fraternity brother and stop the killings before the entire league of frightened men is wiped out.

Once again I had an enjoyable visit with Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin and all the characters that make up these wonderful detective stories. The League of Frightened Men will probably not go down as one of my favorites of the series, but any book that had Archie Goodwin as a main character, a roadster as a means of transportation, and calls a gun a “gat” is alright by me.

This second book of the series was more of a psychological study of a group of men who are bound together by an tragedy that happened during a hazing incident at university. Now one by one this group of men are dying and all are receiving anonymous notes that they are sure come from the hazing victim. The story was a little too drawn out and slow moving for me, show more however I enjoyed the amusing banter between Wolfe and Archie, although I felt at times that Archie was being a little thick and should have realized that a genius like Nero Wolfe would be two steps ahead of everyone else. I will definitely be continuing on with this series. show less

Another great entry, with a more off-beat mystery and with the always wonderful excitement of Wolfe breaking some of his own rules, this still has some of the disturbing language that came out of the 1930s and seems so backward today. I try not to hold it against the story....after all, what we write now may look really backward 85 years from now as well.

Excellent second novel in the Nero Wolfe mystery series. This one features a group of Harvard grads, one of whom was injured in a hazing incident instigated by the others. Twenty five years later, people in this group begin to die in horrible ways. Nero and his employee Archie Goodwin are on the case.