Before Midnight by Rex StoutMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a fantastic premise! It challenges Nero's sensibilities and Archie's maleness. A perfume company and an advertising firm have held a contest, but then a murder interrupts the final acts of determining who the winner is. The winner is the one who solves the last riddles of the contest. Nero is insulted at the idea of the contest; Archie's dry sense of humour and appreciation for women comes out in full force.
It's a stalking of wits. The contestants that are left in the game against each other. Wolfe against the murderer and Archie. The contest holders against each other. Archie bantering and trying to solve before Wolfe, as he usually does and usually fails.
Again, visualizing and verbalizing allowed me to see aspects of relationships I hadn't seen before, this time between Inspector Cramer and Wolfe. It heightened my enjoyment of their cat and mouse game of wits.
I spotted the murderer fairly early on but didn't have the confidence in my comprehension and deductive abilities. I allowed Stout to mislead me into another direction. But the ending added to my big picture of Wolfe's and Archie's relationship. Satisfactory.
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