Wolfe was in the office looking at television, which gives him a lot of pleasure. I have seen him turn it on as many as eight times in one evening, glare at it from one to three minutes, turn it off, and go back to his book.
— Rex Stout, The Golden Spiders
Winterhoff could have snagged a fee posing as a Man of Distinction for a whisky ad. He even had the little gray mustache.
— Rex Stout, The Silent Speaker
I was glad to hear him laugh, because it seemed likely that if there really were ice-picks sticking in my head he, being a doctor, would be taking them out instead of laughing at me.
— Rex Stout, The League of Frightened Men
Her hair started far back above the slant of her brow, and that made her brow look even higher and broader than it was, and noble and spiritual. But her eyes were very demure, which didn’t fit. If you’re noble and spiritual you don’t have to be demure. There’s no point in being demure unless there’s something on your mind to be demure about.
— Rex Stout, Black Orchids
I pushed the button, shoved the door open when the click sounded, and was proceeding along the hall when a door toward the rear was suddenly flung open and somebody’s female ancestor appeared on the threshold. If you had deducted for skin and bones there wouldn’t have been more than 20 pounds left of her for tissue and internal parts all together. Straggling ends of white hair made a latticework for her piercing black eyes to see through, and there was no question about her being able to see.
— Rex Stout, in Not Quite Dead Enough
I’ve been re-reading Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, and enjoying them thoroughly. One of the things that’s particularly striking this time through is the way that Archie Goodwin describes the various people he runs into.
But wait a moment. You do know who Archie Goodwin is, don’t you? You are familiar with his narrative voice, aren’t you?
You aren’t? Then what are you wasting your time here for? Get thee to Amazon, or any other bookstore or library of your choice, and begin feasting! (I use the word advisedly.)
OK. I love the way Archie describes people. He doesn’t emphasize the physical details, but somehow he manages to package up their appearance, their character, and his opinion of them all in a very few color words. For example,
She looked more like a school teacher— or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she looked like what a school teacher looks like before the time comes that she absolutely looks like a school teacher and nothing else.
— Rex Stout, in Black Orchids
And then,
Colonel Tinkham, who looked like a collection of undersized features put together at random in order to have somewhere to stick a little brown mustache, had had some kind of a gumshoe job for a big New York bank.
Rex Stout, in Not Quite Dead Enough
I’ve been collecting these; I’ll start doling them out over the next few weeks.
The View from the Foothills 