Title: Death of a Doxy
Author: Rex Stout
Cover artist: [photo cover]
Yours for: $8
Best things about this cover:
- DOXY is one of the great words of the English language:
- A female lover; a mistress.
- A sexually promiscuous woman.
[Perhaps from obsolete Dutch docke, doll.]
- Just 'cause they're in a dish doesn't mean you're supposed to *eat* the cigarette butts, dearie. What did you think was going to happen?
- What is she doing with her right hand and are we sure she's really dead? Maybe she just gets turned on by the smell of ashtrays.
- I keep meaning to read a Rex Stout novel. And I keep not doing it. It might become my New Year's resolution. One of them.
Best things about this back cover:
- Blah blah blah text! Oooh, "honey-haired corpse," that's nice.
- I almost love the ads for other books on the backs of pbs like this one. Who is Edwin O'Connor and what are these "bestsellers" I'm supposed to have heard of. Coincidence: Carroll O'Connor was in "All in the Family." Also, another coincidence: as I was typing "O'Connor," singer Jennifer O'Connor came on my iTunes shuffle (and I'm shuffling 7700 songs ... 35 of which are by artists with last name O'Connor).
Page 123~ (book is so short that p. 123 = "About the Author"—so, Page 23)
She was tops at ignoring questions.
Wow, I really love that sentence.
~RP
P.S. apologies for the slow pace of new posts. End-of-semester blecch. Won't last.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
10 comments:
I also have not read a Rex Stout novel but I love the TV show staring Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin (RIP at age 61). I especially liked the way they used the same actors/actresses in different roles in different episodes.
Am I the only one disturbed by the visualization of a Nero Wolfe Foursome/Threesome?
Rex Stout was a terrific writer, and these mysteries are wonderful. I recommend them to all.
Rober: Agreed, those TV shows were classic and faithful to the stories.
They liked to package these novels in numerical groups for some reason. Marketing gimmick.
I am reading my way through the Nero Wolfe corpus in order, and I cannot recommend the books strongly enough. Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are two of the great characters ever; frankly, I strive to be like the dapper, confident Archie. And Stout is a marvelous prose writer; Archie's narrating voice is a considerable stylistic achievement.
The Maury Chaykin/Timothy Hutton series was a pip; I loved every episode. The repertory company concept mentioned by Robert above was fantastic. "Death of a Doxy" was adapted as a two-parter.
The numerical groupings mentioned by mr are actually novella collections ("Trouble in Triplicate," "And Four to Go," etc.). There are a total of 33 Wolfe novels, and 41 novellas in 14 collections.
O'Connor won a freaking Pulitzer. The Edge of Sadness. Like the title but not the book.
O'Connor is a historically significant Irish-American novelist, for certain. The Last Hurrah, his roman a clef about Boston politics, was his biggest seller and was made into a movie by John Ford in 1958, with Spencer Tracy in the lead -- not bad going! O'Connor, who passed away young at 49, was also a newspaper television critic.
The Nero Wolfe books are definitely worth your time. also Edwin O'Connor was a pretty major mid-century novelist. The Last Hurrah was not only a Spencer Tracy movie, it was also a 1977 Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie starring...
Carroll O'Connor.
Wow, 4 years as English major and 8 years as English graduate student and this apparently Pulitzer-winning and historically significant author never not ever not even once came into my field of vision. Stupid blind spots.
Oh, and I can't spell either. Banner day for me. CARROLL.
rp
"Doxy" has gone the same way as "trollop" as words that describe sexually-promiscuous women. I can only hope that "ho" goes the same way eventually.
But Deb, then how can we come up with such witty things like "Lindsey Hohan"?
I love the word "doxy." I have also used, in the description of a gold digger I know whom was extremely abusive to one of my mom's friends, the words trollop, harlot, and a few other not so nice ones. (Well, what else do you say about a woman whom says to the 70+ year old mother of her boyfriend "Hurry up and die so I can have your house!"?)
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