{"id":9639,"date":"2013-12-21T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T06:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=9639"},"modified":"2013-12-20T20:19:15","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T02:19:15","slug":"book-review-doorbell-rang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/book-review-doorbell-rang\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Doorbell Rang"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Doorbell Rang<\/em>, Nero Wolfe is hired by a wealthy woman to get the FBI to stop annoying her. She apparently gained the attention of the FBI after purchasing and distributing 10,000 copies of Fred Cook\u2019s expose of the FBI called, \u201cThe FBI Nobody Knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolfe is reluctant to take on the case, and Archie is too. But Wolfe\u2019s pride won\u2019t allow him to refuse to take on a case for fear of the FBI. Wolfe\u2019s decision leads to them coming under surveillance, and Archie learns from their nemesis Inspector Cramer that the FBI is trying to get their licenses lifted. However, Cramer resents the attempt and actually saves their licenses and tips Archie off to a murder where the FBI may be covering up.<\/p>\n

Archie and Wolfe seek to solve convuluted murder and find how the FBI is involved.<\/p>\n

The book is pretty solid and includes one of Wolfe\u2019s greatest schemes and one of the most memorable moments when Wolfe refuses to speak to the unnamed but implied visitor at the door at the end of the book.<\/p>\n

The Doorbell Rang\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0does drag a bit in the middle, with all of Wolfe and Archie\u2019s efforts to dodge potential FBI surveillance of the house by not speaking or speaking in certain ways despite. The problem is that while I could understand how the FBI could tap their phones, I have no clue how they could get in the Brownstone to actually bug anything. For me, their paranoia goes quickly from being slightly humorous to somewhat tedious.<\/p>\n

This does further the book\u2019s propaganda ends with a clear message: Our (mostly) law abiding pals Wolfe and Archie shouldn\u2019t have to live like they\u2019re in a police state and neither should any other American as many did thanks to the FBI. It works as far as it goes, but I think the degree to which Stout played this hurt the narrative a bit.<\/p>\n

Still, I give this a:<\/p>\n

Rating: Satisfactory<\/p>\n

You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our\u00a0Nero Wolfe page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0automatically to your Kindle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Doorbell Rang, Nero Wolfe is hired by a wealthy woman to get the FBI to stop annoying her. She apparently gained the attention of the FBI after purchasing and distributing 10,000 copies of Fred Cook\u2019s expose of the FBI called, \u201cThe FBI Nobody Knows.\u201d Wolfe is reluctant to take on the case, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-nero-wolfe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-2vt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9666,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639\/revisions\/9666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}