The Doorbell Rang

⚖The case for it

A client hires Wolfe to get the FBI off her back, which puts a man who will not leave his own house up against a federal agency, and readers call that change of scale the most exciting premise in the run. The manoeuvre Wolfe devises to work around the surveillance is “one of Wolfe’s greatest schemes.” Archie narrates it with the usual needling, and forty books in, “those two would make almost any book worth reading,” since “each character comes alive in his interaction with the other.” The police cooperate for once. One critic: “Woweee! What a challenge.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The mystery underneath is thin, since “there are barely any suspects” to weigh, and the anti-Bureau argument crowds out the whodunit for readers who came for one. The opening drags, with “energy leaking out almost instantly” before the investigation restores it. The household’s precautions against wiretaps and tails repeat without moving anything. Archie goes quiet during those stretches, and his “trademark wit is largely absent.” And an agency makes a faceless antagonist next to the flesh-and-blood adversaries Wolfe usually gets.

— the honest librarian

4h

honest hours

6

sittings