- Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Books; Reprint edition (1 Jun 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0553245945
- ISBN-13: 978-0553245943
- Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 1.7 x 17.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 200,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Second Confession
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
What Stout does better than others is the background colour, especially his magnificent two central characters. This book sees them both at their bickering, but symbiotic best. The mystery is however no more than serviceable, with any number of red herrings left unexplained at the end as are the rather more important question of the interest of Wolfe's Moriarty and the political involvement or otherwise of the perpetrator. The mark of the author's genius is that you don't notice these holes until after the event.
Format:Mass Market Paperback
James Sperling's younger daughter has expressed an interest in a young man named Louis Rony and Sperling doesn't like him. He is convinced that Rony is a communist and to a dedicated wealthy capitalist like Sperling, being a communist is about the worst sin a man is capable of committing. He wants Wolfe to find sufficient proof so that he can get his daughter to drop Rony. Wolfe is reluctant to take the case but in the end he does
An acquaintance of Wolfe objects to his taking the case and uses machine guns to send a message to Wolfe through his orchard room. Although the damage is extensive, Wolfe never runs away from a case but he is in luck. Mr. Rony, the target of his investigation manages to get himself killed at Mr. Sperling's house while Archie is visiting. The case suddenly changes as Wolfe's friend no longer objects to the investigation and in fact supports it. But who killed Mr. Rony? Sperling wants to know because it happened in his home and his family members are suspected by the police.
The fun in this one is Archie's flirting with Madeline, the older daughter of Sperling. Madeline and Archie have a mutual attraction that is fun to follow as it develops and causes problems for Archie before Rony's death because one fall-back plan was to get the younger daughter, Gwen, to dump Rony in favor of Archie. All of this becomes moot, of course, when Romy is killed with Nero Wolfe's car.
The problems in this story have to do with the mystery although you can ignore the mystery and the story is fine. But what is Sperling's wife and son searching for in Rony's room? And what does it have to do with the mystery? There a few other red herrings that are never explained but I'll skip them so as not to reveal too many clues. Overall, I would say that this is one of the weaker stories I have read so far. But it is still a quick and fun read. Stout at his worst is still better than a lot of other writers at their best.
An acquaintance of Wolfe objects to his taking the case and uses machine guns to send a message to Wolfe through his orchard room. Although the damage is extensive, Wolfe never runs away from a case but he is in luck. Mr. Rony, the target of his investigation manages to get himself killed at Mr. Sperling's house while Archie is visiting. The case suddenly changes as Wolfe's friend no longer objects to the investigation and in fact supports it. But who killed Mr. Rony? Sperling wants to know because it happened in his home and his family members are suspected by the police.
The fun in this one is Archie's flirting with Madeline, the older daughter of Sperling. Madeline and Archie have a mutual attraction that is fun to follow as it develops and causes problems for Archie before Rony's death because one fall-back plan was to get the younger daughter, Gwen, to dump Rony in favor of Archie. All of this becomes moot, of course, when Romy is killed with Nero Wolfe's car.
The problems in this story have to do with the mystery although you can ignore the mystery and the story is fine. But what is Sperling's wife and son searching for in Rony's room? And what does it have to do with the mystery? There a few other red herrings that are never explained but I'll skip them so as not to reveal too many clues. Overall, I would say that this is one of the weaker stories I have read so far. But it is still a quick and fun read. Stout at his worst is still better than a lot of other writers at their best.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
20 reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
The Second Confrontation
15 July 2001
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Nero Wolfe's favorite drink, beer, is not a beverage you can come to like on the first taste. You will find beer bitter and repugnant, but if you keep at it you will eventually begin to tolerate it, then to like it. So it is with Nero Wolfe. At first taste you will find him arrogant, eccentric, and thoroughly unlikeable. Keep at him. Because Rex Stout chose the novella as the format for most Wolfe stories you can read the stories at a sitting. After three novellas you will come to tolerate the corpulent crimefighter. After five, you will even come to have some affection for him.
"The Second Confession" might better be named "The Second Confrontation," because Wolfe faces his archnemesis, Arnold Zeck, for the second time. ("And be a Villain" chronicled the first confrontation). When Sherlock Holmes discovered the existence of Professor Moriarty, he immediately undertook to destroy the professor's criminal empire. When Nero Wolfe discovered the existence of Arnold Zeck, he immediately began to avoid Zeck at all costs. Holmes' course of action led to the Reichenbach Falls. Wolfe's led -- you'll have to find out in the final novella of the trilogy, "In the Best Families." Suffice it to say that Wolfe undertakes to expose a communist, runs afoul of Arnold Zeck, gets his orchids machine-gunned, and winds up trying to solve a murder for Zeck. Along the way Archie gets in deep trouble with the local constabulary, Wolfe confounds the police, the two manage to outright break several laws, and they severely bend a few more.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Entertaining
10 Feb 2003
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I don't understand the reviewers who complain about loose ends. Do you normally expect the second book in a trilogy to wrap everything up? I'm guessing that those reviewers didn't realize that Zeck appears in three books (And Be a Villain, The Second Confession, and In the Best of Families, in that order). At any rate, any ends left loose in this book are tied up in the third.
But even if you know and care nothing about Zeck, you should still be able to enjoy this books; he does not dominate it. Wolfe and Archie are both in top form, and the ploy Wolfe uses to expose the murder is both enjoyable and clever.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Cut Rex Some Slack...
7 Sep 2005
Format:Audio Cassette
Some of the reviews here disparage Rex Stout's "pandering" to the Red Menace thinking of 1949. Let's put this into perspective...
Long before it was fashionable or even easy to represent for civil rights, Rex had Nero Wolfe honoring people of all races. Nero never generalized about (we'd now use the term "stereotyped") people with one key exception: Rex, a devoted husband and father of women, had Nero suspecting and disparaging women as flighty, treacherous and dangerous.
So here Nero accepts a commission to prove that Louis Rony is a Communist. In all truth, the way this is treated in the story Nero might as well have been asked to prove Rony was a philatelist. It's a matter for factual establishment or disestablishment...
To place this book's purported view of Communism as outweighing Stout's lifelong commitment to freedom of speech and expression is illogical.
And, please, don't forget how this book ends. That, too, puts things into an important perspective.
Long before it was fashionable or even easy to represent for civil rights, Rex had Nero Wolfe honoring people of all races. Nero never generalized about (we'd now use the term "stereotyped") people with one key exception: Rex, a devoted husband and father of women, had Nero suspecting and disparaging women as flighty, treacherous and dangerous.
So here Nero accepts a commission to prove that Louis Rony is a Communist. In all truth, the way this is treated in the story Nero might as well have been asked to prove Rony was a philatelist. It's a matter for factual establishment or disestablishment...
To place this book's purported view of Communism as outweighing Stout's lifelong commitment to freedom of speech and expression is illogical.
And, please, don't forget how this book ends. That, too, puts things into an important perspective.
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