»Some Buried Caesar

I was walking past Powell's Books on 57th Street some years ago when I saw the irresistible discards box outside. On the top was a torn paperback with a gaudy illustration: Some Buried Caesar was the title. Efffusive endorsements rang out from the front and back covers: "The best ... unbeatable!". The author: Rex Stout (what a great name!), creator of the irritating, contrary, and iconoclastic detective-gourmand Nero Wolfe. I recognised the name from a review (of what?) that I had read, which compared the author to P G Wodehouse and Rex Stout. Already having read, re-read, and much loved the former, I picked up the latter.
I could not have done better: Some Buried Caesar is one of Stout's earlier, "post-Depression and pre-war" mysteries, and shows his strengths beautifully. It features a different setting for the action: usually, Wolfe sits in his custom-made chair in his Manhattan townhouse, keeps to his schedule, berates Archie Goodwin, his Man Friday, and drinks beer. In this, the book starts off with Archie crashing the car en route to show orchids at the State Fair. From there, it is but a hop, skip, and jump to the introduction of Lily Rowan, who graces many subsequent mysteries in small but complicating roles; the revelation that Methodists make the best chicken fricassee (and do'n't hold the dumplings); and that anthrax is a disease of cattle. Really, I had not grasped this latter bit, despite the Gang of Four song, until this book's description of the disease as it ravages a cattle herd. Like Wodehouse, Stout has an easy way with words, and gives his characters such distinctive voices that they become caricatures of themselves. Archie would be the perfect tough guy for a Marlowe or Hammett novel, except that he is in the company of Wolfe, who is too cerebral for straight-up noir; Wolfe, confusingly, is also too decadent, in his quiet little "seventh-of-a-ton" way. He has a rooftop greehouse filled with orchids, a private chef, and brooks no nonsense.
Some Buried Caesar is amongst my favourite mysteries; other Wolfe adventures I really enjoy are Fer-de-Lance, the first to feature the detective; Too Many Cooks; The League of Frightened Men, of which I found a first edition in a dusty shop in Palo Alto that burnt down a few days after I raided their selection; and Please Pass The Guilt, one of the later stories but featuring such odd period vocabulary as "balloon-rimmed cheaters". Even Google has not been able to help with illustrating that term.