Prisoner's Base

Stout also used Archie's up-to-date vernacular to put across some very old-fashioned values. "It is most important for you to feel you have earned your fee," Wolfe says. Or, "I rarely make promises, because I would redeem one, tritely, with my life." Or Archie will make a remark about racism: "When I feel superior to someone, as I frequently do, I need a better reason than the color of my skin."

I spent many happy hours, through adolescence and adulthood, immersed in this stuff and still gladly plunge back in today. Because along with all his other virtues, Rex Stout is the most rereadable author in the history of the genre.

All of this Stout-Wolfe-Archie exposure at an impressionable age has made indelible marks on my outlook, my patterns of thought, even my style as a writer. Several readers have told me that my first-person style reminds them of Stout's and that a certain character of mine, to quote one of them, "could be Archie Goodwin's younger brother." As far as I'm concerned, that's the best praise I can hear.

Now I want to talk a little about this particular book.

There's something ridiculous about having a favorite Rex Stout book. The man sustained an amazing level of excellence for such a long time, it seems foolish to single one out. It's like having a favorite Elvis record.* (*But of course I've got one-"Suspicious Minds" (1968).)

Nevertheless, when I was offered the choice of which book to do, Prisoner's Base was the one I chose instantly. Why? Because it shows Wolfe and Archie at their romantic (in the swashbuckling sense) best. Because, as in just a few other books (The Silent Speaker, for instance), we have a case that really gets under Archie's skin. We've got the regular gang in top form (although Lily Rowan is, alas, absent), and we have plenty of the Stoutian spear carriers (Dewdrop Irby, Andy Fomos) to bring Wolfe's New York to life. If you were going to pick one book to introduce a friend to Wolfe, you couldn't pick a better one than Prisoner's Base.

But this book has something else going for it, too: a dazzlingly simple-and simply dazzling-plot gimmick. Great as he was, plotting classic mystery puzzles wasn't Stout's strongest suit. But every once in a while he'd come up with a clue for the ages. The League of Frightened Men has a solution like that. So does Prisoner's Base. I envy those of you who are about to read it for the first time.

–William L. DeAndrea

Watertown, Connecticut

Chapter 1