Death of a Doxy by Rex Stout
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'[...] Because your sister was a doxy, and you --'
'My sister was a what?'
'D, O, X, Y, doxy. I happen to like that better than concubine or paramour or mistress. [...]'"

Yeah, I hadn't known exactly what the word 'doxy' meant until I read the first 40 pages of Rex Stout's novel. Death of a Doxy (1966) is the 42nd installment in the famous Nero Wolfe series, albeit one of the weakest ones along with Gambit that I have recently reviewed.

We meet the intrepid and debonair Archie Goodwin, Mr. Wolfe's right hand, as he is leaving an apartment, taking a last look at the body of a murdered woman, and making sure he has not left his fingerprints on the scene. Orrie Cather, one of the detectives whose services Mr. Wolfe frequently uses, is arrested for murder. The case may involve a client of Wolfe, so he is obliged to undertake the investigation. The whole thing is additionally complicated by the fact that Mr. Cather's fiancée, Jill, knew the victim.

Archie has to use all his manly charms to get Jill and the victim's sister to talk. Obviously he succeeds. Uncharacteristically for Wolfe novels the cast of characters includes a gregarious and loose-lipped cabaret singer. Archie and the three women help the obese genius of detection solve the case and he earns quite a substantial amount of money.

I like the characterizations of the three women, they almost feel like real people. Being a mathematician I like the passage

"He discovered the theorem that the sides of equiangular triangles are proportional. He discovered that when two straight lines intersect the vertically opposite angles are equal, and that the circle is bisected by its diameter."

I am also amused by the fact that in mere 52 years since the novel was written English changed so much that I have no idea what the word 'hipped' meant in 1966. The author writes 'she was hipped,' 'I got hipped,' and none of the current meanings of the verb - I have even extensively checked the Urban Dictionary - fits the context in which these phrases were uttered. Well, stumped by 'hipped,' how's that for a pun?

This installment is markedly weaker than most other Nero Wolfe novels. Would it be possible that Mr. Stout hired someone to ghost-write it? Or maybe he wrote it in just a few days?

Two stars.

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