Nero Wolfe Extravaganza, by Rex Stout

Thanks to my thoughtful friend Ruth, the commute has belonged to Nero Wolfe for the past few months:  The Rubber Band (1936),  Murder by the Book (1951), And Be a Villain (1948), Please Pass the Guilt (1973), Too Many Women* (1947), The Red Box (1937), Where There's a Will (1940), Might as Well Be Dead (1956), Over My Dead Body (1940), The Golden Spiders (1953), Fer-de-Lance (1934 - the first), Some Buried Caesar* (1939), The Mother Hunt (1963), Too Many Cooks* (1938), Death of a Doxy (1966), A Right to Die (1964), The Final Deduction (1961), Prisoner's Base (1952), Father Hunt (1968), Not Quite Dead Enough (1944), The Booby Trap (1944), Before Midnight (1955), Plot It Yourself* (1959), If Death Ever Slept (1957), Gambit (1962), Black Mountain (1954), The League of Frightened Men (1935), Black Orchids (1942), Cordially Invited to Meet Death (1942), Death of a Dude (1969), Second Confession (1949), The Silent Speaker (1946), In the Best Families (1950), Champagne for One (1958), *A Family Affair (1975)
*My favorites

Things I've learned about the Nero Wolfe series by way of this sample:

• The relationship between Nero and Archie changed very little from the first.
• Even though Nero and Archie don't seem to age, the context of the stories keeps pace with the times (depression, war years, LSD and civil rights, Watergate); 
• Archie isn't above torturing, assaulting and robbing people, and urging at least one to suicide, though he hates it when Wolfe does so;
• Nero isn't above manipulating fate; 
• In only one book I've read did Stout use language about race to highlight differences in class and breeding  -- to interesting effect;
• Archie is presented as the quintessential ladies man, but maybe he's not.  Constanza in Two Many Cooks makes him so nervous that he pretends to be married; Lilly Rowan is so forward in Some Buried Caesar that he must put her down repeatedly.
• Earlier mysteries followed the mystery formula much less; it was perfectly possible for the killer and his/her motive to be introduced in the last several chapters of a book; by the 1960's, the book was salted throughout with clues pointing to the killer.
• Stout has no problem introducing a sympathetic character and killing her (usually) off.
• Archie and Lilly appear together off and on for 36 years, and in the final Nero Wolfe book, they conclude they don't really know what their relationship is either.