Too Many Cooks/Champagne for One

Never having read Rex Stout before, I tried this as an experiment, and I like it. It's lightly written and amusing, easy to read, but not entirely frivolous: there is some seriousness in it.Main reason for the experiment: I already knew that [a:Randall Garrett 5169382 Randall Garrett https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1332463416p2/5169382.jpg] based one of his characters on Nero Wolfe, and I was curious to see the original!I was tempted to give four stars on first reading, but I'll be conservative and give three, for two reasons: (a) I habitually reread books if I like them, and I'm not sure how well this will hold up to rereading; (b) I enjoyed the characters and conversation, but I don't think these are really good murder mysteries.I don't specialize in murder mysteries, but I think an elegant one should pass two tests. When you come to the solution, you should realize:1. That all the essential information about it was presented to you well in advance.2. That the murder was done in a fairly straightforward way and wasn't complicated, tricky, or implausible.These stories fail both tests.The ambience of these stories reminds me slightly of Wodehouse (in America), perhaps because of the period.Although Nero Wolfe actually solves the mysteries, we see more of Archie Goodwin, who's a bright spark with all his wits about him, and an entertaining character in his own right, especially in the second story.Some readers regard “Too many cooks” as racist, which I think is entirely wrong. Some of the characters are racist or use casually racist language, but this is surely to be expected in a novel from 1938; it merely goes with the period. Nero Wolfe himself seems remarkably free from racism, for the time, and he presumably represents the author in this respect.In any case, I somewhat preferred the second, later story. In “Too many cooks” the characters are colourful but somewhat overdone, and the circumstances of the murder overcomplicated. I do rather like coming across good food and wine in a story, though (Richard Condon used to do it).