XLVI. Where Quinn Booker and Lobo Blacke ride off into the sunset.

I have read only four novels by the late William L. DeAndrea, but I would be willing to put his name among the great GAD authors any day. DeAndrea wrote mystery novels with actual plots; he didn’t unnecessarily pad out his stories, which were solid ones, complete with clues and red herrings. Also, DeAndrea’s writing style was like that of the great Rex Stout: he captured the voice of Archie Goodwin and had it speak through the characters of Matt Cobb or Quinn Booker.

Written in Fire and Fatal Elixir were two books starring Quinn Booker and Lobo Blacke, who were rather like Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe transported to the Old West. Unfortunately, DeAndrea’s untimely death prematurely terminated the series, and it’s a real shame: reading Fatal Elixir, I could only shake my head, dismayed as I read what might have been…

That's my steak, Will!

The late Maury Chaykin as Nero Wolfe

Some of the most fun I’ve ever had while reading mysteries can be found in the pages of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels. Stout’s plots were often weak, but what made his novels so delightful were his characters and his dialogue. His main characters are Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. Goodwin is a man of action, employed by Wolfe, an enormously fat man with a brilliant mind (and a spectacularly lazy person as well). Archie is like the traditional hardboiled detective, and Wolfe is the traditional “armchair” detective. The two are thrust together in the same novels and their banter is extremely fun (quite possibly the best aspect). Other characters are generally speaking well-defined, with plausible motivations behind their actions, and provide plenty of fun. And when Stout came up with a good plot, like he did in Too Many Cooks, the result is one outstanding novel.

An author I recently reviewed for the first time, William L. DeAndrea, seems to have been heavily inspired by the work of Rex Stout. Someone commented on my Killed on the Ice review that the protagonist, Matt Cobb, is remarkably like Archie Goodwin, an excellent comparison I hadn’t even thought of. DeAndrea wrote quite a few other novels and died tragically young, before he was even 45. The world was robbed of an excellent and creative author. I can only imagine how much fun it would be to eagerly anticipate a new book of his…

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. The book I will be looking at today is William DeAndrea’s Written in Fire. This is a novel set in the Old West, and it reads very much as though Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were the main characters. So if you like Wolfe (I do) and you like Westerns (Yes, sir!), this is a treat. (There would also be a sequel, Fatal Elixir. Which I just so happen to have...)