She shut the book, sated with Nero Wolfe for the next few months, or so.
"Now, if only he could raise his eyebrow, then he'd be perfect…" She murmured, reaching for the glass of cool Orangina. Her hand paused as her fingertips were a half-inch away from the glass. She reconsidered what she had just said. Nero Wolfe…and perfect. Nero Wolfe and perfect. Her hand dropped limply to the wooden table. Something didn't fit. Nero Wolfe and perfect.
Aah. Right. She opened the book again to read a passage at random, then shut it without looking at the page. Her mind grasped that which had just unsettled her with its discordant nuance. Nero Wolfe was not perfect. He was far from perfect. He was a pompous and fussy man who had no tolerance for most displays of emotion and who disliked women and stereotyped them all to a within a word. She had always been disgusted with all the females' behavior in his office when they burst into 'hysterics' as he called it which was--in retrospect--crying. If her husband, beau, sister, or whatever had just died and two days later she walked into a detective's office to have him solve the murder and had to give information in the past tense, she'd be pretty upset. It would be pretty damn hard to keep a straight face, and that Wolfe would eschew grief like that was incredible.
And his arrogance! He probably didn't know what he was doing half the time and mostly guessing. Yes, most detective work is a combination of guessing, luck, and reasoning , but for him to pass it all off as logic was insufferable. Not to mention that he ridiculed anyone who was not bright or well-thought enough to have their minds take the same track his was a blight upon his already marred character.
Yet all the same…she looked down at the book in her hands again and she smiled in halves. He was likeable. There really was no point in writing a book where your main character is irritating and you have no sympathy for him (him being used as a general pronoun as we have not yet invented a pronoun that is sexless and yet applies to a human being in singular). She had read enough books where the author through no fault of her own had turned the reader against the main character by his grating selfless personality. Saying Nero Wolfe was not selfless was making a molehill out of a mountain—and that was quite a mountain. It was refreshing to have such an obviously flawed character, but all the same she liked him and hated every other person who irritated him. She was enchanted into liking him. Rex Stout was a clever author. Nero Wolfe was a romantic who when he deferred his good opinon on someone was extremely interesting. And he was knowledgable--trusted a few men and told them so, too.
Gail reached for the glass of Orangina, her mind finally in order. Mayhap she could find room for another Wolfe after all…