Sena Cundioglu Cundioglu itibaren Agraharam, Andhra Pradesh, India itibaren Agraharam, Andhra Pradesh, India

Beautiful story about a beautiful relationship, tinged with unbelievable strokes of good luck (talent seems to mean little in art if you're not also in the right place at the right time, in this case NY in the 1970s) but ending in great misfortune (for Mapplethorpe, not Smith.)

Whether you start with this, the first, or with any in between the last, Nero Wolfe Mystery, you will always meet the same core characters, with habits that never change. (I admit I have not read all seventy-two of them, but this is one series from which I can pick a book at random and not feel as though I missed something.) They never "grow" or "evolve" or "improve themselves". They can be counted on to be the same as they ever were; a comfort actually. In fact when reading, Fer-de-Lance, you will get the impression that Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe, Fritz Brenner, Saul Panzer, Fred Durkn and Orrie Cather have all pulled previous capers together, prior to today, and are just getting around to revealing the latest installment. You won't feel like an outsider just because you don't know all of their stories, but rather included now in the remainder of their adventures. Eccentric Nero Wolfe almost always concludes a case with an odd solution...Justified but not necessarily what the law would have dictated. His prime legman, Archie Goodwin, has an odd mixture of frustration and respect for his genius boss. The banter between the two is poetry in motion!