Falls City’s Kentucky Common
The legendary fictional detective Nero Wolfe was “famously loath to leave his brownstone on West 35th Street” in New York City, preferring to examine mysterious clues through deductive reasoning.
In one of author Rex Stout’s early 1930s-era Wolfe novels, chief assistant Archie Goodwin calls Wolfe to the front door and asks his boss to step outside to see a potential client.
“Out there?” replies Wolfe, incredulous. “On the stoop?”
This weekly column purports to be about beer, not classic crime novels, although I might add that Wolfe certainly enjoyed his homebrew prior to Prohibition’s end. I mention the displaced Montenegrin-turned-American sleuth solely because his attitude toward the outside world parallels my own during these past 14 months.
Not to make it political, but my household took the pandemic at face value, and for the most part, we stayed home.
And, as I kept staying close to quarters on the river’s Right Bank...
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