TooMany Cooks, like all Stout's Nero Wolfe books, has two fully realized characters, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, and a large supporting cast of deftly-sketched minor figures. Nero Wolfe dominates every scene in which he takes part with his sheer physical presence (Archie guesses his weight at 310 pounds), his matchless brain, and his overwhelming rhetoric. No one can ignore him; no one can intimidate him; no one can resist for long his combination of persuasiveness and stubbornness. He manages equally well whether he is lecturing European chefs on American contributions to haute cuisine, extracting information from suspicious black waiters and cooks, or defying the coercion of the authorities. While stirring from his chair as seldom as possible, he contrives to make the world come to him.

Stout keeps Wolfe from seeming insufferably superhuman by allowing Archie Goodwin to narrate. Partly to maintain his own self-respect and to assert...