Book Review: Under the Andes by Rex Stout
Paul Lamar has a rather high opinion of himself. It’s not entirely unwarranted. True, he inherited wealth, but he’s managed it well and increased it to the point that he can buy anything he desires and not feel a pinch. He’s highly educated, an expert gambler, and quite handsome. Paul’s also quite the athlete. The one fly in the ointment is his younger and not quite as competent brother Harry. Now Harry has gotten involved with the beautiful adventurer Desiree Le Mire, and she’s about to lead them into unknown territory!
Rex Stout had two writing careers; most readers are more familiar with his work as a series mystery author and the character of Nero Wolfe. But back before World War One, Stout was an adventure writer for the pulps. His stuff was considered pretty good, but it wasn’t sufficiently lucrative for his taste. So he got a job with an actual salary for a decade or so and worked on improving his writing without selling anything.
This story was his one big dip into the fantastic, a “lost race” novel. This particular subgenre was big in the early days of pulpish fiction. White explorers go off to some remote corner of the Earth, enter an normally inaccessible area and find an exotic civilization cut off from the outside world.
Paul and the others take their own sweet time getting to the lost race part of the story. First we’re introduced to Paul and his brother Harry as the older brother must rescue Harry from a high-stakes gambling game by winning the pot. Paul’s all too aware of his own omni-competence, and Harry is chafing under his protection.
Paul takes a vacation in Europe, and is mostly genteelly bored, being worldly wise and never letting himself get tied down to one woman. He is warned, however, about a beautiful “adventuress” named Desiree Le Mire, a dancer and singer who drives her admirers mad with love. He finally meets her on the ship back to America, but is able to resist her charms.
Not so Harry, who succumbs almost immediately, and runs off with the enchanting woman. Paul follows after to make sure they don’t get legally married (which would give Desiree a claim on the family money) and to pick up the pieces when Desiree breaks Harry’s heart. The trio go off on a tour to South America.
They wind up in the Andes, and Desiree starts falling for Paul, whose coldness turns her on. She’s distracted from this by the tale of the lost gold of the Incas, supposedly taken deep into a cave after the betrayal of Pizarro. Naturally, she just has to investigate the cave in question, and the men must follow. Turns out spelunking is one of the few skills Paul has never mastered, and the treacherous ground spills them deep into the underworld.
The men are separated from Desiree in the darkness and many twisting tunnels, all alike. Except that in fact they’re not all alike to the inhabitants, the degenerate descendants of the Incas who’d hidden themselves and their gold centuries ago. And their hideous king has taken a fancy to Desiree himself.
Good: Even at this early point in his career, Rex Stout has a gift for straightforward language and effective scene-setting. The cramped darkness under the Andes mountains is the main feature here, and there’s a strong feeling of danger and suffocation. There’s some relatively subtle shift in characterization as Paul loses his composure and Harry has to start taking the lead.
There’s a great sequence with a hypnotic giant serpent critter that must be overcome to get through a passage.
Less good: The narrative quickly gets repetitious as the protagonists escape from the Incas, wander about, get recaptured, rinse and repeat.
There’s some sexism in the way the narration treats Desiree, but Paul isn’t exactly the most unprejudiced narrator, no matter what he thinks. Given the time period, she comes off pretty well.
The Incans are not treated as human beings, but more humanoid creatures. Aside from the king’s lust and cruelty, they’re not shown to have emotions or motivations, and are slaughtered by the dozens without any remorse from the protagonists or their own people.
The odd: At the end, there’s a final twist that undercuts the veracity of Paul’s narrative if taken at face value, or indicates a final break between the brothers. Per the introduction, Rex Stout was uncomfortable at best about writing fantasy so this might have been his way of distancing himself from the story.
My edition of this book came with an introduction explaining how this story came into re-publication after decades, including the intervention of Congressman “Tip” O’Neill!
This novel is severely dated, and more of a curiosity if you are a Rex Stout fan, but stands up okay for “lost race” fans.
