How long does it take to read Three Aces?
a Nero Wolfe omnibus
Three Aces by Rex Stout takes about 8 hours 40 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 40 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1961. 473 pages, about 130,075 words.
18 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 14 hours 27 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 40 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 25 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Consists of the three novellas; Too Many Clients; Might as Well be Dead; The Final Deduction. Too Many Clients: A wealthy man with a hidden love nest is murdered, and suddenly Wolfe and Goodwin have a whole bunch of potential clients, including the murdered man's employers, his widow, his latest inamorata, another fling's cuckolded husband, and the building caretakers and their teenage daughter. Might As Well Be Dead: a Midwestern businessman hires Wolfe to locate his estranged son, who fled to New York years before after being accused of theft. Locating the errant young man is not difficult, but there's a complication - under a new name and identity, he's on trial for murder and all of the evidence is against him. The Final Deduction: the too-popular husband of a wealthy but has-been actress is kidnapped and his wife hires Wolfe to conduct the ransom negotiations. The delivery is arranged, the husband returns home, but all is not well. The ransom handover was carried out by the actress' secretary, a slippery and possibly complicit young woman who turns up dead.
Subjects: Private investigators, Nero Wolfe (Fictitious character), Fiction, American Detective and mystery stories, Batting (Baseball), Frappe (Baseball)
