Under The Andes

by Rex Stout

Under the Andes is an early novel by Rex Stout, first published in the All-Story Magazine in 1914. Lured by the legends of Inca gold, a beautiful dancer, Desiree Le Mire, and two brothers, Harry and Paul Lamar, enter a mysterious cave, the Cave of the Devil. What they don't realize is that others live there, protecting the gold of their ancestors; others, now misshapen after generations of living underground. No one who entered the cave ever emerged into daylight. That was why the natives and guides in the Andes stayed away. But no one who had entered was as beautiful as Desiree... or as determined as the Lamars.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Ebooks, Pulp

286 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Rex Todhunter Stout (1886–1975) was an American crime writer, best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius from 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) to 1975 (A Family Affair).

The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century.

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before he hit gold with Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout wrote for popular but cheap pulp magazines beginning in the 1910's , scratching a living in that lowly work which high-brow critics said loudly, lacked literary merit. The pompous ones rather missed the obvious some were quite good better than the stiff dull books mostly be churned out in the period. "Under the Andes" may seem just another improbable adventure in a remote corner of the world, the kind being written for decades previously by H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne to name a few. This particular book is above the norm not only continuous action yet with a real plot and believable characters as three people including two brothers in love with one woman try to survive outrageous fortune as a well- known writer from the distant past wrote centuries ago. Starting in New York ending high above the Andes mountains then below those towering edifices , the story very risque for 1914, and the longest range on the surface of Earth, very alarming in view
nevertheless wondrous monuments to the beauty of nature though never forget to keep the eye wide open ... make that both. Paul Lamar has vast riches his younger brother rather childish in some respects Harry , quite athletic but needs to mature, coming from a wealthy family he can take his time. The third member of our triangle is the alluring Desiree Le Mire an European dancer arriving in New York to perform on Broadway having gathered from the continent great acclaim there and not just for frolicking on stage . The unstable lady promptly runs off with the equally mercurial Harry before her Broadway debut to parts unknown...Denver which gives the responsible Paul a choice... he follows not a good idea and eventually landing in Peru the constantly bored Desiree seeks new excitement she will enjoy, maybe not the right word , finding a tunnel with the help of their guide who doesn't stay, the darkest spot in Earth. Slashing around unable to see more than a few inches in front if that...truly the ultimate in stress and the Incas close- by with weird hungry creatures looking for a snack. Capture and escape from the Indians, occurring somehow more than once the Inca king is very incompetent in executing the strangers. Floating in a raft in an underground river in complete darkness over waterfalls, earthquakes, always being chased by the Incas and hideous things in the perpetual night will give the delicate claustrophobia but we for art will endure.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because author Rex Stout is so closely associated with his most famous fictional character, housebound detective extraordinaire Nero Wolfe, fans may find it hard to believe that the Indiana-born writer ever wrote anything else. And that, I suppose, is understandable, seeing that between 1934 and 1975, Stout came out with no fewer than 33 novels and 40 or so novellas featuring one of crimedom's most well-known sleuths. But just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in many other genres besides the one featuring Sherlock Holmes, so too did Stout: 13 non-Wolfe novels and 44 short stories in the thriller, mystery, historical adventure, lost world/lost race, and even romance genres, to be precise. And thanks to Armchair Fiction's current 24-volume Lost World/Lost Race series, readers may now experience Stout's one and only contribution to that wonderful fantasy subgenre, "Under the Andes." This roller coaster of a novel originally saw the light of day in the February 1914 issue of "The All-Story" magazine (which publication would also release works from such lost-world practitioners as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Abraham Merritt), when Stout was all of 28 years old. It promptly sank into seeming oblivion until 1985, and this recent Armchair release, featuring the same beautiful cover artwork by P. J. Monahan as had graced the 2/14 "All-Story," is the novel's fourth reprint in the last 35 years.

The book is narrated by Paul Lamar, a 32-year-old, extremely wealthy dilettante scientist who lives on NYC's 5th Avenue with his irresponsible, 22-year-old brother Harry. When we first encounter the pair, the older Lamar is bailing out the younger after Harry's most recent losses at an uptown gambling den. And trouble soon crops up again, when Harry falls head over heels in love with Desiree Le Mire, a dancer who had recently taken Europe by storm, who Paul had even more recently met during a transatlantic crossing, and who is currently performing on Broadway. When Harry and the blonde siren suddenly take off for Colorado, Paul follows, in the hopes of once again averting a family scandal. The elder brother trails the lovers to the summit of Pike's Peak, where an understanding of sorts is reached amongst them, after which the trio decides to take an extended ocean voyage. A yacht is rented, and our adventurers travel from San Francisco, down to Mexico and Central America, and on to Lima, Peru. There, Desiree takes it into her head that she wishes to see the land of the Incas, and so the three hire an arriero (muleteer) to take them from Cerro de Pasco to another town, Huanuco (yes, actual places, as any map will show), crossing the mighty Andes en route. A cave is ultimately reached that their guide importunes them to avoid, but headstrong Desiree charges straight on in, followed by the two brothers, and all three plunge fairly rapidly down into a swift-moving, underground river, which separates the trio and washes them into a pitch-black cavern. Ultimately, our heroes are captured by the inhabitants of this stygian realm: the debased remnants of the Incas who had fled from Hernando Pizarro 400 years earlier! Lamar's narrative then goes on to detail the manifold hardships that the three suffer during their many weeks in this underground kingdom, their battles with the Incas, their numerous rescues of one another, the unusual creatures that they encounter, and their many attempts to find their way back to the surface.

And indeed, of all the many heroes who I have encountered during my immersion in lost-race fiction, few have suffered more than our trio does here, all of whom sustain injuries from spears, knives, bites, boulders and burns before the story is done, not to mention lack of sleep and severe thirst and hunger (living on dried fish and cave water for weeks on end will do that to a person!). In essence, after a 40-page setup, Stout's book is one long, 200-page chase sequence, punctuated only by torture, rescue, battles, and continued chases. Unlike in most other lost-world books, the race encountered here is comprised of completely undifferentiated individuals. The Incas here are all the same--squat, ugly killing machines--and none of them is even given a name. The only one who stands out from the pack is the Incan king, and even in his case, a name is never vouchsafed--or learned--by our narrator. Think of them, thus, like H. G. Wells' Morlocks: a nasty underground race of devolved mutants who are only interested in killing. And that the Lamar brothers surely do themselves, by the hundreds, in several remarkably violent sequences. (No wonder Harry tells his brother, during one of the book’s many fracases, "Paul, it’s rank butchery. I’m wading in blood....")

Stout's book contains any number of memorable set pieces, including the one in which the two brothers are brought to the top of a superheated, 100-foot-high column above a whirlpool (pictured in the Monahan illustration) and are compelled to either roast to death or jump; the first rescue of Desiree from the king's clutches, hidden as she is in a veritable maze of underground warrens; a lakeside cavern fight that our trio engages in against hundreds of ravening warriors; a run-in with a monstrous, reptilian, tentacled creature, like something out of an H. P. Lovecraft nightmare, that our hardy band encounters in another cavern; the raft trip that the three take, along underground rapids and waterfalls, in the hopes of finding an exit to the surface; an even more harrowing, second rescue of Desiree; and an absolutely furious and thrilling final chase sequence, as the barely-still-alive trio is pursued by the maddened Incas, during both cave-ins and earth tremors. In truth, the book is a genuine thrill ride, into which Stout mixes in some interesting romantic angles (Harry loves Desiree, while Desiree loves Paul, who vainly tries to resist her temptations), some downbeat grimness (Paul frequently entertains the notion of suicide), and even some occasional humor (such as when Paul tells us, regarding the Incas, "I am satisfied that they were incapable of vocalization, for even the women did not talk!"). And the book is, surprisingly, somewhat risqué, especially for 1914, in that Desiree is completely topless after her initial plunge into that underground torrent, and all three are completely nekkid by book's end, their clothing having fallen off in tatters. And for those readers who suffer from the occasional bout of claustrophobia, I would say that "Under the Andes" might be especially nerve racking, as the author really does make the reader feel what it would be like to subsist in such trying underworld conditions for an extended period of time. Not since reading Alan Garner's "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" (1960) eight years back has this reader experienced such an uncomfortably closed-in sensation.

As it turns out, Stout himself is a pretty terrific writer, even here in his second novel, written a full 20 years before he started on the Nero Wolfe series. He obviously did a fair amount of homework before the penning of his sophomore effort, adding convincing geographical detail as well as historical tidbits and Incan lore. Thus, we get to know about Pizarro, the Incan king Manco Capac, the Incan god Pachacamac, and quipos (knotted and varicolored cords that the Incas used in adjudication), as well as the dreaded soroche (a form of mountain sickness in the Andes). Stout adds numerous literary references to his work, and his characters (whether realistically or not) are apt to start spouting lines from such varied writers as Rudyard Kipling and Alfred Tennyson, and alluding to Cervantes' "Don Quixote," de Montalvo's "Amadis of Gaul," and Lesage's "The Bachelor of Salamanca." He is capable of a lovely turn of phrase, as when Paul thinks, whilst watching a beautiful sunrise from the top of Pike's Peak, "He who made the universe is no artist; too often He forgets restraint, and blinds us...." Then again, Stout can be wonderfully dry, as when Paul opines, regarding the Incas' probable cannibalistic diet, "There is nothing particularly revolting in the thought of being eaten; the disadvantage of it lies in the fact that one must die first...." And still again, he can proffer a line of quiet wisdom, such as when Paul thinks "...if, looking death in the face, a man can preserve his philosophy unchanged, he has made the only success in life that is worthwhile...."

Still, successful as "Under the Andes" undoubtedly is, some small problems do crop up. Stout does offer up the occasional bit of bad grammar (as in "The light of the urns were now hidden from us..."), and his descriptions of the underground caverns and passageways are sometimes (but only sometimes) difficult to visualize. Particularly hard to picture was the whirlpool sequence, but perhaps that is just me. I was also mystified as to why our two American heroes are so wont to use British slang expressions, such as "bally rot." Too much time spent vacationing on the Continent, perhaps? Still, these are very minor matters in a book filled with so much action, suspense and wonder.

Further good news regarding this Armchair Fiction release is that it is practically devoid of the multiple typographical errors that had plagued several other of the publisher's books in this Lost World/Lost Race series. I have purchased no fewer than 10 other titles in this tremendously fun bunch of vintage novels, and am hoping that they are all as thrilling, well written and typo-free as Rex Stout's "Under the Andes." Stay tuned....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ … a perfect destination for all fans of lost world/lost race fare....)

[Michelle B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Zero stars. A third-rate H Rider Haggard imitation which if not for the later fame of its author would not register a blip on the radar. The protagonist is so insufferably cool one feels unworthy of breathing the same air with him, while the female is a reckless, foolhardy airhead. The final pages are interesting, but it's a long slog to reach them.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 2 out of 5]

This strange story is not very exciting, I thought it would be. The characters and events are definitely not exciting, the plot could have been better.
This review is also not exciting...

[Pamela · Rating 1 out of 5]

No Archie. No Nero. No orchids. No point.

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rex Stout tries his hand at Egar Rice Burroughs with mixed results. The pacing was uneven and the second half got very repetitive.
2.75/5

[MB Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book; not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting something along the lines of an Edgar Rice Burroughs story, but (and I'm not sure why exactly) this reminded me more of H. Rider Haggard.

The story starts off a little slowly, giving us ample time to get to know the characters. We meet Paul Lamar, a wealthy New York bachelor and the narrator; Harry Lamar, his much younger brother; and Desiree La Mire, an exotic dancer and free spirit. Paul describes a female friend his as "not beautiful, but eminently satisfying; not loose, but liberal, with a character and a heart." By contrast he describes Desiree as giving "a confused impression of elegance and beauty and terrible power." Another character says "She is a witch and a she-devil, and the most completely fascinating woman in the world."

The beginning of the novel reads more like a romance novel than an adventure story. It's not until page 30 that we even get to Peru, but not too long after the adventure story begins.

Eventually our main characters end up under the Andes and have various and sundry adventures. Stout makes a point of how dark it is in the early parts of the novel as the characters stumble about in the dark. However, the underground inhabitants can apparently see well enough; although they do light some parts of the caverns. But later in the novel our main characters have also adapted to the lightless environment; they manage to get around just fine. It probably wouldn't have bothered me if Stout hadn't spent so time in the beginning on the total darkness.

In many pulp reprints I have read there are occasional transcription issues, and there seems to be a glaring one in this book as well. At one point late in the novel there is a missing paragraph. The previous paragraph ends with Paul (as narrator) saying "I turned away ... as I said:" and the next paragraph is Desiree responding to what he said. Curious, I found Under the Andes on Project Gutenberg and looked there. Unfortunately the text is the same. I'm vaguely tempted to try to find a copy of the February 1914 issue of All-Story Magazine, but since that issue also contains part 3 of Burroughs's The Warlord of Mars, it'd probably cost way too much..

Under the Andes doesn't quite deserve all 3 of the stars I gave it, but it's a decent read. Just don't start it expecting the polished writing of the Nero Wolfe books. Nero Wolfe was nearly 20 years in Rex Stout's future when this was written.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the weirder little books I've ever read. Three intrepid wanderers wind up falling down a hole in a mountain cavern and are captured--after a lot of wandering around through the dark--by the degenerate Incas, who voluntarily went underground to escape Pizarro and his greedy Spanish hoards. There isn't much about the Incas here, but there is a lot of stumbling around in the dark, fighting big scary monsters, and eating raw meat. I found it very diverting (I was reading it on my Kindle) but it did seem to go on rather a long time. I won't spoil the ending, except to say that it made me want to throw my Kindle across the room. Fortunately, I didn't. For those who enjoyed She, by H.Rider Haggard, or anyone curious about Rex Stout's works besides Nero Wolfe.

[Dave Wallace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Early Rex Stout taking on a lost world tale popular at the time, You can see Nero Wolfe in Paul and Archie in Harry. Desiree is on Cramer. Mildly amusing with a dump truck load of Deex ex machina 2.5 stars.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lost race type of story. It was all right but not outstanding. I though a lot of other writers have done it better, especially Howard, Burroughs, and Friel.

[Hal Brodsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before he invented Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout wrote this shallow and way-too-long adventure/fantasy pulp about 2 multimillionaire brothers and Europe's most beautiful/voluptuous/manipulative woman who wind up trapped in a cave system where they are chased by murderous mute hairy black Incas and giant reptiles with the power of hypnosis.
Despite the total subterannean darkness, they "get used to it" and after a few weeks can see.
This is the kind of book wherein our heros escape certain death by drowning 7 or 8 times and hundreds of spears thrown from a few dozen yards all miss them every time.
For the Rex Stout curious and pubescent boys only

[Benjamin Chandler · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a bore.

Excruciatingly tedious, disappointingly unimaginative, gruesomely violent, with sprinkles of racism to boot.

The book started promising, with an interesting trio of characters heading off on adventures and an unlimited cash flow, but once the story meets the title and goes under the Andes, it grinds to a halt. The adventurers are captured and recaptured again and again by a lost tribe of de-evolved, subterranean Incas. How anyone sees anything in the blackness of unlit caves is never explained, but such leaps of logic are the least of this book's problems.

It all picked up during one chapter where the heroes battle a giant, mesmerizing, tentacled monster, but after it is dispatched (spoiler) they get recaptured by the Incas for the umpteenth time. The number of Incas the protagonists kill seems to literally be in the hundreds, which makes a reader wonder—just how many Incas lived in these caves of perpetual darkness, feeding on strips of dried fish? Thousands? Perhaps I can only suspend my disbelief when the story is fun and amusing. This was a slog.

[A.G. Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

As early Rex Stout (of Nero Wolfe fame), it's a solid, "workmanlike" story, although repetitive.

In the action/adventure vein of "King Solomon's Mines" or "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Under the Andes" features the obligatory female love interest who really doesn't do much more than get into trouble and have to be rescued (although, to give Stout credit, his "Le Mire" actually holds her own in some of the fighting scenes...but not many!) The two brothers really only become interesting as characters when they leave civilization behind.

A quick, fun read, if you check your mind at the door. The plot twist at the end is interesting and unnecessary. It has been done before and better, but doesn't really make the story any better (or worse.)

[Norman Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Stout's second published novel, some 20 years before Nero Wolfe came into the world. This is a lost race story similar in tone to what H. Rider Haggard was writing at the time. Stout had a good idea, but got mired down by derivative writing. The action really didn't get started until at least a quarter of the way through the book. The early scenes of the two brothers were a somewhat interesting picture of the idle "1%" of their day. Once they got trapped in the ancient Incan underground, pretty much all the character development stopped, and it was repetitive scene after scene of them traipsing back and forth through unlit caves trying to avoid capture (how they saw in the darkness was not clearly explained). The ending was a cop out.

[Ali · Rating 1 out of 5]

i read this because i like rex stout's nero wolfe mysteries. i would say that "under the andes" has very little, if any, merit on its own. however, if you read this and one of rex stout's later works, it's just amazing to see how much one author's writing and storytelling improved over his lifetime.

[Julie Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

H. Rider Haggard style adventure which put me in mind of The People of the Mist, though I didn't like it nearly as well. However, I'm always up for hidden lands adventures and this was quite enjoyable in its way.

[LeAnna Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novel is more of a fantasy adventure than a mystery. At times the story can be bogged down with too many details, even if it does aid you to visualized the characters, the surroundings and their physical perils.

[Jean · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries, but this book was atrocious.

[Skjam! · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[astaliegurec · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.0 out of 5 stars
Pointless Book that Goes On and On and On…
May 10, 2021

The elephant in the room for Rex Stout's 1914 (yes, that's currently 107 years ago) novel [[ASIN:B0082Z36U6 "Under the Andes"]] is that it's entirely pointless and just goes on and on and on. Besides that, its other faults are fairly tolerable. But, just for completeness, some of them are:

- The driver for the book is that the world is gaga over an airheaded woman simply because she's beautiful and, for various reasons, the protagonist has to follow her all over the world. As far as I can see, she has no other redeeming value. But, then again, the book was written in 1914.
- Nothing is explained. The book is somewhat similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1918 novel "The Land that Time Forgot." But, that book succeeds in part because Burroughs explains the world between bouts of action. Stout does not. Very specifically, his Incans are given only a genesis. There's nothing that actually explains anything about them, how they survived, how they adapted, why they look the way they do, how they communicate, or, really, what they want.
- Related to the above, the ecology where most of the story takes place is flat out ridiculous. There's no energy input into it, yet it's filled with large animals.
- In Jules Verne's 1864 novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth," the ability of the people to see underground is explained (I think it's explained in the book – but I might be getting that from the 1959 James Mason film). But here, Stout says they can see in absolute, underground darkness because their eyes have adapted over time. Never mind that his Incans, who can see perfectly fine in that utter darkness, light things ups with oil fires.

Regardless, the book's a chore to read. I'm rating it at a Pretty Bad 2 stars out of 5.

[John Geary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly not one of Rex Stout’s better pieces of writing.
To be fair, this was published in 1914, 20 years before he would publish his first Nero Wolfe novel. I have to think that in that 20 year period, he really worked at improving his skills as a writer and storyteller.
I realize this is an adventure fantasy, a much different genre than that which he became successful in for more than 40 years: well-plotted mystery novels with interesting characters.
But you really have to suspend disbelief more than normal as 75 per cent of the action in this novel takes place in underground caverns. I’ve been in underground caverns in a couple of different places and your eyes never “adjust to the dark” in a cave. That’s why you have to have a headlamp. But they seem to be able to see after spending some time in the caves underneath the Andes, being chased by, and fighting with, the descendants of Incas and battling reptilian monsters. Even looking past the lack of reality of being able to see in the dark without lights, the story just drags on too long with very little variation in the action events. Perhaps Stout was doing that because he didn’t have a word limit and he was being paid by the word in All-Story Magazine, one of the pulps of pre-Great War USA, where the story was first published.
This story was okay, but it certainly doesn’t come close to matching similar types of adventure tales like “The Lost World“ by Arthur Conan Doyle or “King Solomon‘s Mines” by H. Ryder Haggard.
Read on my Kindle. Glad I didn’t pay for a hard copy version of this book.
It was one of those books that if Kindle allowed you to give half star ratings, it would be a 2.5 rather than a 3.

[Kat (Ginger Bibliophile on YouTube) · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be fair, I skipped a lot. Life is too short to read bad books. I slogged through the first 20-odd pages then skipped to what should have been the good part. The main character is just such a sexist egotistical prick it colors everything. He literally blathers on about a woman’s only charm is her sex appeal which can only last a max of 3 weeks. Then, when they’re in a fight for their lives, assumes the woman is dead or their hosts are deaf so she’s bored because she isn’t talking. Things are finally exciting and we know he unfortunately lives because he brags that later people will doubt how incredible he is to have accomplished yet another great feat to survive, something nobody but a genius perfect make specimen
like him could do. So the ending is ruined barely 25% in taking away the suspense even if I wasn’t rooting for at least Paul, if not the others, to die.

Do yourself a favor and leave this book in the last century where it belongs. There are much better books out there on the intriguing subject!

[Arthur Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

As has been established by previous reviews, UNDER THE ANDES is completely dissimilar to Rex Stout's more familiar work. My own interest in it stems from my affection for the much-later Nero Wolfe stories. Taken on its own merits, UNDER THE ANDES is a reasonably well-written thriller about three people who are trapped in an underground world that is the domain of a lost civilization of Incas. If it is not quite on par with this same sort of thing from the pen of Stout's contemporary, Edgar Rice Burroughs, he can be forgiven, considering he lacks the older author's experience in the genre. Whatever the case, ANDES is neither a great work of fiction nor an embarrassment, and I found it to be a moderately entertaining tale.

[Álvaro Martín Rodríguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pensando que era de Nero Wolfe, detective que tiene entretenidos libros, y pensando a medida que lo leía que cuándo demonios iba a aparecer Nero Wolfe, demasiado tarde descubro que no tiene nada que ver.

Un meapilas, un chichirivainas y una diva caprichosa se embarcan en una absurda aventura bajo Los Andes y se encuentran a "Los Incas", sin duda los malvados más lamentables e ineficaces que hayan aparecido nunca en una novela. A veces resulta hasta entrañable el libro de puro malo por eso no le doy sólo una estrella.

Una especie de "Minas del Rey Salomón" de chichinabo. Afortunadamente no es nada popular y creo que está editado en inglés y poco más, por lo que el peligro de la humanidad de encontrárselo es limitado.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pulpy, teenage-boy’s-wet-dream of an adventure story—from another age (1914). International playboy travelers, a captivatingly beautiful woman, high society, yachting, disguise, mountain climbing, exotic romance, impulsive spelunking, alien tribal enemies, a cavernous underworld, total darkness, capture, escape, kidnapping, pursuit, rescue, repeated capture, dramatic escape, horrifying monsters, royalty and riches, heroic strength, grisly struggles, bloody battles, more capture, more escape, earthquakes, slaughter, near starvation, recovery, rafting and rapids, certain death, narrow escape... and more. Outrageously marvelous. An under-appreciated pulp classic.

[Newell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Under the Andes by Rex Stout is an over-the-top adventure story set in what appears to be the late 1800s with a wealthy protagonist and leading characters who appear to be pursuing an indolent lifestyle that evolves into the most terrifying adventure imaginable. Think Indiana Jones where the action never stops and is all cliffhanger. One thinks of Rex Stout in the context of the Nero Wolf Detective series, and this book is so radically different in character that it is almost as if the author is trying an experiment or fulfilling a wager. This book is recommended for radically adventurous readers.

[Mark James Wooding · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only made it about halfway through this book. I particularly liked the first chapter, but later on, when they were in the lost world under the Andes, and the protagonists had killed many of their captors, those captors repeatedly avoided killing the protagonists. The third time the protagonists were captured, after having killed dozens of their captors, they were tied up again instead of being immediately killed. This seemed too contrived to me, and I couldn't read any more. Maybe I'll finish it someday, but probably not this year.

[AGMaynard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty well written for its genre (especially) and era, 1913/1914. Not meant for those who would be disappointed that it's not Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin or one of the other detective tales. It's an old-fashioned, rip-roaring adventure tale of a "lost race" of undersized Inca living in underground, water-filled caverns. The adventurers fall in among them and fight to get out for the remainder of the story.

[Gretchen · Rating 2 out of 5]

While flashes of the style that Stout displays in his Nero Wolfe books are glimpsed in this early writing, it in no way compares to his later, much enjoyed works. The book just went on and on and on with one supposedly hair raising adventure after another although mostly I kept checking to see how much longer I had to put up with it before the end would come. The ending probably was supposed to be a bit of a surprise but, by that time, I doubt many readers even cared (or were surprised).

[Harpoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is pretty good for this style of pulp fiction. The characters are one-dimensional, but that one dimension is well defined. The plot is moderately interesting at first, but turns into a repetitive "peril - narrow escape" loop; it got a little tedious towards the end. I imagine this was originally a serial with cliffhangers. It was okay, but I'll stick to the much better plotted Nero Wolfe stories.