Nero Wolfe (74)

Both Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are at their furious best when a murder is committed with Archie’s gun and the client lies to the cops, indicating that Goodwin is the prime suspect. Inspector Cramer threatens to cancel Wolfe’s detective license and arrests Archie. Wolfe is so angry that he works during an orchid session, begins a million dollar suit against the client, and reveals Cramer’s threat to the newspapers before finally exposing the culprit; Archie merely slams the client against a wall.

Archie Goodwin attempts to help two scared illegal immigrants only to learn that they are prime suspects in the murder of a policeman. The man nearly breaks Archie’s back in trying to get away from Nero Wolfe’s before homicide cops come for him. A star-struck girl gets bopped with a bottle and tries to frame Sgt. Purley Stebbins, but Wolfe solves the case as he gets his hair cut.

Nero Wolfe again exposes a communist-murderer in a case both the FBI and the police try to keep hushed. Two female suspects smack it out in Wolfe’s office and one drunken woman pats him on the head after pouring scotch in his beer. The feds and cops try to raise hell when they learn that Wolfe offers to “bribe” a suspect.

A young couple deeply in love comes to seek Nero Wolfe’s help because the young woman’s husband has died. She believes he was murdered but because of her affair is afraid to go to the police. The mystery clue seems to concern the movement of the murder weapon. It takes much persuasion by Wolfe to get the young man to admit that he moved the gun, placing it next to the body. Both he and she were afraid that that the other had committed the crime. Would Wolfe help them uncover the truth? He consents and begins to interview all who may have a motive to kill the husband, a famous singer.

“The Twisted Scarf” finds Nero Wolfe having a gardening group and their guests visiting his orchid collection. During the event, a young woman confides in Archie that she has recognized one of the guests as having killed a good friend whose murder has gone unsolved. She gives him no more details and Archie is called to assist with the guests. While he is gone someone murders the young woman. Wolfe has little to go on to discover who murdered the young woman. His only clue is that it had to have been a guest and he believes that the murderer did not leave the scene of the crime.

When orchid nurse Theodore Horstmann leaves the brownstone indefinitely to tend to his sick mother, Nero Wolfe goes out — in the snow and on foot — into the raging wilds of Westchester to find a replacement. He and Archie find a corpse in the greenhouse, as well.

As a favor for his oldest friend Marko Vukcic, Nero Wolfe takes the case of Virgil Pompa, a chef who traded his genius for a high-paying job as the supervisor of a restaurant chain. He is in jail, charged with murder. Archie begins the story with the statement, "In my opinion it was one of Nero Wolfe's neatest jobs, and he never got a nickel for it."

A high-fashion designer consults Wolfe after she sees her uncle — believed to have committed suicide a year before — in disguise and in the audience at one of her shows.

In this story Nero Wolfe investigates the murders of Eugene R. Poor, an inventor of novelties.

In this story Nero Wolfe investigates the murders of Ben Jensen, a well-connected publisher.

In this story Nero Wolfe investigates the murders of Dazy Perrit, an underworld kingpin.

In “Bullet for One,” a man with a lot of enemies is shot dead while riding his horse in the early morning in Central Park; five of the six suspects believe the sixth man is the culprit, but he’s got an ironclad alibi...

A woman with a man seated beside her in a Cadillac mouths soundlessly to a street urchin, “Help, get a cop!” One of these three very presently is murdered, and as a result Nero Wolfe delivers himself of his first recorded lecture on crime detection. Even more surprising, Nero and Archie take on a case for the smallest retainer in their history: four dollars and thirty cents.

“The Golden Spiders”, Rex Stout introduces a new kind of criminal engaged in a peculiarly contemporary and particularly vicious kind of crime. Nero never had to think faster and Archie never encountered greater perils than in this, undoubtedly one of the very finest novels of detection or our day.

Readers who have long followed the adventures of Nero Wolfe will surely agree not only that this is one of the neatest murder puzzles ever set down by Rex Stout, but also that it is the most exciting, adventure-filled, and breathless story he ever told.

Nero Wolfe has represented some pretty unusual clients in his time, but in this one, his client — believe it or not — is the fast-talking, hard-hitting, skirt-chasing assistant and companion to Nero, Archie Goodwin himself.

We’ll make three bets with you abut Prisoner’s Base: First — you won’t solve it. Second — you’ll agree that no author ever played more fair with his readers. Third — when you finish it, you will feel as if you have been on a forty-eight-hour, breath-taking, danger-filled chase up and down the avenues of New York, into some of Manhattan’s darkest and more terror-filled alleys.

In this story Nero working for the War Department. The case presented to him involves widespread industrial sabotage, and without much in the way of clues, Nero, with Archie’s help, sets his own “booby traps” to catch a murderer and a traitor.

Wolfe is hired by a society party planner to find out who is writing poison pen letters about her and sending them to her clients and potential clients. Since it appears that the letters are coming from a member of the party planner’s household, Archie is sent up to her Riverdale mansion to investigate. The client dies a few days into the investigation. Was it an accident or murder? Is there a connection between the death and the letters? If it was murder how was it done?

Wolf’s lust for a unique black orchid combined with his envy of the orchid fancier who hybridized it impel him to attend the annual New York flower show. A nursery/seed company employee is murdered at the show. Wolfe offers to solve the murder in exchange for the rare plant; and he does solve it with some clear thinking and a dramatic stratagem.

Wolfe and Archie investigate the death of a model who ate a piece of poisoned candy. One of the suspects begs Wolfe to handle his estate and especially the contents of a certain red box. Wolfe is at first concerned about a possible conflict of interest, but feels unable to refuse when the man dies in his office before telling Wolfe where to find the red box. The police naturally think that he told Wolfe somewhat more before dying.

This novel presents the series’ first instance of a murder taking place in Wolfe’s office.

Paul Chapin’s college cronies have never completely forgiven themselves for the tragic prank that left their friend a twisted cripple. Yet with their Harvard days behind them, they thought it was all in the past — until a class reunion ends in a fatal fall, and mysterious poems swearing deadly retribution begin to arrive. Now this league of frightened men seeks Nero Wolfe’s expert help. But are Wolfe’s brilliance and Archie’s tenacity enough to outwit a most cunning killer?

THREE RECENTLY DISCOVERED NERO WOLFE CLASSICS Now, with the aid of the Stout estate and Stout’s official biographer, John McAleer, Bantam Books is proud to publish for the first time in book form this newly discovered collection of three Nero Wolfe novellas. ASSAULT ON A BROWNSTONE, the never-before-published version of a novella featuring Wolfe in his most shocking confrontation with the law when his Thirty-fifth Street brownstone is invaded by Treasury officials. FRAME-UP FOR MURDER, concerning a famous fashion designer and a neatly stitched plot that weaves a deadly pattern of death. And BITTER END, a suspenseful story containing one of the nastiest incidents ever to occur at Wolfe’s dinner table.

Nero Wolfe, the brilliant orchid-growing gourmet detective, and his inimitable confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, are America’s most beloved detection team. Now they are back in a splendid new murder mystery that takes up where Rex Stout left off. In the perfect Stout tradition, author Robert Goldsborough has ingeniously rendered every detail of character and place with such uncanny accuracy that fans will savor every page to its surprising and immensely satisfying conclusion. Threatening notes have been sent to Milan Stevens, celebrated conductor of the New York Symphony. His niece, Maria, fears for her uncle’s life and travels to the Thirty-fifth Street brownstone of Nero Wolfe. Archie can barely conceal his surprise when Wolfe agrees to investigate — Archie has just spent two spectacularly unsuccessful years trying to pry his employer out of retirement. But Wolfe has his own reasons for taking the case, reasons that have nothing to do with helping a pretty young woman in distress. For while the world knows Milan Stevens as a brilliant conductor, Wolfe knows him as Milos Stefanovic, the brave freedom fighter who saved Wolfe’s life many years ago. It is a debt that must be paid. But Maria has come to the big detective too late. Milan Stevens is soon found dead, and Maria’s musician boyfriend, Gerald, is in police custody. Despite Maria’s cries that Gerald could not have possibly committed such a bloody act, there are plenty of witnesses who overheard Stevens screaming at Gerald that marrying his niece was out of the question. To make matters worse, Gerald also happened to be the only person seen entering Stevens’s apartment on the night when the final curtain was pulled on his brilliant life. The juicy public scandal of it all enthralls the city, which is anxious for the next development and the climax of the case. With precious little to go on, and not sold on Gerald’s guilt, Wolfe and Archie begin compiling a list of suspects, discovering very soon that the problem isn’t where to start — it s where to stop. But when the scanty clues finally arrange themselves like notes on a score, Wolfe recognizes a dark melody that only a talented murderer could perform.

Wolfe’s cook is in bed with the flu which is a total disaster for the corpulent Nero, estimated to weigh between 310 and 390 pounds. He opens a can of pate, takes a bite and promptly spits it out assured that he has been poisoned. Archie Goodwin, his do-it-all assistant and the story narrator, proceeds to investigate only to find the owner of the company murdered and his relatives suspected.

What could make Nero Wolfe so determined to solve a crime that he would be willing to work entirely without fee or client? What would it take to put him, for the first time, at a loss for words? What would make him so angry about a case that he would refuse to speak to the police, even if he has to spend fifty-one hours in jail as a result? Never before in the Nero Wolfe books has Rex Stout shown us the extremes to which the greatest detective in the world can be pushed, but never before has a bomb blown up in the old brownstone on West 35th Street, murdering someone right under Wolfe's nose. When in October 1974 Pierre Ducos, one of Wolfe's favorite waiters at Rusterman's, Wolfe's favorite restaurant, dies just down the hall from Archie's bedroom, Wolfe is understandably eager to find the perpetrator, but when that murder somehow becomes connected with tape recorders, Washington lawyers, and maybe even a conspiracy to obstruct justice, his fury becomes so intense that even Archie is puzzled. Not only is this a great chapter in the Nero Wolfe legend; A Family Affair is a splendid mystery novel that should capture many new fans and will delight (and amaze) the longstanding admirers of Wolfe and Archie.

A new Nero Wolfe mystery at last — after a gap of four years — and it will be a delight to all Stout fans. The story is set in the summer of 1969, during that memorable period when the Mets were battling for the pennant and bomb scares abounded in Fun City. The mystery involves the explosion of a bomb in the office of a potential candidate for the presidency of a large corporation; the bomb kills another man, however, and no one can figure out whether the actual victim was the intended victim or not, and of course no one knows who set the bomb in the first place. The unraveling of the mystery, during which Archie encounters his first Women’s Liberationist, is full of suspense, humor, orchids, etymology, and good food in the best Stout tradition.

So you think you know Nero Wolfe, do you. So you’re reasonably sure that only the most dire emergency will induce Nero to heave his home on West Thirty-fifth Street, and that no case since his early days could make him budge from Manhattan Island or miss a meal cooked by his own precious Fritz? Well, brace yourself! In this latest full-length Nero Wolfe adventure, Nero not only leaves house, cook, and orchid planes, but also flies nearly cross-continent to Montana to join Archie Goodwin on a lavish but very private dude ranch. Here he settles down to solve murder by rifle shot, resigned to the necessity of performing such unWolfean activities as tramping through underbrush, wading in an icy trout stream, eating canned soup, and attending a rowdy Saturday night hoedown in a cattle town. He also has to deal with a young unmarried mother, some uncooperative cowhands, a highly belligerent sheriff, an off-Broadway actress, and any number of chairs which don’t begin to fit his bulk. Yet, throughout, he remains the same inimitable Nero Wolfe. How does Rex Stout know enough about the Far West to write this novel? Every summer, for a large part of his life, he spent his time riding pack trains, fishing mile-high streams, and enjoying night after night around campfires, yarning with genuine cowpunchers. So there isn’t a misplaced piece of harness or an unauthentic Western Vista in this, one of the funniest, most engaging, and most out-of-doors of all Nero Wolfe adventures.

She was twenty-two years old, a Smith graduate, charming, intelligent, appealing. When she buttonholed Archie Goodwin, she had a very simple request. She hadn’t the faintest idea who her father was, had never seen him or heard of him, and wanted In learn who and where he was. She also, it turned out, had something in excess of a quarter of a million dollars mysteriously received from that father, but she didn’t really consider that part of the mystery at all. Archie, of course, took the problem to Nero and Nero took the problem on after he discovered that the girl’s mother had apparently been murdered and that the possible antecedents of the girl stretched back toward certain men of great power and influence, and into realms as diverse as international banking, national television, and public relations. To solve it, Nero and Archie have to be at the top of their form, and they are. This is the first new Nero Wolfe novel in nearly two years — an unusual interval for the productive Rex Stout, who celebrated his eightieth birthday in December 1966.

In Rex Stout’s latest full-length mystery, the victim is a mental freak — a man capable of successfully playing a dozen simultaneous chess games against first-rate players while he himself is out of sight of any of the boards. It is while thus engaged that he is killed. A millionaire — his opponent in more realms than chess — is accused, and Nero Wolfe is given what appears to be the most hopeless case he and Archie Goodwin have ever tackled. You need know nothing about chess to follow this tale, but some understanding of beautiful mothers and daughters will help. We believe that Gambit will surely be counted among the two or three finest full-length mysteries produced by Rex Stout, and, hence, one of the great works in the whole genre.

Murder Is Corny: In which the farmer’s daughter involves Archie Goodwin in a murder charge and Nero finds himself again at work for no fee.

Kill Now, Pay Later: In which Nero Wolfe vindicates his favorite bootblack — for no fee — and Archie Goodwin protects the bootblack’s daughter.

In Blood Will Tell: In which Archie mysteriously receives a tie in the mail and Nero finally receives a fee for solving the murder of the too curious Greenwich Village wife.

Chances are you are already a Nero Wolfe fan before you hold this new volume in your hands. We need not repeat to connoisseurs of the civilized — although not unbloody — chronicles of crime that the sedentary orchid-fancier and his leg-man Archie are the veritable Beluga in the field of mayhem and murder stories. For many years the redoubtable twosome has been involved with dark deeds of many kinds, but in The Final Deduction they for the first time tangle with the deepest-hued of all — kidnaping combined with the murder which so often accompanies it. The problem — and the fee — are worthy of Nero’s genius and Archie’s footwork. The facts are not concealed, and we invite you to see if you can arrive at “the final deduction” by the time it is revealed on the last pages of this top-drawer exercise in entertainment and detection.

It was preposterously inconvenient. The outer door was locked as usual, yet there she lay — on Nero Wolfe’s carpet, in Nero Wolfe’s office, strangled by Nero Wolfe’s own necktie!

“Here’s the gun I’m going to use to kill my husband.” That’s what she said. But he killed, and with that gun, or with one just like it... and Archie Goodwin had tampered with the gun himself.

Under suspicion for murder and too angry to deny it, harried Hattie Annis offered 42 grand to Nero Wolfe . If she was innocent, you can ask her whether he earned his fee.

Nero Wolfe has always considered murder slightly illegal, but in the three stories in this volume It becomes something far worse — a personal affront. He is in fact, “ruffled beyond the bounds of tolerance” — three times For usually murder takes place at a decent distance from his presence, and now in succession violent death arrives (with the blinis and sour cream) at a dinner for gourmets attended by Wolfe himself, one body comes to the famous West 35th Street address by taxi, and a third murder takes place at a luncheon party where Nero and Archie have gone to partake of some blue grouse.

Altogether, these three situations are really intolerable, and Wolfe is forced to work his brain even faster, and Archie’s feet and fists even harder, than ever before.

Shapely blond, brunette, and titian cupbearers — in flowing robes — attend gourmets’ banquet cooked by Nero Wolfe’s own chef, in prelude to

Nero Wolfe has always considered murder slightly illegal, but in the three stories in this volume It becomes something far worse — a personal affront. He is in fact, “ruffled beyond the bounds of tolerance” — three times For usually murder takes place at a decent distance from his presence, and now in succession violent death arrives (with the blinis and sour cream) at a dinner for gourmets attended by Wolfe himself, one body comes to the famous West 35th Street address by taxi, and a third murder takes place at a luncheon party where Nero and Archie have gone to partake of some blue grouse.

Altogether, these three situations are really intolerable, and Wolfe is forced to work his brain even faster, and Archie’s feet and fists even harder, than ever before.

Nero Wolfe, embroiled with a passel of rodeo riders at a penthouse party, must determine who knotted the noose around a sunburned neck in the case of

The lady taxi-driver’s cab was parked in front of Nero Wolfe’s brownstone with a dead fare in the back seat. Someone chose .

If one of Nero Wolfe’s adventures had not already been called that might have been the title of this one. For sex, to which Archie Goodwin is less a stranger than Nero, rears its quite pretty head throughout this new full-length novel.

When the big businessman, who lived in New York’s fashionable East 60s but maintained an expensive love-nest in one of New York’s worst neighborhoods, is murdered, Nero is called in. In fact he is called in three times, the first two times by very — wrong people. Hence before he can start to unravel the murder, he has to solve the unique problem of ditching the wrong clients. Rut ditching can be fun, especially the way Archie does it, and this book will supply new fun and challenge to mystery connoisseurs.

It was the most distinguished group ever to gather in Nero Wolfe’s study: two of America’s foremost novelists, a world-famous playwright, and the heads of three great publishing houses.

Somebody, or maybe a league of somebodies, was accusing America’s most celebrated living writers of plagiarism — and getting away with it.

Nero had never encountered a case like this before — until the first body was found. And no other investigator could have cracked it, for the solution rested on determining who had written what manuscript, and this required an uncanny eye for literary style.

With Nero tracking down nuances while Archie encounters more than his usual quota of cool-looking girls and much cooler corpses, with both of them up to their raised eyebrows in the world of best sellers, smash hits, and the people columnists stay up to quote, Plot It Yourself is one of the freshest, liveliest, wittiest Rex Stout novel ever to challenge a reader.

“I want you to get a snake out of my house. Out of my family.” Thus spoke millionaire Otis Jarrell, offering Nero Wolfe ten thousand dollars in cash as a retainer. If it hadn’t just happened that Jarrell called on Wolfe during a time when relations between the great detective and his faithful assistant Archie Goodwin were less cordial than usual, Archie, victim of Wolfe’s spite, would not have found himself posing as secretary to Jarrell. But it did so happen, and as a result Archie became part of the Jarrell menage in the twenty-room duplex penthouse on Fifth Avenue. Here he met the “snake” — Jarrell’s handsome, charming daughter-in-law — as well as an assortment of other ladies and gentlemen, including a pretty young girl who danced well and wrote poetry, a lazy brother-in-law who cheerfully lost other people’s money on horses, and an almost too efficient stenographer named Nora. When Archie found Jarrell’s former secretary face down on the floor, with a .38-bullet hole in back of his head, he knew indeed that there was a snake somewhere. The story of how he and Nero Wolfe identified and caught that reptile is herewith set down in Archie’s own lively words.

NERO WOLFE, in this complete mystery novel, admired the knives displayed at the picnic until he found one in a corpse in the tent.

"Murder Is No Joke,” a workaday whodunit in a couturier’s salon, is a sample, of the master’s inimitable ability to relate the unrelated — put the round peg in the square hole, so to speak — and nail two killings on one murderer.

Leaving the church, Mrs. Bynoe seemed unaware of the cameras — and of danger.

The guests had seemed full of good will — until their host was poisoned. Then the truth began to merge, and even Wolfe was baffled.

The famous sleuth, involved in a wire-tapping investigation, in the murder of a deceptive client.

The great detective was baffled by a misfit piece in the puzzle of a millionaire’s murder.

Nero Wolfe agreed to cook the Ambassador’s trout — not to catch the diplomat’s killer.

When Nero Wolfe comes up against murder in the advertising business it isn’t surprising that the world’s largest detective (one-seventh of a ton of orchid-loving, beer-drinking genius) should find himself involved with one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. The agency is conducting the biggest prize contest ever, with prizes totaling one million dollars. Just one man knows the solutions in the million-dollar contest, and it’s his disappearance that introduces Nero and Archie to the world of four-color spreads and TV spectaculars. It introduces them also to a murderer who has the audacity to kill in Nero’s office and before Nero’s very eyes. After Rex Stout unfolds this novel, it is possible that the advertising world will never be the same — and this may be a public service.

The character of Beaky Durkin is not presented as being related in any way to Fred Durkin, a free-lance detective often hired by Wolfe to assist with cases.

Ptomaine poisoning killed the heiress. Now their client can cozy up to the money. But there are too many beautiful women in the mansion, and the slimy little parasite is confused when he should be scared. After Archie Goodwin drops the ball, Nero Wolfe is ready to break a few laws — like extortion.

Nero Wolfe can’t stand Leo Heller, a mathematician who uses operations research to solve mysteries and seems to be superseding Wolfe’s own reputation. But then Heller is murdered by one of his clients. He managed to leave a cryptic message that Wolfe eventually decodes, partly with the help of Lancelot Hogben .

In all his years of detecting, the unflappable Nero Wolfe has never encountered an investigation as damnably messy as this one. For what began as a clean case of larceny quickly sank into a quagmire of blackmail and broken promises, international scandal and cold-blooded murder.

Now Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin must bridge eras and oceans to find the link between a Wild West lynching and a respected British peer. Only then can they save Wolfe’s beautiful young client-and a hotly disputed stake of a cool million dollars.