Fiendish Flattery: A Review of Three Detective Pastiches

One of the many titles listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) that has always fascinated me is a short story docketed as entry #1361, Thomas Narcejac's "L'orchideé rouge" ("The Red Orchid," 1947), which is part of a series of pastiches he wrote during the late '40s and were collected a decade later in Usurpation d'identity (Identity Theft, 1959) – published as by Boileau-Narcejac. "The Red Orchid" is, as you might expect from the title, a pastiche of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

The story was originally translated into an English by Lawrence G. Blochman, published in the January, 1961, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but a new translation was commissioned for its inclusion in The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe (2020; edited by Josh Pachter). Rebecca Jones previously translated Narcejac's "Le mystère des ballons" ("The Mystery of the Red Balloons," 1947) for The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2018; edited by Pachter and Dale C. Andrews).

I'll come back to The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe some time later this year, but now, I want to concentrate on "The Red Orchid." A story that, peculiarly enough, gives Archie and Wolfe an impossible crime to annoy each other with. I believe the closest Stout ever came to the locked room genre was in Champagne for One (1958) and The Doorbell Rang (1965). But that combination is probably what attracted me to the story.

Isabella Tyndall is the niece of an inventor and savant, Sir Lawrence Tyndall, who has been experimenting in "absolute secrecy" with ultrasound and has developed "a simple machine that allows the user to stop engines from miles away," but, around the same time, the attacks began – a bullet grazed his head in the park and there was poison in his herbal tea. These attacks coincided with the disappearance from the house of a bottle of sherry, a ham and a Cheshire cheese. And worst of all, the press smells a story and the place is now "besieged by a crowd of journalists." Sir Lawrence can't work anymore and wants a private detective to clear up the case, but someone predicted Wolfe would refuse the case because he rarely goes out.

Nero Wolfe is "more sedentary than the Empire State Building" and has to be bribed and prepared, like an over-sized child, with a big fee, promise of food and a rare orchid. One of Sir Lawrence discoveries is a way to influence the development and coloring of flowers, which resulted in a red Coelogyne pandurata. Wolfe has tried for two years to breed one in red and refuses to believe it was done outside of his rooftop greenhouse.

Archie finally succeeds in getting Wolfe out of the house and on the road to an earning an easy fee, but when they arrive, the orchid has been stolen and the potato masher has disappeared. During the night, Archie discovers various members of the household, relatives and boarders, sneaking around the place and the next morning they have to break down the door of Sir Lawrence's bedroom – behind it they find his body. Sir Lawrence, clad in pajamas, lay collapsed against the wall with a disfigured face suggesting a nasty dose of poison. The way in which the locked room-trick worked was surprisingly inventive, even if it required a bit of luck, but something you would never associate with Stout. Same goes for the clueing, which was not always one of Stout's strong suits. But the way in which Archie and Wolfe tackled the case was typically Stout. Wolfe reasons the answer while laying in bed and tests Archie's patience when he uses him to test his deductions ("Listen, boss, I'm a patient guy, but..."). So, yeah, I enjoyed it.

Even with the out-of-place locked room poisoning, Narcejac's "The Red Orchid" is a good and well done pastiche of Archie, Wolfe and Stout. One that can even be enjoyed and appreciated by barbarians readers who don't like Archie, Wolfe and Stout.

Well, since "The Red Orchid" is a pastiche, I decided to use it as an excuse to expend this review with two more pastiches that have been lingering on my to-be-read pile for ages.

Edward D. Hoch's "The Wrightsville Carnival" has only appeared in the Sep/Oct, 2005, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and brings an elderly Ellery Queen to an altered, modernized Wrightsville. The corner store now occupied the entire block and the local ice cream parlor was turned into a Starbucks, while many of the old inhabitants had either passed away or moved elsewhere.

Police Chief Anselm Newby made his debut in Ellery Queen's "The Death of Don Juan," collected in Queen's Full (1965), who recognizes Ellery and tells him about the new editor of the Wrightsville Record, Polly Watkins. Ellery learns through Polly about the town's bad boy, Sam Nation, who's the reason why Janice Collins left her husband and Polly had used the newspaper to hound him out of the town, but there was a baby and Janice put it up for adoption – which infuriated Sam when he found out. And demanded to know where his son was. Sam has returned to Wrightsville working as a roustabout at the carnival, which comes to the town every year in August.

So he naturally becomes the primary suspect when Janice is found bludgeoned to death in her home, but Ellery effortlessly deduces the correct solution and escapes the clutches of an enraged murderer with "only minor bruising."

Hoch's "The Wrightsville Carnival" has something curious in common with Narcejac's "The Red Orchid." Character-wise, the detectives echo their originals incarnations, but the plots are a little uncharacteristic. Stout barely touched the locked room mystery, but "The Red Orchid" has Wolfe solving an honest to God locked room murder. "The Wrightsville Carnival" lacked any of the usual Ellery Queen tropes. No dying, or coded, message. No ingenious false-solution or multi-faceted clues. Not even a challenge to the reader. Just an alibi that has be destroyed. It's not exactly an alibi-trick that will fool many seasoned and suspicious-minded armchair detective, but I suppose the novelty of this story comes from seeing Ellery interact with the modern, ever-changing world. And the many references to the original stories.

So a more than decent pastiche with some sense of continuity, but not even close to being one of Hoch's best detective stories.

The last of these three pastiches is a short-short by Arthur Porges, "In Compartment 813," which was originally published in the June, 1966, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and has a double-layered solution with the final twist being the true identity of one of the characters – somewhat reminiscent of John Dickson Carr's "The Gentleman from Paris" (collected in The Third Bullet, 1954). You can probably guess by the title of the story who's playing detective, but we'll pretend it's not Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin.

The story opens with a young and an old man sharing Compartment 813, of the Cote d'Azur Express, when the old man, Monsieur Sernine, recognizes the younger man as the grandson of an old friend, Bertrand de Monsoreau. Sernine asks Bertrand to kill the time and tell him about the night he attended one of Baron Duclaux's dinner parties. During the party, Baron Duclaux showed his guests the Tiger's Heart, "a fabulous ruby," which he had just bought for two million francs. The ruby "was passed from hand to hand" and, all at once, "no one had the ruby." Nobody had left the room when the police arrived, but nobody had the ruby on them and it was not found anywhere in the room. The ruby had "utterly vanished."

Considering the short length of the story (barely 4 pages), I suspected the good old camouflage-trick with the ruby having been secreted in a glass of wine or hidden in the chandelier, but Porges came up with an unexpectedly different kind of solution. A good trick that would have been better had there been room to drop some clues and more hint. Yes, even in this short-short, Porges was able to foreshadow the solution. Porges was such a good and underrated mystery writer!

Not Quite Dead Enough (1944) by Rex Stout

Last month, I reviewed three war-themed novels by Christopher Bush, The Case of the Murdered Major (1941), The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1941) and The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942), which together form a home front trilogy that put Ludovic Travers back in uniform and solved three murder cases within the ranks of the military – praised by Curt Evans as "the most notable series of wartime detective fiction" published during the Second World War. This trilogy reminded me of two excellent, but often overlooked, novellas by Rex Stout with a similar war-theme and plots. So I decided to revisit them to see if they stood up to re-reading. They absolutely did.

Not Quite Dead Enough (1944) collects these two novellas, entitled "Not Quite Dead Enough" and "Booby Trap," which were originally published in The American Magazine.

These two novellas represent, in my opinion, the best the series has to offer, because not only are they very well-written, fast-paced and tightly plotted detective stories, but the societal upheaval of the war provided Stout with an opportunity to deviate from series' formula – allowing him to cast his series-characters in a different light. I think this brought out the best in both Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

An abridged version of "Not Quite Dead Enough" was first published in the December, 1942, issue of The American Magazine and begins with a meeting between Major Archie Goodwin and "the top mackaroo of United States Army Intelligence." They need Nero Wolfe "to work on a certain matter of great importance," but he flatly refused. So they want Goodwin to go and see him, because he's the only one who knows how to handle him. However, when Goodwin returns to that famous brownstone on West 35th Street, after being away for two months, he gets "the worst shock" of his live.

The dusty desks and stacks of unopened mail in the office made him fear that either Wolfe or Fritz had died, but when he entered the kitchen he became convinced that they were both dead. Pots and pans were dusty and had not been used for weeks, if not months. Goodwin only found a dish or oranges and cartons of prunes in the cupboard, while the refrigerator only held lettuce, tomatoes and a dish of applesauce, but when he went up to the roof-top greenhouse he finally finds one of the residents of the brownstone, Theodore Horstmann – an orchid-nurse who looks after Wolfe's prize collection. Goodwin learns from Horstmann that Wolfe and Fritz placed themselves on a rigorous training schedule, because they intend to enlist and fight in Europe. Just like Wolfe did in the First World War ("I didn't kill enough [Germans] in 1918").

So getting Wolfe back into the game, this time with the U.S. army as a client, is easier said than done. Luckily, Goodwin bumped into a familiar face on his way back to the brownstone.

Lily Rowan has a friend, Anne Amory, who's desperately needs sound advice. She had found out something about somebody and wanted to know what to do about it, but she refused to give any details. Amory lives in an apartment building with a "goofy assortment of specimens" and a roof-top pigeon coop, which plays a part in the murder committed there shortly after Goodwin gets involved. And he uses this murder in an ingenious, if risky, way to ensnare Wolfe.

However, this novella is not just about Goodwin luring Wolfe back into the game to start working for the army intelligence, but the plot surrounding the murder is arguably one of Stout's best. Stout is not a mystery writer known for his ingeniously constructed, maze-like plots that brim with clues. Dialogue and characters were his forte, but the plot here is as clever and devious as the best short stories or novellas by such American mystery writers as Ellery Queen and Edward D. Hoch with a cast-iron alibi and a shrewd piece of misdirection – which I have only seen once before in an impossible crime story. Combine this cunning plot with the wartime backdrop and the unusual circumstances of the series-characters, you have one of the richest and most rewarding stories in the entire Wolfe corpus. I can't recommend this story enough.

The second and last novella in this collection, "Booby Trap," made its first appearance in the August, 1944, issue of The American Magazine and is a direct sequel of "Not Quite Dead Enough."

 

Armed Services Edition

In the previous story, it was mentioned that the army wanted Wolfe to work on a matter of great importance and here it is revealed that the matter concerns the secrets entrusted to army of various industrial processes – a trust which is, according to an anonymous whistle-blower, "criminally abused." Some of these industrial secrets, without patent or copyright protection, are being betrayed to those "who intend to engage in post-war competition of industries involved." A dirty, underhanded business that could rob tens of millions of dollars from their rightful owners.

The anonymous letter writer also hinted that there might be more behind the accidental fall of Captain Albert Cross, of Military Intelligence, from the twelfth floor of the Boscombe Hotel in New York. A second death occurs shortly after the Wolfe meets with the military brass and this death is most definitely a murder: Colonel Ryder is blown to pieces in his office by "a new kind of grenade." Not only new in construction, but in its content. It is, however, never explained why these grenades were painted pink. I suppose this has something to do with them being test samples or something. Anyway...

Plot-wise, "Booby Trap" is not as intricately plotted or involved as "Not Quite Dead Enough," but the tense and brutal ending makes more than up for that.

I have seen Wolfe disposing of murderers before (e.g. Black Orchids, 1942) and would later do so again (e.g. In the Best Families, 1950), but never as brutal or remorseless as here. Wolfe psychically breaks the cowardly murderer and then forces this person to commit suicide with a pink grenade, which makes him comparable to H.C. Bailey's Reggie Fortune and Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley – who both played avenging angels in their respective series. The disposal of the murderer is justified here by the fact that the truth, if it came to light, would seriously harm the war effort. I guess all is fair in love and war.

Not Quite Dead Enough gathered two excellent novellas with one of them being a gemstone of the Wolfe corpus and the other ending the collection on a dark, but unforgettable, note.

I noted at the beginning of this post that these novellas are often overlooked, or even ignored, when it comes to lists of World War II mysteries. A list traditionally dominated by British mystery writers. I suppose this has to do with American detective novels from this period having the war play out in the distant background or have their plots diluted by spy material. However, this is not the case with these two closely-linked novellas and can stand with the best British wartime mysteries, which includes Carter Dickson's Nine-and Death Makes Ten (1940), Christianna Brand's Green for Danger (1944) and Christopher Bush's wartime trilogy. Unreservedly recommended!

The Book Case

"But in any case, after another crime, we shall know infinitely more. Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions."

- Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, 1936) 

Thus far, 2016 has been a reasonably solid year for reading and discovering detective fiction. There were a handful of mystery novels that were uneven in quality, sparsely clued or stumbled in the final chapter, but none of them deserves to be qualified as a complete train wreck – unlike my worst read from last year.

So I was glad that my return to the works of Rex Stout not only continued this positive trend, but also uncovered one of the best stories from the Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin series.

The UK edition of Plot It Yourself

As I've stated in the past, the Nero Wolfe corpus is one of the rare exceptions in which I prefer characters to plot and there's a good excuse to justify such heresy. Stout had an uncanny knack for writing dialogue that gave his cast of regular characters a breath of life and endowed them with a mind of their own, but even more importantly, they're characters you would love to sit down with in real-life – in spite of their personal flaws. Who would not love to share a dinner table with Wolfe or have a front row seat for one of the many head-on collisions between him and the cigar-mangling Inspector Cramer? Or have a verbal exchange with the witty, sharp-tongued Archie or simply a guided tour of the brownstone with its rooftop greenhouse and the kitchen where their live-in chef, Fritz, prepares five-star meals. 

Nevertheless, the fact that Stout's talent manifested itself mainly in writing great lines for characters, who are both larger-than-life and yet very human, does not mean he was hopelessly lost when entering the plotting department. Some of my favorite entries in this series came with the added bonus of a soundly constructed plot: Too Many Cooks (1938), Some Buried Caesar (1939), Not Quite Dead Enough (1944) and And Be a Villain (1948). You can now expand that list with the wonderful Plot It Yourself (1959).

First of all, it should be pointed out that Rex Stout served as president of both the Authors Guild and the Mystery Writers of America, which is probably where he found the ideas and inspiration for Plot It Yourself – which has a clever and fairly original plot. Stout even found a new interpretation for the term "copycat killer," but the most ingenious part of the plot is the plagiarism racket that swindled a small group of authors and publishers out of large chunk of pocket money.

The case begins when a small contingent of people visits the office of Wolfe and Goodwin: Philip Harvey (author), Mortimer Oshin (playwright), Amy Wynn (author), Thomas Dexter (publisher), Reuben Imhoff (publisher) and Gerald Knapp (publisher). They form a Joint Committee on Plagiarism, selected from the ranks of the Book Publishers of America (BPA) and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists (NAAD), who are tasked with looking into a series of accusation of plagiarism that begin to follow a suspicious pattern – there "have been five major charges of plagiarism" so far. All of them seem to follow a similar script.

A book is ascending the bestseller list or a play begins to garner success when a letter arrives, in which the writer claims the plot, characters or even the dialogue were cribbed from a submitted, but unpublished, manuscript – a manuscript nobody remembers ever having seen or read. However, the manuscripts are found in drawers of the authors and archives of the publishers, which forced them to settle for tens of thousands of dollars.

Obviously, they were fake and planted on the victims, but there's a gaping ravine between a feeling of certainty and proof that will stand up in court. So the committee decided to hire the services of the best detectives money could get them and it's problem right up Wolfe’s alley.

Wolfe really hates to do any actual work (i.e. physical action), but he has to rent his remarkable brain in order to indulge in his expensive pastimes: growing orchids and lavish meals, which require the services of a resident orchid nurse and a live-in chef. Not as costly are his well-stocked bookshelves. Wolfe is an avid reader and Archie guesses he reads "two hundred or so books" a year. So it's not entirely surprising to find Wolfe doing some actual detective work in the initial stages of the investigation, instead of parking his one-seventh of a ton in his "oversized made-to-order chair" and synthesize the information brought to him by Archie, which he simply does by reading the fraudulent manuscripts. Hey, it was still work for Wolfe!

There were four different claimants, Alice Porter, Simon Jacobs, Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert, but Wolfe astutely deduces all of their manuscripts that their claims were based on were written by one and the same person – based on "the internal evidence" of diction, syntax and paragraphing. As Wolfe states, "a clever man might successfully disguise every element of his style," but there’s one exception, namely paragraphing, which comes from "the depths of personality."

However, the discovery of a common link between the claimants requires an extensive, all-encompassing and costly "kind of investigation," which falls outside of Wolfe's expertise. Regardless, he offers his clients a short-cut solution for their problem by offering one of the claimants a chunk of money and exemption from legal repercussions in exchange for a name. The name of the person who wrote those manuscript and basically the brains behind the whole scheme, but this person is well-aware of what is being planned and begins to remove all of the loose ends.

Archie is send around to the home of one of the claimants, Simon Jacobs, but is greeted ("not you") by Sgt. Purley Stebbins of Homicide West. Jacobs' body was found that afternoon behind a bush in Van Cortlandt Park, "dragged across the grass from the edge," which means he probably taken there from a car and the cause of death was a stab wound in chest – he would not be the last person to go out of this world with a knife buried in his chest. The body's pile-up in the final half of the book and Wolfe realizes he gave away too much information to the swindler-turned-murderer. It makes him roar "in a language that was probably the one he had used as a boy in Montenegro," but Wolfe redeems himself by trapping a strong-minded, very determined witness in giving away the identity of the murderer in order to wrap up the case to the satisfactory of his clients. And to earn his fee.

My favorite part of Plot It Yourself is the first half, which deals with the fraudulent accusations of plagiarism, because it's cleverly done and challenges Sherlock Holmes' assertion that "it has all been done before" and "there's nothing new under sun." But how it turned into a murder case and the identity of the murderer was also very nicely done. Considering the book was published in the final months of 1959, it's almost as if the book represented that final glance over the shoulder before the door closed on that Golden period in the genre's history.

So, all in all, Plot It Yourself has all the familiar faces and elements that made readers return to that notorious brownstone, on West 35th Street, for many decades and several generations, but the excellent and original plot also makes the book one of those brightly glowing embers in the hearth were once the mighty fire of the Golden Age roared.

Simply put: I very much enjoyed Plot It Yourself.

The Unpleasantness at the Gambit Club

"A player surprised is half beaten."

- Proverb.

In previous postings dealing with that duet of gumshoes, the armchair bound Nero Wolfe and the quick-witted Archie Goodwin, I explained that my enjoyment of this series does not come from ingeniously contrived plots, which they seldom sport, but from the characters and spending a few hours in their company. However, it's always a treat, served as one of Fritz's opulent banquets, when Rex Stout put some thought and effort into his intrigues – making Gambit (1962) a noteworthy entry in the late-period corpus.

When Gambit opens, we find Nero Wolfe tearing the pages from a copy of a 3rd edition of Webster's dictionary, deeming it as "intolerably offensive," as Archie Goodwin ushers a prospective client into the office. Sally Blount has $22.000 in cash on her and wants Wolfe to prove her father innocent of the murder of Paul Jerin, a chess maven who was poisoned at the Gambit Club under peculiar circumstances. Paul Jerin was taking on twelve opponents, at once, under "blindfold" conditions, while alone in a room, separated from the other players, with only messengers moving between them to whisper the moves.

The twelve-man blindfold match was Matthew Blount's idea, who wanted to publicly humiliate Jerin and concocted a scheme, however, when Jerin is taking ill mid-match and dies in the hospital from arsenic poison – Blount is arrested as his murderer. After all, it was Blount who was kind enough to supply Jerin with his customary cup of hot chocolate, which appears to have been the container for the poison, but Sally refuses to believe that her father's plans had included murder and has very little faith in his attorney, Dan Kalmus, who's apparently in love with her mother. Wolfe and Goodwin have their work cut out for them!

I have to admit that the who-and howdunit angles weren't particular difficult to solve and most of their work consisted of prying loose a piece of information from Blount and Kalmus, which merely confirms a suspicion Wolfe and his readers have been harboring all along, but it's hard not to notice the effort Stout put into constructing this plot. I appreciate that, especially from this writer, and that's not something that can be said of all his books from this period. Even at gun point, I would be unable to supply even a synopsis of The Final Deduction (1961) or Please, Pass the Guilt (1973), and I don't think I have read them that long before I began blogging.

But how Wolfe wraps up this case does not only take a slice of the cake, but the whole thing and you know he has the appetite for it! I also wanted to glare daggers at the writing team who worked on the splendid A&E TV-series for not considering this book! Wolfe's gambit tears a page (another sacrilege against the printed word between the covers of this novel) from the playbook he used in The Doorbell Rang (1965) with the adaptation being even better and the last twenty-or-so minutes, in which Wolfe springs his trap, with one favorite scene following another favorite scene, easily makes it one of my all time favorite episodes from any detective series.

Wolfe mentioned in this last portion of the story that books could be written on the varieties of conduct of men in a pickle. If he even wants  to read such a book, I can recommend him Gambit by Rex Stout. 

I also reviewed: 

Where There's a Will (1940)

Too Many Women (1947)

And Four to Go (1958)

Gambit (1962)

Last Rides

"I would not tell them too much," said Holmes. "Women are never to be entirely trusted,--not the best of them."

- Sherlock Holmes (The Sign of Four, 1890)

Normally, when opening a Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin novel or novelette, I am greeted by the familiar clatter of a verbal sparring match emerging from the office and imaginary flavors of Fritz's latest culinary masterpiece drifting from the kitchen that makes that famous brownstone, on West 35th Street, one of those fictitious places I would like to find a Never-Ending Story-like entrance to. But this time I was met on the doorstep by a chill that ran through the house to answer the door.

Rex Stout's Too Many Women (1947) begins with a confession from Archie that he had more of Wolfe than was good for either of them and reopens a line of communication with a client who was brushed aside by the lack of subtlety from the brains of their snooping outfit. Mr. Jasper Pine is the president of Naylor-Kerr, Inc. (an engineering supply company) and wants Wolfe, under an assumed name, to take a job in the stock department to look if there's any validity in the rumor that one of his employees, Waldo Moore, was accidentally or intentionally run down with a car.

It's out of the question that Wolfe will expose himself to any fieldwork, but Archie is more than up for the job and finds a newfound appreciation for his work as he fishes in the secretary pool of Naylor-Kerr for information and clues. I think watching Archie interact with the women of the work floor, even trading blows with the estranged husband of one of them in the street in front of the brownstone, made up for the story's lack of pace.

The first quarter of the book is very, very slow moving and Archie even admits this himself. Waldo Moore's death is officially written-off as an unsolved and unintentionally hit-and-run and with a trail that has gone cold months before they were pulled into the case lowered their changes considerably of pulling a quick one – especially if you have to sift through offices jam packed with potential suspects and witnesses. This took the urgency completely out of the book and it never made any serious attempts at a comeback.

I thought the plot was finally brought into motion after the murderer ran over Kerr Naylor, son of one of the company's founders and named after the other, but the case jams again after Wolfe's best operatives come up empty handed and the only thing the police was able to establish is that their lab guys confirmed the suspicion of murder. Moore and Naylor were either stunned or killed before being moved to the scene of the crime and ran over with a car (hence the botched attempt at a clever and witty pun in the post title). Wolfe finally deigns it worthy to take action, after having done next to nothing for the entire book, and leads everyone to a very unsatisfactory conclusion.

However, I was not disappointed at all. I knew before tackling the book that it was not going to be one of his greatest achievements and as I have said many times before, this is one of the few detective series I read for their characters rather than their plots. Good plots are an extra with Rex Stout, but not a necessity and this book had more than enough to offer as far as the characters are concerned. It was also nice to see Archie as the main protagonist and the only complaint I have is that Stout didn't go all the way and let him solve this case, if only just for once.

Anyway, plot-wise, Too Many Women is far below average with its lack of clues and fair play, but I very much doubt that will deter any dedicated Rex Stout fan from enjoying it.

I also reviewed:

Where There's a Will (1940)

And Four to Go (1958)

And tried answering that age-old question: why do Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin never age in the stories.

Death Throws a Party

"No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully."

– Nero Wolfe.

The trees have shed their leaves, which blanket our lawns and sidewalks, as the days have become notably shorter, the nights a lot colder and we pour ourselves a warm beverage – while we wait for the first snowflake to drop or a pond to freeze over. Decorated trees adorn our living rooms and dens. Jolly-looking, white-bearded, red-clad men in shiny boots took up their residence in the store windows and radio DJ's receive letters from listeners who threaten to burn the station to the ground if they play Wham's Last Christmas one more time. Ah, yes, Christmas must be upon us!

Over the past few years, I made it a holiday tradition to read two or three Christmas themed mysteries or detective stories with an evocative winter setting. Last year, it was the turn of Pierre Véry's The Murder of Father Christmas (1934) and Anthony Abbot's The Creeps (1939), but for this yuletide I had only one book lined up, Rex Stout's And Four to Go (1958), which can be put down to the fact that stories from the first category are becoming a bit scarce. I have less than a handful of them to go and I will spread them out over the years ahead of us, but, for the moment, it's time to head back to that familiar and comfy brownstone of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin – and is there a better spot in "Cloud Cuckoo Land" to spend Christmas than at their place?

Snuffing up the mouth-watering aromas wafting from Fritz's kitchen, taking a stroll through the forest of orchids on the greenhouse roof and listening to the bickering, between Wolfe and Goodwin, emanating from the office as they plot petty larceny and throw marriage licenses around. Yup, there's only one place like that on the printed page!

Christmas Party (also published as The Christmas Party Murder)

The detective business has been rather slow at that famous brownstone, on West 35th Street, and without a profitable client or pressing matters to tend to, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin gave up on resisting their juvenile tendencies – which means that they no longer put in effort not to annoy one another too much. An agitated Archie is the first one to clamber out of the trenches of this childish workplace skirmish, after finding out that he's been scheduled to drive his oversized employer to Mr. Lewis Hewitt, who'll be entertaining a well-regarded hybridizer from England, on the same evening he's expected at a Christmas party, and charges straight ahead to deliver a cataclysmic blow to Wolfe's disposition: slapping a marriage license for himself and a woman named Margot Dickey on his desk.

Wolfe's response is a predictable one, "you are deranged," but Archie claims this battle and takes his fiancée to the party, however, it comes to an abrupt halt when the host, Kurt Bottweill, takes a swig from a poisoned goblet of Pernod – and the fatter-than-usual Santa Claus, who was tending the bar, vanished like smoke through a chimney. Plot-wise, this is a not ingenious or complexly plotted detective story, but a typical, average fare that you come to expect from Rex Stout. Luckily, we don't read his stories for their plots, but to cross the threshold of that comfy brownstone and spend a few hours in the company of a bunch of character who, at times, make you feel like you're visiting old friends and they wrapped themselves up in enough trouble to keep the story moving along nicely.

Easter Parade (also published as The Easter Parade Murder)

Mr. Millard Bynoe, an affluent man with a deep-rooted love for flowers, succeeded where Wolfe has been failing for years: cultivating a flamingo-pink Vanda, "both petals and sepals true pink, with no tints, spots, or edgings," but he simply refuses to display the orchid until the next International Flower Show – which is in this story marked down on the calendar for the following year. Wolfe finds this stalling unacceptable, but a rumor has it that his wife persuaded him to let her wear a spray of it during the church service on Easter Day, which inspires the stout detective with arguably the worst scheme of his career! He begs Archie to act as a go-between in attracting and hiring a thief to pluck the rare orchid from the innocent woman's bosom, but the plan goes awry when Mrs. Bynoe collapses in the street and Archie was seen running after the orchid snatcher.

Wolfe and Goodwin find themselves, once again, in a world of trouble and this time they have more on their plate than just a baffling and daring murder – literarily committed in the public eye. The gumshoes also have to obliterate any trail of the petty larceny of a flower that might lead to their doorstep. A great story, character-wise, but also depressing as hell that Stout wasn't able to do more with the plot – which could've been turned into a full-fledge impossible crime story with just a little bit more imagination.

Fourth of July Picnic (also published as The Labor Union Murder)

And while we're on the subject of impossible crimes, this story secured a spot in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1991) as a falsely advertised locked tent mystery. Nero Wolfe has agreed to venture outdoors to give a speech at a picnic of the United Restaurant Workers of America, under the condition that they stop pestering his personal, live-in gourmet chef, Fritz Brenner, to join their union, but a body turns up with a knife handle protruding from his back – and the locked and watched environment of the tent only functioned as a pool to keep the splash of dodgy characters from spreading all over the place (i.e. create a closed-circle of suspects situation). This was the least interesting and exciting story of this collection with its only really interesting point being Archie's short biography of himself.

Murder is No Joke

In spite of what the title, in combination with the theme of this collection, might suggest, this is, sadly, not a story with a plot that revolves around an April Fools joke with a killer of a punch line – which would've been great if only for the interaction between Wolfe and Goodwin on that day! But no, this is the only novella in the collection without a holiday theme, however, the plot of this story finally shows a shimmering of imagination. Flora Gallant asks Wolfe for help in dealing with a woman who has a negative influence on her brother, but the shrew is murdered in mid-conversation with Wolfe and Archie on the phone! The clueing was still below par, but the central idea was not devoid of merit and once again makes you wish Stout had been more adept were his plotting skills were concerned.

All in all, a fairly average outing for these two gumshoes, which derives it interest mainly from the situations they find themselves in rather than from their plots, but that's to be expected and not something I will hold against Rex Stout. These are stories about two detectives rather than detective stories and fans will no doubt delight in the way these two spend their holidays. Recommend... if you are a fan. 


Les Blatt also reviewed this book, as an audio podcast, last Monday over at Classic Mysteries. 

And on an unrelated note: I now own a copy of Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes and have already placed several orders based on descriptions in this book. Two very obscure, somewhat scarce and pricey titles will arrive here within the next 4-5 weeks, but a third, less obscure, book was delivered today and will be up next on this blog. So you know what to expect from this place in the new year: more impossible crime! 

Don't Look a Gift Corpse in the Mouth

"You give me nothing during your life, but you promise to provide for me at your death. If you are not a fool, you know what I wish for!"

- Marcus Valerius Martial

This is the first entry that is entirely dedicated to one of Rex Stout's novels, but ever since the inauguration of this blog I have occasionally peppered reviews with references to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin – who are the protagonists of one of only two detective series in which I favor the characters over the plot. It's not that Rex Stout didn't know how to plot, it's just that his forte was dialogue and he mastered this aspect of his writing so well that it brought forth a set of characters as enduring and memorable as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Admittedly, this turned the series over time into stories about two detectives rather than actual detective stories.

Where There's a Will (1940) is often maligned as the worst volume in the Wolfe corpus, but plot-wise it's just as bad as some of the later entries – except for the fact that this story followed in the wake of a slew of very good stories. Too Many Cooks (1938) and Some Buried Caesar (1938) are admitted masterpieces and Over My Dead Body (1940) deserves its fair share of praise as well. The status of the book wasn't exactly elevated, either, with such follow-ups as Black Orchids (1942) and Note Quite Dead Enough (1944; a personal favorite of mine). This is merely a mediocre fare from a vintage period and therefore egged as the worst course in the corpus, but I have a slight problem with that general accepted consensus as this story, at least, showed fragments of creativity – which is not something that can be said in favor of the forgettable The Father Hunt (1968) or the unimaginative Please, Pass the Guilt (1973).

The millionaire Noel Hawthorne, who was killed during a tragic hunting accident, is the author of one of the most unconventional wills ever drawn up by an attorney, in which he bequeathed his three sisters, named April, May and June, respectively a peach, an apple and a pear and his widow a measly five hundred thousand grand – while the residue of his estate, estimated at a whopping seven million dollars, is bestowed upon his mistress. Needless to say, the family is not amused and they want to engage the services of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin to convince this woman to relinquish a considerable part of her inheritance back to the Hawthorne family.

The hefty, chair-bound gumshoe thoroughly despises quarrels over a dead man's earthly possessions, but is strapped for cash and has to accept the job to rejuvenate the bank account. But he's soon back on familiar turf, when Inspector Cramer and DA Skinner burst into his office with the announcement that the routine inquiry into Noel Hawthorne's accidental demise yielded new evidence and has now officially turned into a homicide investigation.

I know this summary synopsis will probably solicit a response along the lines of "how could anyone mess up such an intriguing premise," but if you're familiar with Rex Stout's weaknesses as a plotter you know that sparse, uninspired clueing and a more or less random solution ruined better detective stories than this one – and evinces that these tales are best read without your thinking cap on. I constructed a clever, but simplistic, solution around the basic facts that half of Hawthorne's face was blown away by a shotgun blast – which bore a striking resemblance to an archery accident in which a rogue arrow horribly mutilated his wife's face.

But, as I said at the beginning of this review, I don't read these books in the hope of finding an ingeniously, multi-layered constructed plot or a rug-puller of a surprise solution. If I want plot complexity, I'll pick up a novel by John Dickson Carr or Ellery Queen. No, I read these books, and many with me, because I feel at home in that comfy brownstone on West 35th Street – where you can't help but smirk at the bickering emanating from the office and goggle at the kingly meals that are prepared and served by their live-in gourmet-chef. We read them because we enjoy the company of the curmudgeonly, but often misunderstood, Nero Wolfe, the wisecracking Archie Goodwin (whose narrative voice makes up for nearly every flaw you can uncover in the plots), their gourmet-chef and head of the household, Fritz Brenner, the consistently fuming Inspector Cramer, the regular troupe of private ops, Saul Penzer, Orrie Cather and Fred Durkin, who are hired as legmen to assist Archie in his investigations, the lovely Lily Rowan and all the other regulars who inhabit this vibrant universe brought to life by Stout's sparkling dialogue.

I'm aware this constitutes as a roughshod, unprovoked onrush on the gag reflexes of some of you, but I have to say that these stories are best described as cozies with an attitude, and I, for one, can't get enough of them. 

Overall, this is a nice compilation of Stout's strength and weaknesses, in which the familiar scenes of Archie mercilessly needling Wolfe with his sarcastic, teasing remarks are more interesting and fun than the actual plot itself – but devoted fans won't mind for the reasons stated above. If you're new to the series, however, skip this one until you've familiarized yourself with the characters in such books as Too Many Cooks (1938), Some Buried Caesar (1938), Not Quite Dead Enough (1944), And Be a Villain (1948), The Golden Spiders (1953) and Champagne for One (1958).

Why Nero Wolfe Never Ages

"I don't know how a brain that is never used passes the time."

- Nero Wolfe (The Final Deduction, 1961)

Maury Chaykin as the immortal Nero Wolfe

The attentive readers of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin stories are likely to be familiar with the apparent immortality of the characters, whose aging processes seems to be have been in suspended animation during the period between their first recorded appearance in Fer-de-Lace (1934) until their final bow in A Family Affair (1975). This is most notable in A Right to Die (1964), in which a character from Too Many Cooks (1938) reappears and has morphed from a young adult into a middle aged man with a grown son. There's also the advent of technology in the later books – so time does, in fact, move on outside of the brownstone, but does seems to have had a very weak grip, if any, on its inhabitants.

What's the secret of their perpetual robustness and everlasting good looks? To be honest, I don't have a clue, however, I do have one or two theories to offer on this matter – and they make so much sense that I want to consider them as part of the corpus. But hey, I am open to rivaling theories. ;)

Theory #1: if you're a habitual visitant of the brownstone on West 35th Street, then you probably have noticed that not everyone lived to tell about it. There's an impressive list of people who drew their last breath in (and around) Wolfe's abode, which could mean that the fundaments of the house rests on an ancient, sacrificial altar and needs a blood offer every now and then to appease some archaic God of Death – who resides on the greenhouse roof in the human guise of Wolfe's orchid nurse, Theodore.

Theory #2: taking Nero Wolfe's personality into consideration, it's also possible that he simply repudiates the idea that time is irretrievable and who couldn't envisage him looking up from a book to glare at a ticking clock and muttering, "pfui!" If the passage of time wants to encroach on Nero Wolfe's time it has to check with Archie Goodwin first to make an appointment – just like everyone else.

Theory #3: Wolfe's greenhouse roof is stuffed with plants and flowers imported from that mythical place high-up in Tibetan mountain region, Shangri-La, emanating fragrances that considerably slows down bodily decay and mental rot of the residents of that famous brownstone.

Yes, the next book in the queue just so happens to be an entry from the Wolfe and Goodwin series, which prompted me to post this. Now, if only I had a quiet moment to work my way through the first couple of chapters. Hm. I'm afraid I just wasted such a moment on this nonsense. Oh, well.