Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

Three Witnesses (Nero Wolfe #26) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission


Title: Three Witnesses
Series: Nero Wolfe #26
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 176
Words: 66K





Knowing this was going to be a collection of short stories, I deliberately set out to enjoy myself and to focus on the positives instead of whining about what wasn’t there. And it worked. I enjoyed the daylights of these stories.

Having three shorter stories really fit my mood this time around. I enjoyed the brisk pace of it all. Instead of meandering along while Archie casually pinches the police’s snozz, he does a quick snatch and grab and dashes off again to slap some hysterical broad.

Wolfe doesn’t get as much time to complain either. It’s like getting concentrated Wolfe in pill form.

I wouldn’t click the synopsis open if I were you. It’s close to 2000 words long.

★★★★☆


From Wikipedia:


The Next Witness

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are in court, having been subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution in a murder trial. Leonard Ashe has been accused of trying to hire Bagby Answers, Inc., a telephone answering service, to eavesdrop on his wife's calls, and of killing employee Marie Willis when she refused to cooperate. The prosecutor intends to call Wolfe and Archie to testify that Wolfe turned down Ashe's attempt to hire them to spy on his wife, actress Robina Keane.

Clyde Bagby, owner of the business, testifies that Marie had complained to him about Ashe's request and was planning to tell Robina. Bagby tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Marie; later that same night, he learned from the police that she had been strangled to death at her switchboard. Wolfe abruptly exits the courtroom, followed by Archie, who reminds him that they are under subpoena and will almost certainly be charged with contempt of court for leaving. Wolfe, however, is convinced of Ashe's innocence and wants to have no part in convicting him.

They visit the premises of Bagby Answers, finding the business to be located in an apartment with a bedroom for each operator due to employment regulations. Wolfe makes himself as obnoxious as possible in order to see how much incivility the employees will tolerate, and the detectives take notice of an original Van Gogh painting on a wall and a stack of racing forms on a table while questioning operators Bella Velardi and Alice Hart. From them, Wolfe and Archie learn that Helen Weltz, another operator, is spending the afternoon at a cottage in Westchester that she has rented for the summer.

Arriving at the cottage, they find a new Jaguar parked in front. Helen is accompanied by Guy Unger, an acquaintance of several of Bagby's employees. Unger describes himself as a broker, but gives only a vague description of the business he transacts. Helen privately admits to Archie that she wants to get out of an uncomfortable situation, but is too frightened of Unger to give details. Archie persuades her to call Wolfe's office that evening, then learns from Wolfe that Unger tried to pay him to drop the investigation into Marie's murder.

Wolfe and Archie return to the city, but cannot go to the brownstone because a warrant has been issued for their arrest. They take shelter at Saul Panzer's apartment for the night, and Wolfe meets with Robina to persuade her to visit Ashe and take him with her. She agrees, promising not to tell Ashe's attorney. Archie gets a call from Helen, relayed to him by Fritz Brenner, and picks her up from Grand Central Station in order to interview her out of Unger's presence. Wolfe and Robina meet with Ashe shortly before the trial resumes the following morning.

Once called to the witness stand, Wolfe tricks the prosecutor into asking a question that both allows him to explain his theory of the crime and forces the judge to dismiss the contempt charge. Based on the operators' behavior during his visit and the evidence of their lavish spending, he concluded that Bagby and Unger were using the answering service to blackmail clients by having the employees listen in on calls and gather compromising information. Helen had confirmed these facts to Archie the previous night. However, the plan would only succeed if every operator took part; anyone who showed hesitation could potentially expose the scheme. When Marie acted against Bagby's orders and turned down Ashe's request to spy on his wife, one of her co-workers strangled her to keep her quiet. Wolfe suspected Bagby of committing the murder and luring Ashe to the office so that he would be found with the body and arrested.

Bagby, Unger, Helen, Bella, and Alice are detained for questioning, Ashe is acquitted, and Bagby is ultimately convicted of Marie's murder without the need of any further testimony from Wolfe. Archie reflects that Wolfe's exit from the courtroom may have been motivated less by a desire to see justice done than by the discomfort of having to sit next to a woman wearing too much perfume.


When A Man Murders

Sidney Karnow has returned from the dead. In 1951 he enlisted in the Army and was sent to Korea as a soldier in the infantry. Injured in battle, he was left for dead by retreating American forces, but in fact was only stunned. Karnow was taken prisoner by the enemy, but after a couple of years he escaped to Manchuria and lived there in a village until the truce. Then he made his way to South Korea and was sent home by the Army.

Unusual enough by itself, but Karnow was also a millionaire. He had inherited money from his parents but felt that he should serve in the military. Before enlisting, he had met and married Caroline, who now calls on Wolfe along with her new husband, Paul Aubry. Caroline and Paul are in a terrible spot: Karnow's return from the dead apparently voids their marriage, and they have spent a large portion of Caroline's inheritance to set Paul up in business as a car dealer. They have decided to offer what is left of the inheritance, plus the dealership, to Karnow in return for his consent to a divorce.

Paul has gone to Karnow's hotel room to put the proposition to him, but got cold feet before knocking on the door. He discusses the situation once again with Caroline, and they decide to come to Wolfe for help. Wolfe explains that he is a detective, not a lawyer, but Aubry replies that "We want you to detect a way of getting Karnow to accept our proposition."

Ignoring Aubry's diction, Wolfe sends Archie, along with Aubry and Caroline, to the Hotel Churchill to put the proposition to Karnow. Archie leaves the clients in the bar and goes upstairs to Karnow's room, gets no answer to his knock, tries the doorknob and finds it unlocked. When he enters, he finds Karnow, shot dead, and a gun lying a few feet away. Archie leaves the room as he found it, collects the clients and returns to the brownstone, where Purley Stebbins soon shows up. Archie, Paul and Caroline were seen at the hotel where Karnow's body was just found.

Stebbins takes Paul and Caroline for questioning (although Wolfe and Archie insist that he do so from the sidewalk: Wolfe will not tolerate a client, even a potential client, being taken into custody inside his house). Archie follows shortly thereafter, and as he is waiting to meet with the DA, he encounters Caroline's in-laws: Karnow's Aunt Margaret, cousins Anne and Richard, and Anne's husband Norman Horne. With them is Jim Beebe, Sidney's lawyer and executor. Archie learns nothing from them except that Anne Horne has a facetious sense of humor.

Archie has no information for ADA Mandelbaum and Inspector Cramer, and shortly after he returns home Caroline rings the doorbell. She brings the news that the police have arrested Paul for Karnow's murder, and she wants to hire Wolfe to clear him. Wolfe accepts, but needs to knows more about Karnow's relatives. They had received bequests in Karnow's will, stood to lose those bequests when he turned up alive, and therefore had motive. Caroline knows little about them except that they had always depended on Karnow's support, and have not managed their inheritances prudently. Wolfe sends Archie to bring them to the office.

Archie tries Beebe first but can't corral him, and has no better luck with Karnow's Aunt Margaret and his cousin Richard. When he calls on cousin Anne, he gets more of her persiflage. Trying to draw her out, he lets her read his palm – and then her husband Norman returns to their apartment. Anne slows Archie down just enough that Norman, unencumbered, can clip Archie in the jaw. Then Archie decks Norman, and leaves.

Finally Wolfe hears from Saul Panzer, who has been investigating a different side of the problem. Wolfe has Archie phone Inspector Cramer, and gives him the choice of bringing all involved to Wolfe's office, or declining to cooperate and letting Wolfe work through the DA's office. Cramer chooses the former option. In the traditional meeting with the suspects in Wolfe's office, Wolfe makes public what Saul has turned up: an unwitting but crucial witness to the motive for Karnow's murder.


Die Like A Dog

It's a rainy day in Manhattan, and Richard Meegan has grabbed the wrong raincoat after getting the brushoff from Nero Wolfe. Meegan came to the brownstone to hire Wolfe, apparently on the sort of marital matter that Wolfe won't touch. Now Archie Goodwin wants to get his raincoat back: it's newer than the one Meegan left behind.

As Archie approaches Meegan's small apartment house on Arbor Street[1] in the Village, he sees police near the front, including Sgt. Purley Stebbins. Opting for discretion, Archie starts back home when he realizes he's being tailed by a friendly black Labrador. It's windy enough that Archie's hat blows off his head and across the street, but the dog risks its life retrieving it. After that, Archie can't bring himself to shoo the dog, so he takes him back to the brownstone.

And there, in the office, Archie discovers that Wolfe likes dogs. With what passes in Wolfe for fondness, he recalls that he had a mutt in Montenegro, one with a rather narrow skull. This Labrador has a much broader skull – Wolfe asserts that it's for brain room, and decides that the dog is to be named Jet. Then Fritz reports that Jet has excellent manners in the kitchen. Wolfe has one-upped Archie once again: he would enjoy keeping the dog, but can blame Archie for any problem it causes.

Now Cramer appears at the front door, wanting to know about a dog. A man named Philip Kampf was murdered in the Arbor Street apartment house. Kampf had owned a black Labrador, and a policeman noticed that the dog left with Goodwin. Hence Cramer's questions: Meegan, who saw Wolfe that morning, lives in the apartment house where Kampf was murdered, and Archie has Kampf's dog. Wolfe and Archie describe the day's events for Cramer, who wants more but will wait until the next day.

That evening, looking for a rationale to keep Jet, Wolfe sends Archie for Richard Meegan. But Meegan doesn't answer the buzzer, and when another man leaves the apartment house, Archie follows him.

Archie catches up, introduces himself, and points out that the man's being followed by a police detective. Grateful, the man introduces himself as Victor Talento. Archie wants to know where he's going, and Talento tells him that he's meeting a young woman. Her name is Jewel Jones, and Talento asks Archie to go in his place, and tell her that Talento couldn't make it – Talento doesn't want the police to see them meet.

Archie agrees, meets up with Miss Jones, and since he can't bring Meegan to Wolfe, brings her instead. When they enter Wolfe's office, all three get a surprise: Jet, who has been keeping Wolfe company, runs to Miss Jones and stands in front of her, wagging his tail.

So she knows Jet, and therefore Kampf, and Wolfe pries it out of her that she knew him intimately – and in fact lived for almost a year in the Arbor Street apartment house where Kampf was killed. She knows, less well, three of the men who live there: Talento, Jerome Åland, and Ross Chaffee.

Archie interviews Åland, Meegan and Chaffee separately. From Meegan he learns more about his reason for seeing Wolfe: Meegan comes from Pittsburgh, and his wife left him – completely disappeared – about a year earlier. Not long ago Meegan saw a painting of a woman in a Pittsburgh museum, and he's sure it was his wife. He tracked down the artist, Ross Chaffee, and asked him about the model he used. Chaffee couldn't remember the model, but Meegan did not believe him and, to stay close by, rented the empty apartment in the Arbor Street building where Chaffee lives.

Archie takes a blind, but successful, stab at finding the painting and learns that it belongs to a Manhattan collector. He calls on the collector, gets a look at the painting, and sees in it a woman who looks a lot like Jewel Jones. Archie brings her to the office. Informed that she sat for the painting, and is therefore Meegan's missing wife, Wolfe speaks with Chaffee by phone. He threatens to turn Miss Jones over to the police but gives Chaffee the option of bringing the other three tenants with him to Wolfe's office.

With the Arbor Street residents collected, Wolfe zeros in on the murderer, and along the way explains the dog's strange behavior, particularly that it followed Archie from the apartment house.



Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Shadow of Anubis (The Arcane Irregulars #2) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Shadow of Anubis
Series: The Arcane Irregulars #2
Author: Dan Willis
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 256
Words: 83K







I read the first book in this spinoff series, The Curse of the Phoenix, back in June of ‘22. It does not seem that long to me. But that’s why I keep records.

The original series, The Arcane Casebook, follows one Alex Lockerby, a magical detective who solves several mysteries each book that end up all tying together. In this Arcane Irregular series, we follow a series of people connected to Alex who solve various magical mysteries that are NOT related. That difference really threw me for a loop in the first book, as I kept waiting for Willis (the author) to tie everything into a nice neat bow. Thankfully, this time around I didn’t expect that and he didn’t disappoint. We’re both happy now.

Having a variety of mysteries to solve from a variety of viewpoints can be a hard thing to pull off. In fact, I’d usually bet against an author being able to pull such a thing off. But Willis manages it quite well. The switches between the various characters was done smoothly and I never felt a jarring change. He also introduced each change at a good point, so I wasn’t thinking “why can’t I stay reading THIS part?” My only issue is that Danny Pak feels shortchanged in this novel. I don’t feel that Willis has a good grasp of him as a person and so he’s almost a caricature or an idea of a person. The reason I mention that is because I did not feel that way about Agent Aissa. She had her own real voice and felt very distinct and separate and not just an Alex Lockerby clone with a name change (which can be the case in too many cases for indie authors). Despite what I said in Curse of the Phoenix about Willis seeming to have plateaued in skill, I have to admit I was wrong. Shadow of Anubis feels like a much better book and I hope that trend continues. And that wraps up my various thoughts on the book itself.

To end this review, I have to talk about the cover. I always have to talk about the covers that Willis uses in these Arcane series. They’re gorgeous! In this one, we see Agent Aissa on the left, Dr Bell (the real life Sherlock Holmes) in the center and the resurrected high priestess Sherry Knox on the right. I’m including a large version here just because it’s a very strong contender for Cover Love winner at the end of the month.


★★★★☆


From the Publisher


It’s been a year since the events of the Jade Phoenix, but its legacy is still being felt. When a magical assassin makes his presence felt in the city, Lieutenant Danny Pak has to bring in Dr. Ignatius Bell to help him track down a terrifying killer, preferably before the tabloids find out about him.

Meanwhile, FBI Agent Aissa Mendes gets her first solo case, the murder of a foreign national. At first the case seems fairly straightforward, but the deeper she digs, the more she uncovers, including a dark secret from the city’s past. Eventually, her pursuit of truth brings international scrutiny on Aissa that could end her career before it gets started.

With her boss, Alex Lockerby, mysteriously out of commission, Sherry Knox finds herself trying to keep the detective agency afloat with only Alex’s apprentice Mike Fitzgerald to help. She is keeping things together, at least until her cards show her a horrifying vision, predicting that one skeleton in her closet isn’t willing to stay buried.




Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Before Midnight (Nero Wolfe #25) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Before Midnight
Series: Nero Wolfe #25
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 164
Words: 60K





After the previous book, The Black Mountain, this was just like sliding back into a comfortable pair of slippers. All the roughness was gone, things fit just the way they were supposed, I knew what to expect walking up a set of stairs, contract killing was off the table, I knew what these slippers could and could not do. That is a good feeling and it’s even better when it applies to a book series.

Wolfe is hired to find a missing wallet which may contain the answers to a very lucrative poetry contest. The only snag is that the guy who owns the wallet has been murdered. Wolfe doesn’t care, as he hasn’t been hired to deal with that aspect of things. Of course the clients don’t think that, nor do the police, so you get a lot of drama going on just on that bit of misunderstanding. The clients (3 members of an advertising firm and the owner of the company paying out the prize money) are mostly despicable lowlifes who are impatient and think they have “rights”. Wolfe disabuses them of THAT idea early on. I wish we had more Wolfe’s in the world to disabuse the Social Justice Warriors of all the “rights” they make up ad hoc, usually ones that only apply to them too. Well, Wolfe is a fictional character so that particular dream of mine is just that, a dream. Since I am a diabetic, I can’t gain 120+ pounds and BE Nero Wolfe to save us all from idiots and stupidos. More’s the pity :-(

Archie plays his vital role of being the go-between for the reader and Wolfe. While he’s not integral to solving the mystery (Wolfe pretty much keeps him in the dark the whole time and this riles Archie up pretty good), he’s the oil that keeps us reading without friction, without getting annoyed at Wolfe. For Archie gets annoyed at Wolfe and allows us the reader to sublimate our own feelings through his, without making us throw the book against the wall because of how Wolfe acts.

A very successful return to form for Wolfe and Archie, and it’s a full novel so we run the gamut instead of getting three little stories. I’m pleased with this.

★★★★☆


From Wikipedia:

Nero Wolfe is approached by corporate attorney Rudolf Hansen and his clients Oliver Buff, Vernon Assa and Patrick O'Garro, the chief executives of Manhattan advertising agency Lippert Buff Assa (LBA). The group want Wolfe to save them from embarrassment and ruin following the murder of Louis Dahlmann, an up-and-coming advertising executive with the firm. Dahlmann's wallet was also stolen, and inside were the final answers for a series of cryptic poetic riddles run as part of a promotional competition for Pour Amour, a brand of perfume designed by one of LBA's clients. The first prize of the competition is $500,000, and in a meeting with the final five contestants the night before his death Dahlmann had revealed that he kept the answers in his wallet, both of which lead the police to suspect one of the contestants. The executives, however, do not want Wolfe to investigate the murder but to find out who stole the wallet before the contest deadline—midnight of the nineteenth of April, exactly one week later—in order to ensure the integrity of proceedings and restore their reputation. Despite tension between the advertising agency and Talbott Heery, owner of the company that produces Pour Amour, Wolfe agrees to their terms.

Wolfe dispatches Archie Goodwin to secure a copy of the final riddles and their answers for Wolfe's reference, and proceeds to interview each of the contestants: Gertrude Frazee, the leader of an anti-cosmetics women's group who has been using her members to find the answers for the riddles to try and embarrass the cosmetics industry; Carol Wheelock, a housewife who wants the prize money to secure a better life for her family; Harold Rollins, a condescending academic who entered the competition as part of an intellectual exercise; Susan Tescher, a magazine editor who wants to do a profile on Wolfe himself; and Philip Younger, a retiree seeking to recover a fortune he lost during the Great Depression. Although skeptical that Wolfe is only investigating the theft and not the murder, Inspector Cramer shares what the police have learned about the case so far. Other than the financial motive, none of the contestants appears to have had any serious reason or opportunity to either murder Dahlmann or steal the answers, and much to Archie's concern Wolfe's investigation appears to lose energy and focus.

As the deadline nears, the LBA executives begin to panic and lash out, resulting in a contradictory sequence where Wolfe is fired and then rehired within a span of minutes. When all seems lost, however, an anonymous source sends copies of the answers to each of the contestants, thus voiding the contest and saving LBA. Although Archie, the LBA executives and the police suspect Wolfe of doing so, he insists that he was not responsible, and begins to suspect one of the advertising executives of at least stealing the wallet, if not murdering Dahlmann. After the letters are sent, Vernon Assa approaches Wolfe and attempts to unilaterally dismiss him from the case, but Wolfe refuses. His suspicions aroused, Wolfe summons the major players to his office and claims he will reveal the identity of the thief, and in doing so provide the police with vital information to help them identify the murderer. Before he can do so, however, Vernon Assa is poisoned with cyanide surreptitiously slipped into his drink and dies on the floor of Wolfe's office. Dahlmann's wallet is found in his pocket, suggesting that he was the thief and murderer.

Infuriated at the murder of someone who was enjoying his hospitality and skeptical of Assa's guilt, Wolfe determines to identify the true culprit. He, along with Archie and Saul Panzer, travels to the offices of LBA and inspects a display of products from their clients, discovering a bottle of cyanide that he suspects was used to murder Assa; this confirms in Wolfe's mind the guilt of one of the executives. Confronting Buff, O'Garro and Hansen, Wolfe lays out the facts of the case and accuses Buff of murdering both Dahlmann and Assa. Buff is the only man who had clear means and opportunity, and Wolfe speculates that he was driven to murder Dahlmann out of jealousy and fear over Dahlmann's skills eclipsing and threatening his position. Assa discovered the wallet that Buff stole from Dahlmann to cover his tracks, and Buff murdered him to silence him. When Buff tries to throw suspicion on O'Garro, O'Garro reveals that Wolfe is correct. Buff is convicted of murder, but the remaining LBA executives challenge Wolfe's fee, arguing that as the thief and murderer Buff presumably exposed himself when he sent out the letters containing the final answers. In response, Wolfe reveals in confidence that he will be adding onto his bill the price of a used typewriter that has been disposed of in the East River, implying that he was in fact responsible for sending out the letters and saving them from humiliation after all.


Thursday, December 07, 2023

Deja Vu Halloo (Reeves and Worcester Steampunk Mysteries #5) 3Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Deja Vu Halloo
Series: Reeves and Worcester Steampunk Mysteries #5
Author: Chris Dolley
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Steampunk Mystery
Pages: 139
Words: 42K






It’s been about 2 years since I read the previous Reeves and Worcester book, The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall, and I was hoping that would breathe some new life into this fifth book. Unfortunately, it did not.

Don’t get me wrong, this was still amusing and I don’t regret reading it at all, but it was starting to feel tired. Time machines, the faux-PG Wodehouse expressions, it seemed like Dolley (the author) was just going through the motions. Considering this was published in ‘20 and there’s not been another one, I suspect Dolley realized where things were headed and just stopped before he ran off a cliff. I can respect that in an author.

The timey-wimey aspect of this, with Reeves and Worcester repeating the same day over and over again, glazed my eyes over. When Reeves began explaining how they were going to break the time loop I completely checked out until they did. Worcester getting sloshed every night so he’d remember the time loop was amusing and when you throw in the various things he and Reeves get up to, it was a good time all around. There was one particular amusing part to the story where Worcester meets the Aunt and Uncle of his fiance and they are 8th Day Secessionists. I just laughed my head off, what with being a 7th Day Adventist myself.

One thing I would like to see is Worcester and his fiance get married. That has all the hallmarks of some serious Wodehousian shenanigan potential. But sadly, I doubt it will happen. Ahhh, it is better to have read and not got the ending you wanted than to have never read at all. Some bloke named Bookstodge made up that quote. Quite a genius, eh? I thought so. If I could track him down, I’d like to give him a solid gold dumptruck just to show him how appreciative I am of his input into the literary world.

★★★☆☆


From the Publisher

It's Groundhog Day, 1906. February 2nd is stuck on repeat, and only our intrepid trio appear to have noticed. Emmeline senses the meddling of a higher power - possibly her aunt. Reggie's sure it'll be the handiwork of the subterranean horror one least suspects. And Reeves considers it all "most disturbing."

Can our heroes save the world from perpetual winter? And could ending the time loop be just the start of an even thornier problem?

This short novel is the sixth Reeves & Worcester Steampunk mystery and is set a few months after The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall.


Thursday, November 02, 2023

The Black Mountain (Nero Wolfe #24) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission


Title: The Black Mountain
Series: Nero Wolfe #24
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 176
Words: 66K





I think this was the first Nero Wolfe book that I would have been ok if I had never read it. This was very much a post-worldwar two spy novel but not quite a cold war thriller. It felt like it was the worst of both.

Wolfe’s adopted daughter does something incredibly stupid and gets killed for it. And Wolfe goes traipsing off to his homeland to find the killer, not to kill him, but to apprehend him and bring him to justice in the American court system.

First, I didn’t feel bad about the daughter dying. We’ve met her in previous books and man, was she a real witch. She also managed to manifest every single trait that I despise, so her getting killed was a cause of rejoicing for me. So Wolfe trying to get her killer brought no joy to the main occupant of Bookstoogeville, ie, me.

Second, reading about Wolfe traipsing around Europe holds as much appeal to me as drinking a quart of motor oil. I realize Stout was trying to get them out of the familiar, both in terms of setting and even storyline, but it didn’t work for me. It was like watching some actor who has spent his whole life being a failed comedian suddenly take on a role of an action star. It just doesn’t work.
Finally, Wolfe’s absolute insistence on bringing the killer to justice. The killer wasn’t American, didn’t kill an American and was allied with anti-American forces and it wasn’t logical at all what Wolfe wanted.

Even with all that, it was still excellently told and totally worthy of 3stars. Rex Stout is that good.

★★★☆☆


From Wikipedia:

As Archie is about to leave the brownstone for a basketball game, Sergeant Purley Stebbins calls with news that Wolfe's old friend Marko Vukcic has been shot and killed. After Archie identifies the body, Wolfe joins him at the morgue and insists on being taken first to the crime scene and then Rusterman's Restaurant, owned by Marko.

Wolfe and Inspector Cramer question the employees there, and Wolfe and Archie return to the brownstone to find a surprise visitor: Wolfe's adopted daughter Carla. She and Marko have been involved in a movement to secure Montenegro's independence from Yugoslavia, and she is furious at Wolfe's refusal to support the effort. Wolfe tries to question her, but she is reluctant to give any information, since she believes that he may be in league with the government of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union.

During the three weeks following the murder, Wolfe pursues various lines of investigation and gets a second visit from Carla, enraged that the police are now looking into the movement's background. Following this meeting, he gets three updates from Paolo Telesio, an informant in Bari, Italy. The first states that Carla has returned to Bari and crossed the Adriatic Sea into Montenegro; the second is a cryptic message on the killer's location — "the man you seek is within sight of the mountain"; the last states that Carla has been killed. Realizing that "the mountain" must be Lovćen in Montenegro, Wolfe makes immediate plans to go there and find Marko's killer, accompanied by Archie.

The two fly to Europe, making their way to Bari and taking temporary shelter in a house owned by one of Telesio's friends. Telesio arranges for a guide to ferry them across the Adriatic; from there, the two hike through the foothills of Lovćen and eventually secure a ride to Rijeka Crnojevića and then Podgorica. Jubé Bilic, a college student, drives them to Podgorica and drops them off at the office of Gospo Stritar, the local police chief. Wolfe gives a fake name and passes himself off as a Montenegro native who has lived abroad for many years and is now returning to decide which side to support in the struggle over Yugoslavia's future, and Archie as his American-born son (to explain his inability to speak Serbo-Croat).

Although Stritar is skeptical of Wolfe's explanation, he allows the two to go about their business, but dispatches Jubé to follow them. Wolfe and Archie travel to the home of Marko's nephew Danilo, who had passed the messages on to Telesio and who has been helping Marko and Carla smuggle weapons and supplies in from the United States. Danilo learns of Jubé's surveillance and has him killed, then reluctantly agrees to take Wolfe and Archie into the mountains for a meeting with Josip Pasic, one member of a guerrilla team in the independence movement. From Pasic, Wolfe learns that Carla had begun to suspect that a spy had infiltrated the group; she slipped into Albania to infiltrate a Russian-controlled fort and gather information, only to be killed instead.

Wolfe and Archie sneak into the fort, where they hear screams coming from one room. Inside, they discover Peter Zov, a man they had previously seen in Stritar's office, being tortured by three Russians. Their leader berates Zov for going to New York and killing Marko on Stritar's orders, hampering Russia's goal of taking over Yugoslavia if the Tito regime is overthrown. Carla had gained the favor of the other two Russians; when they realized who she was, they killed her.

Wolfe and Archie storm the room, and Archie kills the Russians and frees Zov. The gun he used to kill Marko is found elsewhere in the fort, and Wolfe makes up his mind to take him back to New York to face justice rather than exact revenge immediately. Once the three have returned to Podgorica, Wolfe pretends to have decided to commit himself to the Tito regime and offers Stritar a large bribe in support of it. Stritar produces a letter (a fake sent by Telesio as a red herring) which states that "Nero Wolfe" will be remaining in New York and sending funds to support the independence movement. Zov is dispatched to assassinate him as an associate of Marko.

The three return to Italy, where Wolfe and Archie arrange a trans-Atlantic ship voyage under their assumed names and Zov comes aboard as a steward. Wolfe insists on having Zov brought to the brownstone so that he can reveal himself on the spot. When the ship pulls into the New York harbor, though, a news photographer spots Wolfe on the deck and calls his name. Zov draws his gun and shoots Wolfe, wounding him in the leg before being tackled by the rest of the staff. Satisfied that both murders can now be closed, Wolfe tells Archie to call Cramer.


Friday, September 22, 2023

Three Men Out (Nero Wolfe #23) 3.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Three Men Out
Series: Nero Wolfe #23
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 130
Words: 59K



First off, I couldn’t easily get rid of the links in the synopsis below. I use LibreOffice to write my initial reviews and there is an option to remove all formatting from copied text. I assumed that would take care off it, but it didn’t. I didn’t care enough to go through and individually de-link everything. Which is stupid, because linking is as much a format issue as font size, type and spacing is. Oh well, whatever. I’m not real happy with libreoffice right now. I feel like it stabbed me in the back.

I enjoyed this collection of 3 stories, just like I expected I would. I might have even given it 4stars except for two things.

First, the final story is about baseball and I find baseball deadly boring. If it had been the first story, I probably would have forgotten about it and it wouldn’t have influenced me. But it was the last story and so that was the note I went out of the book on. Not necessarily bad, but not good like I wanted.

Secondly, Nero Wolfe keeps leaving his bloody house. I have commented on it before, but Stout really breaks the “Wolfe doesn’t leave the house” rule all the time. Too many times for me. In two of the three stories here he leaves the house! No, no, no! If you have rules, you obey them and only break them once every 7 or 8 books. Otherwise it’s like a piscetarian claiming they are a vegetarian, ie, it’s utter balderdash.

I know that’s a lot of complaining. But I still like these stories and highly recommend them. It’s more like going to a high class restaurant and being irritated that your waiter didn’t put “quite enough” shredded parmesan on your plate of capellini with artisan tomato sauce :-/ So let me tell you, this waiter is NOT going to be getting a big tip from me today.

★★★✬☆




Table of Contents & Synopses from Wikipedia


"Invitation to Murder":

Herman Lewent offers to pay Wolfe $1,000 to solve a problem regarding his family's finances. Lewent's father left his entire estate to his daughter Beryl in his will 20 years earlier, with a provision that she should look after Lewent's needs. She sent him $1,000 per month until her death one year ago, leaving the estate to her husband, Theodore Huck. Lewent has tried to persuade Huck to give him a portion of the money, to no avail; Huck intends to keep sending him only the $1,000 monthly payment. Now, Lewent is concerned that one of Huck's three attractive female employees is trying to seduce him into cutting Lewent off, and he wants Wolfe to find out which one it is. When Wolfe rejects the case as a family squabble, Lewent mentions that Beryl died of ptomaine poisoning at Huck's house; he believes that one of the three women murdered her. Wolfe turns the case over to Archie, who accepts and travels to Huck's mansion, where Lewent also lives.

Huck's declining health has confined him to a wheelchair, which is motorized and outfitted with various conveniences. The three employees Lewent suspects are secretary Dorothy Riff, nurse Sylvia Marcy, and housekeeper Cassie O'Shea. Archie questions Huck, using the pretense that Beryl might have hinted at entrusting one of them with part of her father's estate to be turned over to Lewent, in an attempt to draw out information on them. Huck sees through the deception and even believes it might be part of a blackmail scheme on Lewent's part, so Archie questions the women instead, as well as Huck's nephew Paul Thayer, who lives in the mansion and who warned Lewent about the women's possible designs on the money. Stopping at Lewent's room, Archie finds him lying dead on the floor inside, the base of his skull caved in. However, the skin is not broken, there is no blood on the floor, and the blow appears to have been delivered at an upward angle. The geometry of the room leads him to believe that Lewent was killed elsewhere and his body moved to this location.

Archie calls Wolfe with an update, then continues his questioning of the household members without revealing his knowledge of Lewent's death to any of them. He is thrown off by Huck's decision to present Dorothy, Sylvia, and Cassie each with an expensive jeweled wristwatch. Finding himself stumped after dinner that evening, Archie calls Wolfe and tricks him into coming to the mansion by faking an attack on himself. Wolfe is furious that Archie would stoop to such methods, but prepares to question the household about both Lewent's allegations and Beryl's death. He learns that Beryl had died after eating pickled artichokes at a party; since she had taken them all and no other guests became ill, it was assumed that the artichokes had been poisoned.

Wolfe offers Huck a deal: for $100,000, he will investigate and use what he finds to persuade Lewent that his suspicions are groundless, with the caveat that no one will ever tell Lewent of this arrangement. Huck accepts the terms and everyone agrees to keep them secret, and Wolfe and Archie excuse themselves to speak with Lewent in his room. Only after Wolfe has examined the body and the scene does he allow Archie to call the police and tell the others of the murder. Inspector Cramer and his men soon arrive to question the household members; while this is going on, Archie suddenly realizes that he knows how Lewent's body was transported without attracting attention.

Wolfe identifies Huck as the murderer and explains that he tricked Lewent into bending over to pick something up off the floor, then struck him with a spherical paperweight. The smooth surface would not break the skin, and Lewent's posture would make it appear that the blow was delivered upward. Huck then put the body in his lap, covered it with the quilt he always used to keep his legs warm, and drove his wheelchair to Lewent's room to dump the body. He was eager to accept Wolfe's $100,000 offer because he knew that Lewent would never hear of the results, and he had earlier poisoned Beryl in order to inherit her fortune. Cassie provides further motive, saying that Huck had been having an affair with her; when Beryl found out about it, Huck made up his mind to kill her.

Sylvia removes her wristwatch and puts it in Huck's lap as Cramer prepares to take him into custody. Even though he is eventually convicted, Archie does not know if Dorothy or Cassie ever returned theirs.


"The Zero Clue":

Leo Heller, a mathematics expert who uses his knowledge of probability to assist his clients with their problems, tries to hire Wolfe for a difficult case. He believes that one of his clients may have committed a crime, but does not want to tell the police of his suspicions without evidence to back them up. Wolfe angrily refuses the job, remembering a past incident in which he lost a client to Heller, but Archie offers to stop by the next day for a preliminary discussion.

The following morning, Archie goes to Heller's private office at the agreed-on time but finds it empty, with the door open. Taking note of several pencils lying in an unusual pattern on the desk, he asks the five clients in the waiting room if any of them have seen Heller in person, but all of them say no. That evening, Inspector Cramer arrives at the brownstone with news that Heller has been found dead, shot through the heart and stuffed into his office closet. Accounts of Heller's movements suggest that he was killed shortly before Archie entered the office.

Cramer demands to know Wolfe's involvement in the case for two reasons: an envelope in Heller's desk, marked with Wolfe's name and containing $500 cash; and the pencils, whose pattern he re-creates as best he can. Archie corrects it slightly, tearing the eraser off one pencil and placing it in the middle of the pattern. Cramer is convinced that they stand for Wolfe's initials when viewed from the side, even though one grouping has too many strokes to form a W. Wolfe dismisses Cramer's claims, keeps the $500, and briefly looks through a book from his shelves before locking it in a desk drawer. He asks Cramer to bring in Heller's five clients as well as Susan Maturo, a woman who had left Heller's building just as Archie entered to meet with him, and urges Cramer to watch for instances of the number six.

Wolfe and Cramer question these six people one by one, learning of their various reasons for wanting to see Heller. They take a particular interest in Susan, a nurse who had worked in a hospital where a bomb exploded a month earlier, killing 302 people. She had thought of hiring Heller to find the culprit, but changed her mind at the last minute and began to think of hiring Wolfe instead. The number six figures in every person's account, but a remark by one client – about Heller's winning tip on a racehorse named Zero – prompts Wolfe to have everyone brought back to his office.

With the pencils laid out on his desk as they were on Heller's, Wolfe explains that the book he consulted earlier was on the history of mathematics. The two groups of pencils were arranged to symbolize a three and a two, and he originally assumed that the eraser between them stood for multiplication; hence his focus on the number six. However, the mention of the horse's name made him realize that the eraser was meant to stand for a zero. Before he was killed, Heller had laid out the pencils to form the number 302 – the death toll in the hospital bombing.

Aside from Susan, the only client with any substantial connection to that hospital is Jack Ennis, an inventor who had unsuccessfully tried to persuade the staff to use a new X-ray machine he had designed. Wolfe conjectures that he set the bomb as revenge for this rejection, learned that Heller might have become suspicious enough to call in Wolfe, and killed him. As Ennis is placed under arrest, Archie reassures Susan that he is guilty, and a jury reaches the same conclusion at his trial two months later.


"This Won't Kill You":

Wolfe and Archie honor a house guest's request to see a baseball game by taking him to the final game of the World Series at the Polo Grounds. The tickets come courtesy of Emil Chisholm, part-owner of the New York Giants, but Wolfe is in no mood to enjoy the game or the surroundings. The Giants fall far behind the Boston Red Sox due to inept fielding on the part of several players, and Archie notices that Nick Ferrone, a talented rookie, is not part of the day's lineup. He and Wolfe are summoned to the Giants' clubhouse by Chisholm, where they meet manager Art Kinney, team doctor Horton Soffer, and talent scout Beaky Durkin. Soffer has discovered that four of the Giants players have been drugged, by drinking beverages laced with a sedative before the game. Suspicion immediately falls on the absent Ferrone, and Archie finds him dead in another room of the clubhouse, his skull fractured with a baseball bat.

The Giants lose the game and the Series, and the police arrive to question everyone on the team at length. They begin to focus on catcher Bill Moyse, who had previously confronted Ferrone over his interest in Moyse's wife Lila. As the questioning comes to an end, Wolfe asks that the four players who were drugged remain behind, along with Kinney, Soffer, Durkin, and Chisholm, and comments that one fact has come to light and drawn his attention. Realizing that he had previously seen Lila seated in the stands and looking pleased at the Giants' poor play, Archie leaves the stadium and finds her and a friend sitting in her parked car a few blocks away. He claims that her behavior may lead the police to think that Moyse was paid to drug the drinks and fix the game, but learns from her friend that she was angry at Moyse being left on the bench throughout the entire Series and had taken pleasure in their loss.

Lila insists that Moyse had nothing to do with the drugging or the murder, but admits that the two of them had been approached by someone who wanted Moyse to fix the game: her uncle, Dan Gale. She drives Archie to Gale's drugstore in an attempt to persuade Gale to tell the police and clear Moyse's name. Instead, Gale threatens to disfigure her with sulfuric acid; Archie recognizes that he is trying to buy time for his associates to arrive and deal with their intrusion. Gale, a compulsive gambler, lost ownership of the drugstore but had been offered a chance to reclaim it by fixing the Series on behalf of organized crime.

Archie and Lila subdue Gale, spilling the acid but not injuring him or themselves, and Archie calls the police to come pick him up and look for his accomplices. Upon Archie's return to the stadium, Wolfe confronts the eight men who have remained in the clubhouse and notes that the assumption that Ferrone drugged the drinks is implausible. Brought into the Giants' organization by Durkin, Ferrone had performed so well that his next year's salary would be increased and he would receive a large bonus if the team won the Series. Instead, Wolfe conjectures that Ferrone caught someone else drugging the drinks and was killed to keep him quiet.

The fact that drew his attention is that Durkin had been sitting in the stands from the starting lineup announcement until the time he was called into the clubhouse. Wolfe considers it highly unlikely that a scout who had brought such a promising young player onto the team would not become angry over learning that he was not going to play in a pivotal championship game. Wolfe asserts that Durkin acted as he did because he had killed Ferrone, but he has no proof until Kinney and the players intimidate Durkin into admitting his guilt. He had accepted a bribe to fix the game as a way to pay off his gambling debts; when Ferrone confronted him over a bet he had placed against the Giants, Durkin panicked and killed him. The money is found hidden in a radio, and one of the players knocks Durkin unconscious when he tries to flee.

Just before Archie can call the police to inform them of Durkin's capture, they call the clubhouse with news that Gale has confessed to paying him off. Wolfe and Archie find themselves at odds with each other over whether they or the police can take credit for solving the murder.



Tuesday, August 08, 2023

Golden Spiders (Nero Wolfe #22) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Golden Spiders
Series: Nero Wolfe #22
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 175
Words: 58K



This was a tough one because right near the beginning a boy gets killed after coming to Nero Wolfe and Archie lets him in the house as a way to get revenge on Wolfe for his bad attitude. It wasn’t their fault but it happened. Several other people are killed too but the death of the child is what makes Wolfe do his utmost this time around.

Whooooo, what a great cast of characters this time. Sometimes Archie and Wolfe dominate a book and the side characters are very small side characters. But sometimes, like here, the side characters really pop and stand out. There is a lawyer and a public relations guy and man, they are both as slimey as Cthulhu’s tentacles, and they’re probably just as evil, whether willfully or through deliberately ignoring what is going on. I loved to hate on them and every time Wolfe put either of them into their place I was super happy and felt good about myself. Childish and immature, yes, but also very, very, very true.

I always rave about how good Nero Wolfe stories are and what a wordsmith Rex Stout is and it remains true. That is part of why my reviews of these books are so short. When something is good, I simply read it and enjoy it and my review consists of a lack of problems. I don’t necessarily enumerate all the positives but the lack of negatives is how I roll.

I am about at the halfway mark through the series. I started with Fer-de-lance in March of 2021. Here I am, 2 ½ years later, still reading, still loving, still going strong. To me, the fact that I still look forward to reading a Nero Wolfe book every 4-6 weeks speaks absolute volumes about not only the entertainment value but also the quality. I’ve dropped indie SF authors before simply because the quality of writing was mediocre and I could only stand it for a couple of volumes. Stout puts out quality stuff each and every time and I am proud to say that I can appreciate that fact. I suspect Stout is pretty proud that such an esteemed personage as myself is not only reading his books, but reviewing them too. But don’t worry, there is plenty of room on this bandwagon, so jump on and have yourself the ride of a lifetime.

★★★★☆




From Wikipedia:


After Nero Wolfe reacts petulantly to a change in one of his favourite meals, Archie Goodwin plays a prank on him by allowing Pete Drossos, a neighbourhood child, to enter and ask for Wolfe’s help on a case. Pete claims that while he was washing the windows of car at a stop light the driver, a woman wearing distinctive golden earrings in the shape of spiders, silently asked him to summon a police officer, and Pete believes she was being threatened by her male passenger. To indulge Pete, Wolfe has Archie pass Pete’s information on to the police, but the next day they learn that the same car, now driven by a man in a brown suit and hat, has struck and killed Pete. Matthew Birch, an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was also struck and killed by the same car, apparently on the same day that Pete approached Wolfe. While this suggests Birch was the man Pete saw in the car evidence at the scene proves Birch was killed before Pete, ruling him out as Pete's murderer.


Wolfe is visited by Pete’s mother, who gives them his savings of $4.30 and asks them to use it to find his killer. Archie, angered at Wolfe’s reluctance to get involved, puts an advertisement in the newspaper, asking the woman in the car to contact Wolfe. Laura Fromm, a wealthy widow, responds to the advertisement and arrives at Wolfe’s house wearing the golden spider earrings. Wolfe and Archie quickly determine that she is not the person they seek, but she is horrified on learning of Pete’s death and claims that she may know who was driving. Fromm refuses to reveal the information, but the next day Wolfe and Archie receive news that she too has been struck by a car and killed. Infuriated by the fact that two people who came to him for help are now dead, Wolfe decides to solve the murders.


Archie learns that the last people to see Fromm alive are all directly or indirectly connected to a charity for displaced persons that Fromm supported with sizeable donations. While Wolfe assigns his operatives Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather to pursue various leads, Archie approaches those present at a dinner attended by charity officials - including Fromm’s secretary Jean Estey, the charity's attorney Dennis Horan and his wife, and the charity's director Angela Wright - and offers to sell the details of the conversation between Wolfe and Fromm in an attempt to flush out the guilty party. Before he can approach Paul Kuffner, the charity’s public-relations director, Kuffner approaches Wolfe and offers to pay for the information. Realising he has been tipped off, Wolfe rejects the offer.


Saul, who has been posing as a displaced person seeking help from the charity, reveals that after he had approached Horan for help he was subsequently visited by a man who tried to blackmail him out of $10,000. Meanwhile, Fred has tracked down two hoodlums who claim to have been working with Birch. On discovering that Fred is a private investigator they attempt to torture him for information, but Archie, Saul and Orrie — who have been independently following either Fred or the hoodlums — manage to rescue him. Saul confirms that one of the hoodlums, “Lips” Egan, is the blackmailer, and a notebook in his pocket reveals the existence of a blackmail ring targeting poor, illegal immigrants.


Before the investigators can interrogate the hoodlums further, Horan arrives unexpectedly at Egan’s base of operations. Archie takes Horan and the hoodlums to Wolfe’s office, where they are held for questioning by Wolfe and Inspector Cramer. Horan tries to distance himself from the two hoodlums, but Egan confesses to the blackmail and implicates Horan as well. Egan reveals that Birch was one of the ringleaders of the operation, but that he in turn took orders from an unknown woman. This confirms to Wolfe a flawed assumption made by the police: that the driver of the car that killed Pete was a man, when in fact it was a woman disguised as a man.


With the principals and several police officers assembled in his office, Wolfe reveals the identity of the murderer: Fromm’s secretary Jean Estey. Estey was the true mastermind of the blackmail ring, but Fromm had begun to suspect her and, after overhearing the codeword she used - “said a spider to a fly” - had given the spider earrings to Estey as a subtle way of confronting her. Estey murdered Birch when he demanded a larger share of the blackmail proceeds, then killed Pete and Fromm to hide her connections to Birch and the illegal operation. When a clothing store owner brought in by Orrie identifies Estey as having purchased the suit and hat worn by the driver who killed Pete, she is arrested for the murders and Horan and Egan are arrested for the blackmail.

Wolfe burns Egan's notebook to prevent the identities of the blackmail victims from being exposed, leading Archie to worry that he may be charged with destroying evidence, but all three defendants are convicted even without it.


Friday, July 07, 2023

Prisoner’s Base (Nero Wolfe #21) 4Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Prisoner’s Base
Series: Nero Wolfe #21
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 164
Words: 61K




Ooph, this was a kick in the pants. Two women are killed and while both Wolfe and Archie deny it, they bear some responsibility for the murders being able to happen at all. It wasn’t a big happy fun time to read about.

And yet, the mystery of what happened was fantastic to read about. Money, greed, people’s egos, big business, murder and false identities. This story had it all and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course, I’ve enjoyed every Nero Wolfe set of stories I’ve read so far, so I guess I kind of expect a good story by now. Rex Stout has not let me down.

Do you know how many other authors I can say that about? NONE. Nobody. Brandon Sanderson has mired himself in worldbuilding, unnecessary complicatedness and moral ambiguity. Adrian Tchaikovsky has let his politics not just creep into his stories but roll on through like tanks through Tienanmen Square. Edith Pargeter ended up boring the living daylights out of me by the end of the Brother Cadfael books. Alan Dean Foster lost me when the Pip and Flinx stories kept on going beyond all reasonableness and plot plausibility. Rex Stout is a rock in the turbulent sea of authors who have disappointed me and let me down. A veritable stony island that resists all attempts at disappointment.

★★★✬☆




From Wikipedia:

After an argument between Archie and Wolfe over Archie's weekly paycheck, a young woman arrives at the brownstone with an unusual request. She wants to rent a room until June 30, one week away, without revealing her identity or presence to anyone. Wolfe rejects the idea, but before he and Archie can send her away, a lawyer named Perry Helmar arrives. He is the legal guardian of Priscilla Eads, a young woman who has gone missing, and he wants to hire Wolfe to find her before June 30. The photographs he has brought with him convince Archie that Priscilla is the house guest.

The terms of her father's will state that Priscilla is to inherit 90% of the stock in Softdown, a major towel manufacturer, when she reaches her 25th birthday on June 30. However, her ex-husband, Eric Hagh - currently living in South America - claims that she signed a document giving him half of her property. In addition, several Softdown officers are concerned about Priscilla suddenly becoming a majority stockholder.

Wolfe sends Helmar away without an immediate decision, then offers Priscilla a choice. She can either pay the same fee Helmar offered and stay at the brownstone incognito, or she can leave and Wolfe will accept Helmar's terms and begin tracking her down the following morning. She chooses to leave, but before Wolfe can call Helmar the next day, Inspector Cramer brings news that both Priscilla and her maid, Margaret Fomos, have been strangled to death. Margaret had keys to Priscilla's apartment, but they were not found on her body, leading the police to conclude that the murderer targeted her first in order to gain access to Priscilla.

While Archie feels guilt at his involvement in the events that led to Priscilla's death, Wolfe takes no interest in the case, having no client and no prospect of a fee. Infuriated, Archie storms out to begin investigating on his own. He barges into a meeting of Softdown personnel, four of whom are officers who will inherit Priscilla's stock in her place, and learns from them that Helmar will receive shares as well. Before he can learn much more, Lieutenant Rowcliff arrives and arrests him, based on claims that he had impersonated a police officer to get into the building.

While being questioned, Archie learns that thanks to Rowcliff's pettiness and overeagerness, Wolfe has been taken into custody as a material witness. Outraged, Wolfe states that he does now have a client – Archie – and the two are released. From Lon Cohen, Archie learns about Priscilla's background, her marriage and time spent living in South America, and her best friend Sarah Jaffee, who owns the remaining 10% of the Softdown stock. Sarah tells Archie that Priscilla had planned to oust the company's board of directors and replace them all with women, including herself, Sarah, and Margaret. Archie urges her to file an injunction blocking the four Softdown officers from exercising the voting rights on the stock they hold until the murders have been solved, but she turns down the idea. He also tries to question Margaret's husband Andy, but without success.

Shortly after Archie returns to the brownstone, a lawyer named Albert M. Irby arrives and asks to see Wolfe. He represents Hagh, who is due to arrive in New York the following afternoon. That next morning, Sarah decides to act on Archie's suggestion of legal action; Wolfe arranges representation for her by Nathaniel Parker, his lawyer. He uses the decision as leverage to bring all of the involved parties - the four Softdown officers, Helmar, Sarah, Parker, Andy, Hagh, and Irby - to his office for a meeting that night.

The meeting yields little of use, but after everyone has left, Sarah calls Archie from her apartment to report that her keys are missing. Suspecting that the murderer may have stolen them and is lying in wait, he instructs her to leave the phone off the hook and exit so that he can clearly hear her; when the line goes silent, he rushes to her building and finds her strangled to death in the apartment.

After being questioned and released from custody, Archie discovers that Wolfe has brought Saul Panzer in on the case and provided him with expense money. He observes the interrogation of several people who were at the meeting, with Cramer's permission, then relays a suggestion to re-enact the night's events at the office. To his surprise, Wolfe accepts.

The gathering takes place at noon that same day, with Saul present as well. Wolfe dismisses the police's initial theory that Margaret was killed only to get her keys and/or because she recognized her attacker. Saul had traveled to South America, carrying a photograph of Hagh that Sarah had given to Archie, and learned that he had died three months earlier. The man claiming to be Hagh is in fact Siegfried Muecke, an associate who left South America shortly after Hagh's death. Muecke had learned of the document Hagh and Priscilla signed, witnessed by Margaret, and traveled to New York to collect half her property. He killed all three women because they had seen the real Hagh, either in person or through photographs, and could expose his deception.

Archie vents his frustration by punching Andy when he lunges at Muecke, who is quickly arrested.



Saturday, May 20, 2023

Triple Jeopardy (Nero Wolfe #20) ★★★★☆

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Triple Jeopardy
Series: Nero Wolfe #20
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 184
Words: 67K




From Wikipedia:

3 novellas comprising:


"Home to Roost"

Benjamin and Pauline Rackell engage Wolfe to investigate the death of their nephew Arthur, paying him a $3,000 retainer. Arthur had begun to show increasing support for the Communist Party, but confided to Pauline that he had been recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the group's New York organization. At a dinner party, he had brought out a pillbox from his pocket, set it on the table, and taken one of the vitamin capsules inside, only to die a few minutes later from cyanide poisoning. The other capsules in the box were found to be genuine and harmless. Pauline insists that one of the other five dinner guests must have learned the truth about Arthur and slipped the poisoned capsule into the box while he was not paying attention.


Archie visits both the local FBI office and Manhattan Homicide but is unable to get any useful information; at Wolfe's request, he arranges a meeting with the Rackells and the dinner guests at Wolfe's office. Of these latter five - Ormond Leddegard, Fifi Goheen, Della Devlin, Henry Jameson Heath, Carol Berk - only Heath is known to have ties to the Communist Party. Wolfe questions the group about the dinner party and the pillbox, not mentioning Arthur's FBI status in order to avoid tipping them off, and inadvertently sparks a confrontation between Della and Fifi over Heath's affections. Fifi says that Arthur told her he lied to Pauline about working for the FBI, a claim Pauline adamantly denies.

The next day, Archie engages Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather to keep Heath under constant surveillance and arranges for the Rackells to see Wolfe again. Wolfe tells them that he is convinced there was an eyewitness to Arthur's murder, and offers to find that person and get the truth for a fee of $20,000. Benjamin is unconvinced, but Pauline is eager to accept the offer, and Wolfe sends Archie to visit Della and Carol in their shared apartment that night. Della says that Carol has gone to a show, but Archie finds her hiding in a closet and listening in. After she leaves, he offers Della $10,000 to tell the police that she had seen Fifi switch the capsules; she does not immediately say yes or no, and he leaves to update Wolfe and Saul.

The next morning, both Inspector Cramer and FBI Agent Wengert visit the office to confront Wolfe. They have learned of Archie's offer to Della and are furious, but Wolfe points out that their best course of action is to let him proceed, neither supporting nor opposing his plans. Archie gets updates on Heath's movements throughout the day, culminating in a meeting with a woman in Central Park at which Saul is eavesdropping. Arriving at the location, Archie finds that the woman is Pauline and brings both of them to the office. With Saul's corroboration, Wolfe determines that Heath arranged the meeting in order to persuade Pauline not to pay for Wolfe's scheme to get Fifi convicted.

Wolfe reveals that his offer to the Rackells was meant to draw out the murderer, as he had no concrete evidence or witnesses. He accuses Pauline of Arthur's murder, having become suspicious of her after she accepted his offer so quickly. She had seen it as a way to frame someone else for her crime and keep her own Communist leanings from becoming public. Wolfe pressures Heath into agreeing to tell him how much Pauline has contributed to the party, in order to keep himself from being associated with her criminal trial.

The next day, while Cramer and Wengert are going over the details of the case with Wolfe, Archie reveals that he knows who had been the real infiltrator sent by the FBI. It was Carol, who would have learned about the $10,000 offer from Della and was the only person who could have informed Wengert of it so quickly. Now that the case is over, she accepts Archie's offer of a drink.


"The Cop-Killer"

Returning to the brownstone from his morning errands, Archie finds two surprise visitors waiting for him on the stoop: Carl and Tina Vardas, both of whom work at the barbershop that Wolfe and Archie frequent. Jacob Wallen, a police detective, had visited the shop earlier in the day in order to question the employees as to their whereabouts on the previous night. After he had questioned Carl and Tina separately, they fled the shop for fear of being deported back to their native Russia, from which they had illegally made their way to New York City three years earlier. Archie puts them in the front room, tells Wolfe of their arrival, and goes to the shop.

Several police officers, including Sergeant Purley Stebbins, are already there when he arrives, and Inspector Cramer arrives soon afterward. Wallen has been found dead in a manicurist's cubicle, stabbed in the back with a pair of scissors. While waiting for a shave, Archie learns that Wallen had been investigating a hit-and-run accident the previous night in which two women were struck and killed by a stolen car, and he had carried that evening's newspaper with him. He had used the cubicle for his questioning, and his body was found there some minutes after talking to the last of the employees. Since Carl and Tina fled the shop, suspicion falls on them first. Janet Stahl, a manicurist, claims in overly dramatic fashion that she killed Wallen, but Archie does not believe her.

Once his shave is finished, Archie returns to the brownstone and finds Wolfe eating lunch with Carl and Tina. Further questioning of the couple reveals that neither of them knows how to drive a car, which is enough in Archie's mind to clear them of any guilt in the hit-and-run. They remember that Wallen had carried his newspaper flat as if it had just come off the newsstand, rather than rolled or folded up in his coat pocket, and had set it down that way on the table in the cubicle. Surprised by the arrival of Cramer, Archie moves them into the front room in order to keep him from finding them. Cramer is unconvinced that Archie's visit for a shave was only a coincidence, especially since has never gone to the shop for only a shave, but cannot see how any of the employees could afford Wolfe's fees. During the visit, Cramer learns from a phone call that Janet has been injured.

Returning to the shop, Archie finds Janet recovering from a blow to the head and willing to talk only to him. She again over-dramatizes the incident, claiming that Stebbins assaulted her, but Archie uses her theatrics to question her further about the timeline of the morning's events. He calls in with an update for Wolfe, who soon surprises everyone by showing up for a haircut and asking for his usual barber, Jimmie Kirk. As Jimmie begins to work, Wolfe addresses the group with a list of assumptions he has made concerning the hit-and-run and Wallen's death:

That Wallen found some object in the car to lead him to the shop

That he carried it with him when he entered the shop

That it was inside his newspaper

That the murderer found and either moved or hid it

That neither Carl nor Tina was the murderer

That the object is still inside the shop

That no proper search for it has yet been made

With prompting from Wolfe, including a suggestion to check the shop for Wallen's fingerprints, Cramer realizes that the object in question must have been one of the magazines in the waiting area, which are labeled with the shop's name and address. Janet remembers seeing Jimmie carrying one wrapped in a hot towel, as if he had been steaming it, and Jimmie dives for the magazines only to be tackled and arrested. He had jumped bail in West Virginia on an assortment of charges, including auto theft; while working at the shop, he had developed a habit of stealing its magazines, one of which he left in the car after abandoning it. Wolfe grumbles over the inconvenience of losing his barber to a murder charge.

In the final chapter, Archie suggests that Wolfe call in a few favors with Washington officials so that Carl and Tina can legally remain in the United States. Wolfe comments that he has been a naturalized citizen for 24 years.


"The Squirt and the Monkey"

Archie Goodwin takes an unusual assignment to help cartoonist Harry Koven recover a gun that has been stolen from a desk drawer in his home office. Harry, creator of the popular Dazzle Dan comic strip, intends to have Archie place his own gun—the same model as the stolen one—in the drawer, then open the drawer in the presence of the five people he suspects of the theft and watch their reactions. These five are Harry's wife Marcelle, his friend Adrian Getz (nicknamed "Squirt" by Harry), his agent/manager Patricia Lowell, and strip artists Pete Jordan and Byram Hildebrand.

Arriving at the Kovens' house, Archie is escorted to a room with a blazing fireplace; the heat is for the benefit of Rookaloo, a pet monkey kept in a cage in this room. After Archie puts his own (unloaded) gun in Harry's desk drawer, Harry becomes indecisive about his plan and asks for time to gather his courage, during which Archie meets the other five and learns of various tensions between them. Several hours later, once Harry is ready to proceed, he and Archie re-check the drawer only to find that Archie's gun has been switched for Harry's. Archie subsequently finds Getz lying dead in Rookaloo's room, shot in the head, and Rookaloo is holding Archie's gun (now loaded) and shivering in a draft from a now-open window.

When the police arrive, Archie makes a full statement and is then arrested by Inspector Cramer for violating the Sullivan Act, since he had been carrying Harry's gun at the time and did not have a permit for it. Cramer's decision is based on Harry's untruthful account of the day's events, in which he claims that he only invited Archie to discuss the idea of introducing a detective storyline into Dazzle Dan. Wolfe's detective license is suspended; he secures Archie's release on bail the next day—for both the weapons charge and a material witness warrant that has been sworn out against him—and files a $1 million slander lawsuit against Harry for damaging his reputation.

Wolfe has the past three years' worth of Gazette issues delivered to the office, and Lon Cohen briefs Archie on various grudges that Harry and the others have against Getz, who turns out to be the owner of the Kovens' house. Later that day, Wolfe and Archie have a hidden tape recorder installed in the office, with controls in the kitchen. Wolfe searches through the Dazzle Dan strips in the Gazette and takes interest in two characters, Aggie Ghool and Haggie Krool, who have a severely lopsided business relationship that favors Aggie. When Patricia stops by the office, Wolfe questions her about portrayals of a monkey in the strip—first depicted maliciously, then suddenly made to appear sympathetic. Patricia admits that Jordan and Hildebrand have very different opinions about Rookaloo, explaining the shift, and also says that she gave it to Getz, who in turn left it in Marcelle's care without asking her. Patricia denies Wolfe's statement of a rumor that the idea for Dazzle Dan originally came from Getz.

That night, Wolfe gathers the principals in his office and allows Cramer to attend as well, on the condition that he remain silent and observe through the office peephole for the first half-hour of the meeting. Wolfe secretly records a portion of the conversation, then plays it back in order to leverage information out of the group. The Aggie/Haggie characters represent the uneven split between Getz and Harry, as indicated by their initials (A.G. and H.K.); Getz, the strip's actual creator, took a 90% share of the strip's revenues and allowed Harry only 10%. Marcelle reveals that she had tried to persuade Harry to stand up to Getz and denounces him for never having the courage to do so. She tries to blame Harry for the murder, but Wolfe points out that her disdain for Rookaloo led her to open the window in the hope that the draft would kill it—a mistake that proves her guilt. Cramer places Marcelle under arrest, with Wolfe's admonishment that he would have been able to close the case much sooner if he had believed Archie's statement.




I really enjoyed these 3 novellas. I don’t know if I actually enjoyed these more than previous Wolfe novella collections or if I’ve just accepted that a good story can still be had in 60 pages. Whatever the reason, I had zero hangups this time around. For which I am thankful.

I absolutely love Archie and Wolfe’s interaction with the police. It is almost always adversarial yet they still all acknowledge the professionalism of the other. Of course, even here we can see how power wants to accumulate more power to itself. The cops are constantly pushing for more power, to deal with the bad guys better, but at some point if they got their wish they’d become 3rd world thugs. Also Archie and Wolfe both fully know their rights and the limits and protections of those rights. How many citizens today in America can factually layout why they can do what they think they can (or why they legally can’t)? Sadly, not nearly enough.

This was one of the times that I was tempted to read another Wolfe book right after this and bedamned to my reading schedule. I just wanted MORE. But not giving in to my literary cravings is what keeps me loving these Wolfe books. If I gave in, I’d get tired and burned out (unless I was Fraggle and read the whole series 3 times in a row in like a year or something totally cray-cray). While my reading rotation is highly personalized, it is that way because it works. I haven’t had a reading slump in years and I want to keep it that way. So with regret but determined, I put Wolfe away for another month or so.

★★★★☆