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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.
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