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Title:
And Be A Villain
Series: Nero Wolfe #13
Author:
Rex Stout
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Mystery
Pages: 207
Words: 65K
From Wikipedia
Cyril
Orchard, the publisher of the weekly horse racing sheet Track
Almanac, is poisoned with cyanide during a live soft drink commercial
on a popular radio talk show. A media sensation, the case attracts
the attention of Nero Wolfe, who is facing a crippling income tax
bill, and Archie Goodwin is dispatched to convince the producers and
sponsors to hire Wolfe to investigate the crime. The police have
identified several suspects, including the show's host Madeline
Fraser; her business manager, friend and former sister-in-law Deborah
Koppel; her on-air side-kick Bill Meadows; Tully Strong and Nathan
Straub, representatives of the show's sponsors; script-writer Elinor
Vance; Nancylee Shepherd, the head of Fraser's fan-club; and F.O.
Savarese, an assistant professor of mathematics and the show's other
guest.
Although
his initial investigations seem unpromising, Wolfe eventually learns
that a separate bottle of the beverage being advertised was provided
for Fraser, identified with tape around the neck. When pressed, the
producers admit that Fraser is unable to drink the beverage she was
advertising because it gives her indigestion, and instead drinks iced
coffee from the bottle instead. As the marked bottle was the one
containing the poison, this suggests that Fraser was the intended
victim instead of Orchard.
Wolfe
passes this information on to Inspector Cramer, seeing this as an
opportunity to claim his fee without further work. When the press --
prompted by Archie -- criticises him for his lack of effort, however,
he is stung into further action but, to Archie's surprise, begins
investigating a different murder. Beula Poole, the publisher of an
independent political and economics journal, has been shot dead in
her offices days before. Although there is no apparent connection
between the crimes, Wolfe is skeptical that two independent
publishers would be murdered within weeks of each other without any
link. His investigations reveal that the magazines were in fact the
front for a sophisticated blackmail operation which targeted its
victims using the threat of slander to compel them to purchase
subscriptions for a year. This, in turn, brings Wolfe into contact
with Arnold Zeck, the shadowy and powerful criminal mastermind behind
the operation, who warns Wolfe not to interfere in his affairs.
After
the blackmail story is published Walter Anderson, the president of
the soft drink company, tries to end Wolfe's investigations by paying
him off and announcing that his company is withdrawing sponsorship
from Fraser's show. With no further leads, Wolfe sends Archie to
Fraser and her entourage with a fake letter implicating Elinor Vance
in order to try and shake a response out of the suspects. During the
meeting, Deborah Koppel dies after eating a piece of candy laced with
cyanide. Discovering the letter on Archie, the police threaten to
charge him with obstructing justice, but they are interrupted by a
phone call from a rival radio station. Wolfe has announced that he
knows the identity of the murderer and threatens to reveal it on-air
that night.
To
avoid humiliation, the charges against Archie are dismissed and Wolfe
is permitted to reveal the identity of the murderer in his office.
Once the suspects have arrived, Wolfe presses Anderson to reveal the
reason he tried to terminate his contract with Wolfe and Fraser's
show. Anderson had discovered that Madeline Fraser had received
blackmail letters, and it is revealed that Fraser was being accused
of murdering her husband years before. However, while the blackmail
syndicate had previously created false claims about their victims to
slander them, in this case they had unwittingly stumbled upon the
truth – Fraser had in fact murdered her husband. Fraser murdered
Orchard and Poole to conceal her secret, and Koppel when she began to
suspect the truth. Fraser is arrested and charged with murder. The
novel ends with Wolfe receiving a phone call from Zeck,
congratulating him on solving the case — and warning him not to
interfere in the crime lord's affairs.
The righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight,
but the wicked falls by his own wickedness.
~Proverbs 11:5 (English Standard Version)
This Bible verse is the first thing that sprang to my mind when
thinking about reviewing this book. The second part of the verse
anyway. Fake blackmailers stumble upon a real crime and pay the
consequences and the criminal gets hers as well. Evil devouring
itself.
This was a book of several crimes that appeared unconnected but ended
up all being part of one big crime. It reminded me very much of Dan
Willis and his urban fantasy series The
Arcane Casebook featuring Alex Lockerby. In fact,
thinking about it, I suspect that Willis has read enough of Rex Stout
to be influenced in his own writing. That's really neither here nor
there, but it was something else that popped into my brain while
reading this story.
There was also a LOT of negative interaction between Archie and Wolfe
this time around. Mainly because Archie deals with the bills and
Wolfe is just lazy. I am now curious what a book about each of them
on their own would be like. I am being careful about that wish
though, because that very interaction, whether positive or negative,
is what drives my interest a lot of the time.
Overall, another good entry in the Nero Wolfe series and I'm happy
with what I read.
★★★✬☆
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