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Murder by the Book (Nero Wolfe) Paperback – September 1, 1995
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Introduction by David Handler
It wasn’t Leonard Dykes’s writing style that offended. But something in his unpublished tome seemed to lead everyone who read it to a very unhappy ending. Now four people are dead, including the unfortunate author himself, and the police think Nero Wolfe is the only man who can close the book on this novel killer. So the genius sleuth directs his sidekick to set a trap . . . and discovers that the truth is far stranger—and far bloodier—than fiction.
A grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America’s greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained—and puzzled—millions of mystery fans around the world. Now, with his perambulatory man-about-town, Archie Goodwin, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth is back in the original seventy-three cases of crime and detection written by the inimitable master himself, Rex Stout.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 1995
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.58 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100553763113
- ISBN-13978-0553763119
"All the Little Raindrops: A Novel" by Mia Sheridan for $10.39
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more
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Editorial Reviews
Review
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Something remarkable happened that cold Tuesday in January. Inspector Cramer, with no appointment, showed up a little before noon at Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street and, after I had ushered him into the office and he had exchanged greetings with Wolfe and lowered himself into the red leather chair, he said right out, “I dropped in to ask a little favor.”
What was remarkable was his admitting it. From my chair at my desk I made an appropriate noise. He sent me a sharp glance and asked if I had something.
“No, sir,” I told him courteously, “I’m right on top. You just jolted that out of me. So many times I’ve seen you come here for a favor and try to bull it or twist it, it was quite a shock.” I waved it away tolerantly. “Skip it.”
His face, chronically red, deepened a shade. His broad shoulders stiffened, and the creases spreading from the corners of his gray-blue eyes showed more as the eyelids tightened. Then, deciding I was playing for a blurt, he controlled it. “Do you know,” he asked, “whose opinion of you I would like to have? Darwin’s. Where were you while evolution was going on?”
“Stop brawling,” Wolfe muttered at us from behind his desk. He was testy, not because he would have minded seeing either Cramer or me draw blood, but because he always resented being interrupted in the middle of a London Times crossword puzzle. He frowned at Cramer. “What favor, sir?”
“Nothing strenuous.” Cramer relaxed. “A little point about a homicide. A man’s body fished out of the East River a week ago yesterday, off Ninetieth Street. He had been—”
“Named Leonard Dykes,” Wolfe said brusquely, wanting to make it brief so he could finish the puzzle before lunch. “Confidential clerk in a law office, around forty, had been in the water perhaps two days. Evidence of a severe blow on the head, but had died of drowning. No one charged by last evening. I read all the homicide news.”
“I bet you do.” That having slipped out by force of habit, Cramer decided it wasn’t tactful and smiled it off. He could smile when he wanted to. “Not only is no one charged, we haven’t got a smell. We’ve done everything, you know what we’ve done, and we’re stopped. He lived alone in a room-and-bath walk-up on Sullivan Street. By the time we got there it had been combed—not torn apart, but someone had been through it good. We didn’t find anything that’s been any help, but we found one thing that might possibly help if we could figure it out.”
He got papers from his breast pocket, from them selected an envelope, and from the envelope took a folded sheet of paper. “This was inside a book, a novel. I can give you the name of the book and the numbers of the pages it was found between, but I don’t think that has a bearing.” He got up to hand the paper to Wolfe. “Take a look at it.”
Wolfe ran his eyes over it, and, since I was supposed to be up on everything that went on in that office so as to be eligible for blame if and when required, I arose and extended a hand. He passed it over.
“It’s in Dykes’s handwriting,” Cramer said. “The paper is a sheet from a scratch pad there on a table in his room. There were more pads like it in a drawer of the table.”
I was giving it a look. The paper was white, ordinary, six by nine, and at the top was the word “Tentative,” underscored, written with pencil in a neat almost perpendicular hand. Below it was a list of names:
Sinclair Meade
Sinclair Sampson
Barry Bowen
David Yerkes
Ernest Vinson
Dorian Vick
Baird Archer
Oscar Shiff
Oscar Cody
Lawrence McCue
Mark McCue
Mark Flick
Mack Flick
Louis Gill
Lewis Gill
I handed it back to Cramer and returned to my chair.
“Well?” Wolfe asked impatiently.
“I was on my way uptown and dropped in to show it to you.” Cramer folded the sheet and put it in the envelope. “Not so much to get help, it probably has nothing to do with the homicide, but it’s got me irritated and I wondered what you’d say, so I dropped in. A list of fifteen names written by Dykes on a piece of his scratch paper, and not one of them can be found in any phone directory in the metropolitan area! Or anywhere else. We can find no record anywhere of a man with any of those names. None of Dykes’s friends or associates ever heard of a man with one of those names, so they say. I mean, taking the first and last names together, as they are on that list. Of course we haven’t checked the whole damn country, but Dykes was a born and bred New Yorker, with no particular connections elsewhere that we know of. What the hell kind of a list of names is that?”
Wolfe grunted. “He made them up. He was considering an alias, for himself or someone else.”
“We thought of that, naturally. If so, no one ever used it that we can find.”
“Keep trying if you think it’s worth it.”
“Yeah. But we’re only human. I just thought I’d show it to a genius and see what happened. With a genius you never know.”
Wolfe shrugged. “I’m sorry. Nothing has happened.”
“Well, by God, I hope you’ll excuse me”—Cramer got up. He was sore, and you couldn’t blame him—“for taking up your time and no fee. Don’t bother, Goodwin.”
He turned and marched out. Wolfe bent over his crossword puzzle, frowned at it, and picked up his pencil.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House Publishing Group; 4th Print edition (September 1, 1995)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553763113
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553763119
- Item Weight : 9 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.58 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #170,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,573 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Books)
- #1,636 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #13,411 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Rex Todhunter Stout (/staʊt/; December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction, particularly the 33 novels and about 40 novellas that featured the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin between 1934 and 1975.
In 1959, Stout received the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon XXXI, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century.
In addition to writing fiction, Stout was a prominent public intellectual for decades. Stout was active in the early years of the American Civil Liberties Union and a founder of the Vanguard Press. He served as head of the Writers' War Board during World War II, became a radio celebrity through his numerous broadcasts, and was later active in promoting world federalism. He was the long-time president of the Authors Guild, during which he sought to benefit authors by lobbying for reform of the domestic and international copyright laws,[specify] and served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by CBS Radio and photographer uncredited [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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A month or so later, Joan Wellman, a pretty, young reader for a small publishing house is killed by a hit-and-run driver, and her father wants Wolfe to investigate. Wolfe notices that the name ‘Baird Archer’, an author whose novel Joan had read and rejected for her employer, had also appeared on the dead law clerk’s list of aliases. Archie is chagrined to learn that he had failed to spot the tie-in, but then neither had the police.
When a second woman is murdered, almost under Archie’s nose, he goes ballistic. The first victim had worked for the law firm of Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs, so Archie bundled up several boxes of his boss’s beloved orchids and invited every single female employee (bar one whose voice he didn’t like) from the firm to dinner at Wolfe’s brownstone. Wolfe okays the orchids, but then he overhears Archie inviting the women to dinner in his brownstone:
“Archie.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What was that flummery about dinner?”
“No flummery. I haven’t told you, I’ve decided to ask them to stay to dinner. It will be much—”
“Stay to dinner here?”
“Certainly.”
“No.” It was his flattest no.
Archie manages to talk his misogynistic boss into letting the ladies in to dinner (Wolfe ate out that night), and there occurs one of the most memorable scenes in any of Stout’s detective novels, as Archie plies the ladies with orchids, drink, and Fritz’s cooking, and finally gets them to open up about the murdered law clerk.
Not only is “Murder by the Book” one of the author’s most tangled and devious mysteries, but the dialogue between the man of action (Archie) and the man of intellect (Nero) spits and sparkles and keeps you wired to the story until the very satisfactory denouement.
The characters are something else, the lawyers and their Secretaries in the law firm "Corrigan, Phelps,Kustin & Briggs". After "O'Malley, Corrigan & Phelps", had to rearrange their law firm, because of jury tampering.
When certain people found out who did what there was informing the courts and writing about it, that were it got dangerous for several people and they didn't see it coming before it was too late.
I stayed up late a lot to find out what Nero Wolfe was thinking and planning with Archie Goodwin. The minute I thought I had figured out who, how, when, I knew why. It took a 120 degree turn. Which meant I had to keep reading longer.
I have read quite a few of Nero Wolfe books and have not been DISAPPOINTED, I love detective stories that keep your mind going. I would tell as many people as possible to try one of these Nero Wolfe books and you have to read more of them and the beauty of it you don't have to read them in order.
Try one I dare you, you will love it!!!!!!
Top reviews from other countries
Murder By The Book will misdirect you as you try to solve the case before Nero Wolfe can and if you are like me, you will fail. That is the fun of these books. It is doubtful that you will spot the clues as you read but you will still enjoy what you read.
1月のある日、おなじみのクレイマー警部がレナード・ダイクスという水死体の所持品の中にあった紙切れを持ってウルフの事務所にやってくる。
その紙には15人の人名が書かれていた。クレイマーはウルフに何か思いつかないかと聞くが勿論そんなことはいくらウルフでも無理な話で、クレイマーはそのまま帰ってしまう。その後、6週間経ったころ、ジョン・ウェルマンという人物が事故死した自分の娘は殺されたのではないかと思われるので調査して欲しいとやって来る。彼の娘はある出版社に勤める編集者であり、事故死した夜は一旦原稿の採用を断ったベアード・アーチャーという人物と会う約束していたという。
このベアード・アーチャー(Baird Archer)という名前がクレイマー警部が持ってきた紙切れに書かれていたということをウルフが覚えていたことから一気に物語は事件性を帯びてくる。読者の多くはここで前のページに戻って名前を確認するだろう。それほど些細なことをウルフが覚えているという設定がすごい。
ウルフはクレイマー警部に連絡し、二つの事件にはつながりがあると考えてもいいと思うということで警察との協力をもちかける。
当時のアメリカでは小説の手書き原稿を清書してくれるタイピストがいるということで調査を始めるが、アーチーがあるタイピストの事務所を訪れてみるとそのタイピストは事務所の窓から突き落とされた後だった。わずか2~3分の差で殺されたところだった。その事務所の机からベアード・アーチャーが支払った
領収書が見つかり、3つの事件がつながる。ベアード・アーチャーとはいったい何者なのか?
レナード・ダイクスが勤めていた弁護士事務所で関係者の調査がなされるが、手がかりは中々つかめない。
アーチーは一計を案じ、女性職員全員にランの花を贈り、ウルフの事務所でのパーティーに誘う。10名の女性職員が参加し、パーティは盛り上がるが、アーチーが巧妙にに仕掛けた罠により女性間の派閥のいさかいが始まる。
ゴシップ好きの女性の口に戸は立てられないという事が改めて認識させられる。だが、犯人の特定までには至らず、最後の手がかりを得ようとアーチーはダイクスの妹が住むロサンゼルスに飛ぶ事になる。(勿論ウルフに飛行機で移動することなど不可能)
そこでついにダイクスがベアード・アーチャーというペンネームを使ったという事が確認されるが・・・・
だが、犯人は特定できない。ウルフは事務所に座ったままで何もしていないようだ。アーチーが遂に我慢できなくなり、ウルフにどなってしまう。
「ええい、くそ!仕事したらどうなんです?(Goddam it, go to work!)」、だがウルフにはすんなりかわされてしまう。
手がかりが全て与えられるエラリイ・クイーンの国名シリーズ等と違ってレックス・スタウトの小説ではアーチー・グッドウィン君が見聞したことを元に話が書かれているので、アーチーが見聞しないことは私たち読者にも知らされないのである。
本書でもウルフはアーチにも詳しく知らせないでソール・パンザーを使って何事かを調査させている。決定的証拠を集めているのだと思われるが残念ながら
教えてはもらえない。ソールはニューヨークではウルフに次ぐ名探偵とアーチーも認めている程なのでここは我慢するしかない。
最後にウルフは事務所に集めた関係者の前で圧倒的な迫力と完璧なロジックにて犯人を追い詰めていくのである。
「料理長が多すぎる」と同様、登場人物がかなり多いが一人一人の人物がそれぞれ個性豊かで読みごたえがある物語になっている。
果たして犯人は・・・