One of the short Nero Wolfe novellas in And Four to Go rates some special attention from readers because it is one of the few Rex Stout stories to appear in two different versions.
According to Stout's official biographer, John J. McAleer, after Stout finished writing "Murder Is No Joke," he was asked by the Saturday Evening Post to revise and expand it for publication in the magazine. He did so, turning what McAleer says was originally a 48-page story into one that ran 79 pages. Surprisingly, it continues to exist in both formats. As "Murder is No Joke," it was published in the collection And Four to Go, but it appeared in the Saturday Evening Post as a three-part serialization - and, after Stout's death, in the posthumously-published Death Times Three - as "Frame-up for Murder."
Writing in an introduction to Death Times Three, McAleer says the revised version is much better than the original. I leave that decision up to you, as you can easily get
This is news to me, Less. Hmmmm. I think I have both these collections in paperback. I'll have to check and see. Come the new year I have tons of reading lined up.
Posted by: Yvette | December 15, 2011 at 12:55 PM
I sympathize with the TBR pile problem, Yvette. My own pile will, one day, come crashing down, burying me beneath a stack of unread books. And my wife, vindicated, will probably say, "I told you so"...
Posted by: Les Blatt | December 15, 2011 at 01:24 PM
Also two different versions of the Hattie story: "Counterfeit For Murder" in "Homicide Trinity" and the generally considered inferior "Assault on a Brownstone," written earlier but published in the posthumous "Death Times Three
Posted by: tina | December 15, 2011 at 10:52 PM
"Death Times Three" is an interesting collection, Tina. The collection consists of the two rewritten/alternative novellas - "Assault on a Brownstone" and "Frame-up for Murder" - and a third novella, "Bitter End" which is a complete rewrite of what was originally a Tecumseh Fox novel - "Bad for Business." That one works MUCH better as a Wolfe novella!
Posted by: Les Blatt | December 16, 2011 at 07:51 AM