"The Rubber Band," by Rex Stout

Here's an early Nero Wolfe book with some very unusual features from Wolfe's perennial battle with police:

• Nero Wolfe hides a young woman in his house, to keep her from the police;
• The police outrage Wolfe by searching the house with a search warrant;
• And Inspector Cramer actually smokes a cigar rather than just chewing it!

It's all incidental, of course, to murder - and, in this case, to a story that has roots in a lawless Nevada mining town in 1895, a near-lynching, a promise unkept, and a disreputable character called "Rubber" Coleman. It's the story of "The Rubber Band," by Rex Stout, the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

"The Rubber Band" was only Stout's third novel about Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and the rest of the 35th Street crowd. It's still a bit rough around the edges - Archie, in particular, has some maturing to do - but I think it's one of the better plots, overall.

The story begins with a businessman trying to hire Wolfe to investigate an apparent theft from his office. Before he can do so, however, the woman who is suspected in that theft, Clara Fox, shows up, trying to hire Wolfe to investigate (and collect) an old and potentially very valuable debt. More than 40 years earlier, her father was involved in an escapade in a Nevada mining town, where he and his friends - members of the "Rubber band," led by Rubber Coleman - freed a man about to be lynched by a mob. In return, the man - an Englishman - had promised them a share of his fortune. Now, 40 years later, that man has finally been traced. He's a wealthy English diplomat, and Clara Fox and others want their share of his wealth.

But there's much more - and, obviously, there is a murder. And, with the police now very interested in Clara Fox, Wolfe is forced to hide her in the brownstone. The scene where the police - in the form of Lieutenant Rowcliff, Archie Goodwin's nemesis - search the brownstone for Clara Fox is, by itself, worth the price of admission. The book, of course, ends with one of Nero Wolfe's distinctive office confrontations.

"The Rubber Band" is, I think, excellent in many ways. It is my entry for the 1930s in the "Deadly Decades" division of Bev Hankins' Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge at the My Reader's Block blog. The book is available in print and also as an eBook; for Nero Wolfe fans, it is a must-read.

Comments

[Yvette]

I love this book! I reread it every couple of years. Compulsive of me, I know. But I can't help myself. You're so right about the scene in which Rowcliff searches the brownstone. FABULOUS! And of course, Wolfe never forgot this insult to himself or his home. :)

[Les Blatt]

Yvette, that is a wonderful scene. I'm also VERY partial to the one where Cramer actually does light one of his awful cigars - I don't know if he actually does that in any of the other books!