It began with the unsolved murder of a clerk in a law office and a list of names that meant absolutely nothing to anyone. It ended with several more murders, all of them apparently tied to a book - a book so dangerous that anyone who might have read it could wind up dead.
That's the basic plot line in "Murder by the Book," by Rex Stout, a 1951 mystery featuring Nero Wolfe and his assistant, the irrepressible Archie Goodwin. It's the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.
Wolfe and Archie are hired by a midwestern businessman whose daughter has been killed by a hit-and-run driver. Her father thinks the police aren't paying enough attention. Wolfe agrees, particularly when the man produces a letter from his daughter which includes a name Wolfe recognizes as having been linked to an earlier murder. It quickly becomes apparent that the deaths are in some way connected to an unpublished manuscript - a manuscript which has disappeared. The problem, for both the police and Nero Wolfe, is that there is no obvious clue, no way to figure out why the missing manuscript should be so deadly.
This is one of my favorites. There's more to the characters in this book that causes them to linger in the reader's memory, particularly the relatives of two of the victims. In order to make and prove his case, Nero Wolfe has to stage what has to be one of the best office confrontation scenes in any of the books.
"Murder by the Book" is vintage Rex Stout, writing at the top of his form. It is available in paperback and there's an Amazon Kindle edition. I recommend it very highly.
Les - ...and when you say 'top of his form' that's saying something considerable. I've always liked this series, especially the interplay between Goodwin and Wolfe, and this particular one has a particularly interesting mystery behind it I think. Thanks for highlighting it.
Posted by: Margot Kinberg | October 01, 2012 at 07:31 AM
Margot, I think most of us read and reread these books because of that interplay. Wolfe, Archie, and the regular characters - Fritz, Theodore, Saul, Fred, Orrie, Cramer, Stebbins...the interplay is always entertaining. These people are our friends (or adversaries) and very much worth our time and attention.
Posted by: Les Blatt | October 01, 2012 at 11:57 AM
Fabulous, fabulous, FABULOUS book! One of my all time favorites. Thanks for writing about it, Les. I never get tired of re-reading this one. I usually read this and PLOT IT YOURSELF one after the other.
The killer in both these books is particularly heartless and I like that there are multiple murders - keeps things hopping.
But as usual, I especially love Wolfe and Archie and life in the brownstone.
Posted by: Yvette | October 01, 2012 at 02:11 PM
Yvette, "Plot It Yourself" is another of my favorites - particularly the opening portion, where Wolfe proves to his own satisfaction that all the cases of plagiarism can be traced to a single person. It's another of Stout's best plots.
Posted by: Les Blatt | October 01, 2012 at 02:18 PM