This week, mystery authors and their faithful readers are gathering in Toronto for the annual mystery festival known as Bouchercon. There will be four days of non-stop talk about mysteries, a fair amount will be consumed at the bar, and there will be "external" events as well. One of those events will be a banquet - now sold out, by the way - by, and for, the Wolfe Pack, the fan club that honors the memory of author Rex Stout and his inimitable detective duo, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I'll be one of the more than a hundred guests.
I'm taking it for granted that my readers here are very familiar with the Nero Wolfe books. They're certainly among my favorites, books that can be re-read with some frequency, because they offer the same (or even increased) pleasure each time we read them. I thought this might be a good excuse for me to re-read three of Stout's novellas which were published together in 1953 as Triple Jeopardy. That's the title of the book which is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
It's a good Wolfean collection - not a great one, but a good one.
The first novella is called “Home to Roost.” A young man – an extreme left-wing type suspected of being a Communist - is poisoned by swallowing what he thought was his regular vitamin pill. His aunt and uncle, finding themselves stonewalled by an uncooperative FBI and equally silent New York City police department, turn to Nero Wolfe to solve the murder and – they hope – prove that the young man was no Communist.
In the second story, called “The Cop-Killer,” we learn first of all that Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin both have their hair cut at a neighborhood barber shop. Unfortunately, this winds up pulling both men into the midst of a murder case, when an over-ambitious police officer, searching for a hit-and-run driver, is stabbed to death in the barber shop. Police think they know who committed the murder. Wolfe and Archie don’t agree…and are prepared to do something about it. There are some lovely confrontations with Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins along the way.
The final novella in the book has the rather picturesque title of “The Squirt and the Monkey.” Archie finds himself suspected of murder and Wolfe finds his detective license at risk as they confront the artists responsible for a popular – and unusual – comic strip…and try to figure out which of them may really be guilty of murder.
Triple Jeopardy is an enjoyable trio of shorter mystery stories. It’s well worth your reading time. And I'll be delighted to drink your health at this week's Wolfe Pack banquet in Toronto!
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