My visit to the Classic Mysteries vault this week has brought forth another of my favorite detectives - two of them, actually: Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. They rarely fail to give readers a great deal of pleasure. I think the case they tackle in Rex Stout's Murder by the Book is a particularly good one: what is there about a particular book - an unpublished manuscript, really - that is proving so deadly that everyone who has read it appears to have become a murder victim? I reviewed it on the Classic Mysteries podcast some years ago, and here is a transcript (slightly edited) of that audio review for your reading pleasure:
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You have probably heard other readers describe a book as a real “killer” book. Generally, that means a really terrific, interesting book, an especially powerful one, a book so good that you can’t put it down. That sort of thing. As a general rule, we don’t mean for the phrase to be taken literally. But, as with any rule, there must be an exception – and there is, of course. Consider the time that Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin came across what apparently was a real “killer” book – so real that everybody who might ever have read it turns up as a murder victim. It happens in Murder by the Book, by Rex Stout.
As an author, Rex Stout had a great deal of respect for the written word. Books play an important part in several of the Nero Wolfe stories – whether as indicators of Wolfe’s mood (based on what he is reading and how he is reading it) or, occasionally, as central plot points in a given story.
Certainly that’s very much on display in Murder by the Book, published in 1951. The book begins with a sort of preface: Inspector Cramer comes to visit Nero Wolfe to ask a favor – not a regular occurrence, to be sure. The police are trying to figure out who killed a man whose body was found floating in the river. The man had been a confidential clerk at a high-powered law firm. There aren’t very many clues – but there is one: a list of names, apparently made by the victim. Police can’t seem to trace anyone on the list. Cramer wants to know if any of the names mean anything to Wolfe. They don’t. End of request, and, for the moment, the end of that murder case.
Several weeks later, Wolfe gets a new client: a Midwestern businessman wants to hire Wolfe to find out who killed his daughter. He thinks the police aren’t giving the case the attention it deserves – they seem to think it was a hit-and-run accident. In the course of laying out the facts for Wolfe, he shows the detective a letter from his daughter, who had been reading unsolicited manuscripts received by her employer, a New York City publisher. In that letter, she mentions having received a phone call from the author of one of those manuscripts – and Wolfe recognizes the name of the author as being one of the names on that list which Inspector Cramer had shown him several weeks earlier.
So Wolfe begins his investigation – and there is, very soon, another murder. The victim this time is a typist who apparently had typed the same unpublished manuscript that the previous victim had read.
The conclusion is unavoidable: it appears that anyone who might have read that manuscript…will become (or already HAS become) a murder victim.
So Wolfe begins investigating in earnest. That investigation takes him back to the powerful law firm where the very first victim had been employed – a law firm whose leading partner had been disbarred for bribing a jury foreman.
There will be another murder before Wolfe is able to crack the case – and it will take one of his most daring office charades to trap the killer and explain the motives behind all the murders.
As always, Archie Goodwin’s comments and wisecracks help to keep the book moving. Clues are fairly scarce on the ground – this killer, apparently, makes few mistakes – but the plot is pretty solid and some of the characters – particularly the second victim’s father (who is Wolfe’s client) and the third victim’s mother – add a degree of poignancy that you don’t always find in a Nero Wolfe mystery. Murder by the Book remains available, and you can easily find it in print or as an e-book.
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You may listen to the complete podcast recording of my review by clicking here.
Next: Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy L. Sayers.
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