Customer Reviews (2)

Murder For Christmas by Agatha Christie
On Christmas Eve, the aging Simeon Lee invites his family home for an old-fashioned holiday celebration. However, his motive for gathering his nearest and "dearest" around him is not in the true holiday spirit. That night, he is found murdered in his locked study. Hercule Poirot arrives to solve this "locked room mystery." Usual cast of suspects plus a stranger from abroad. Not the best story in the collection, but still a good read/puzzle. For another Christmas manor mystery, try Christmas is Murder: A Rex Graves Mystery, a novel by C.S. Challinor and seasonal mystery In the Dead of Winter (Ivy Towers Mystery Series #1) (Heartsong Presents Mysteries #3) by Nancy Mehl.

Great fun for the short story mystery lover!
I received this as a gift and it was great fun to read. It contains 26 short stories revolving around Xmas by some of the great writers such as Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Damon Runyan, etc. A great gift for the mystery lover! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

quality and timely
The book was one of the best old books I have purchased and the delivery was spot on ... prompt!! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

it's the wrong item!
Amazon clearly markets this as rather lavishly illustrated with vintage NYC photos, however the edition they sent to me was apparently a later one, with no illustrations whatsoever.How disappointing, I wanted this for the flavors of a vanished New York, as much as the absurd recipes -- shame on you Amazon for mixing this up with another edition!

Nice book but......
This is a great book but please be aware that this issue does NOT have photos in it. It is all text. Yes I will enjoy reading and cooking from this book but I am disappointed that there are no photos. Another reviewer commented on the lovely photos in the book but they're not in my copy. Not to worry just my 2 cents worth.

Wolfe & Goodwin
As previously noted here, this is an excellent cookbook. Some ingredients are difficult for me to find so I substitute when possible. Creatively written.

DelectableEats and Fun to Read too
I became introduced, and subsequently hooked on the Wolfe books through watching the A & E series a few years ago. While I own all of them I have thus far only managed to get through half of them. As I began reading the books I thought to myself if ever a series begged for a cookbook it was this one, and, much to my delight,there was one.

I recieved the cookbook as a present and have thouroughly enjoyed cooking meals from it. I have yet to make some of the more adventurous dishes such as the Starlings, Grouse (raised on fresh huckleberries), and turttle soup; due both to lack of fund$ and lack of supply. However, I have enjoyed making both the melon and crab salads. As well, I highly recomend Wolfe's Onion soup [especially if you have a cold], Cornbread Griddlecakes, Spareribs and Cassoulet all are delicous and finger-licking good. I warn you now the Nero Wolfe Cookbook is not for those who are on a diet Atkins or otherwise, the character of Wolfe is not known for his sveltness and, besides his relatively sedentary lifestyle, his epicurean nature is a clear indication as to why.

Inserted througout the cookbook are but a minutia of the plethora of food references found throughout Stout's, arguably most successful, series. These mouth watering recipes and qoutes make the cook/reader want to go and read more of the books to see what else Wolfe ate which in turn makes you want to go make more of the food because the books are so detailed about what is served.My only reget in reading this book is that Stout did not publish a second volume of Wolfe's dishes since readers of the series are left wanting more of the recipes to Wolfe's great feasts

Invitation to the Brownstone.
"I beg you not to entrust these dishes to your cook unless he is an artist.Cook them yourself, and only for an occasion that is worthy of them.They are items for an epicure, but are neither finicky nor pretentious; you and your guests will find them as satisfying to the appetite as they are pleasing to the palate.None is beyond your abilities if you have the necessary respect for the art of fine cooking -
and are willing to spend the time and care which an excellent dish deserves and must have.Good appetite!"

The above quote from the account one of Nero Wolfe's first investigations ("Too Many Cooks," 1937) serves as one of several introductory notes to this compilation of recipes from Rex Stout's famous mystery series involving the New York epicurean, orchid lover and heavy-weight detective whose exploits have long become as indelible a part of literary history as those of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey.And the quote not only sums up to perfection Wolfe's view of the meals served in his house; it also - consequently - provides a taste of the approach one should adopt in using this cookbook.For unlike many other literature-related recipe collections, "The Nero Wolfe Cookbook" need not rely on a great many third-party sources to determine what the great detective might have consumed; a key part of the mysteries themselves are the descriptions of Wolfe's meals, and Wolfe's (as well as his Swiss chef Fritz Brenner's) attitude towards food in general.

All of the recipes presented here were initially developed by chef Michael S. Romano and tested personally by Rex Stout and "New Yorker" food critic Sheila Hibben.And it's all there, from Eggs au Beurre Noir, griddle cakes, and apricot omelet to Fritz Brenner's various duck, duckling, and pork dishes, Wolfe's "relapses," and even the complete menu served by Fritz on the occasion of the annual Ten for Aristology dinner in "Poison a la Carte:"Blinis with Sour Cream (of course without the fatal dose of arsenic someone had added, to Fritz's eternal horror and shame, to one of the guests' plates!), Green-Turtle Soup, Flounder Poached in White Wine, Mussel and Mushroom Sauce, Roast Pheasant, Suckling Pig, Chestnut Croquettes, Salad with Devil's Rain Dressing and Cheese.As you would expect with cuisine as refined as this (and given that we're talking, after all, about the culinary arts of the early and mid-20th century), not all ingredients are easy to track down or even still available; turtles being the obvious example - and frankly, I don't quite share Wolfe's predilection for such things as starlings and marrow dumplings, either.But even foregoing those recipes, there are plenty of others to try your hand at, and to get a flavor of the culinary delights that fueled Wolfe's and his "legman" and chronicler Archie Goodwin's investigations.

In addition to the recipes, the book is lavishly garnished with quotes and excerpts from Rex Stout's - err, excuse me, Archie Goodwin's - narrations, providing the context in which individual dishes were served, as well as an array of photographs by renowned photo artists such as Norman and Lionel Wurts, Roy Perry, Samuel Gottscho, Andreas Feininger, John Muller, and Bernice Abbot; displaying the New York of the 1930s through the 1950s (by many considered the city's golden years, and the heyday of Wolfe's and Archie Goodwin's career), with brownstones like Wolfe's on West 35th Street and other fashionable residences (seen both from outside and inside), 5th Avenue, the Financial District and Times Square, the Empire State Building, Central Park and other green spots, Madison Square Garden, Fulton and other markets, the Staten Island Ferry, Grand Central and Penn Stations, and New York restaurants of various degrees of elegance and refinement.Thus, this is much more than "just" a cookbook - in fact, it's an introduction to Wolfe's entire world and style of life; tastefully uniting the essence of Archie Goodwin's manifold accounts in a single volume.

"I have not a great hope that many people will eat superior meals because they buy this book and use it," cautions Fritz Brenner in his own foreword."The facts about food and cooking can be learned and understood by anyone with good sense, but if the feeling of the art of cooking is not in your blood and bones the most you can expect is that what you put on your table will be mangeable. ... But I do not think this book will make your food any the worse.At least it should help with some of the facts."And that, after all, is plenty already, I think.So savor, enjoy, and, in Wolfe's words - good appetite!

Also recommended:
The Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant Complete Seafood Cookbook
The Union Square Cafe Cookbook: 160 Favorite Recipes from New York's Acclaimed Restaurant
Around the World Cookbook
Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day
Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant: Ethnic and Regional Recipes from the Cooks at the Legendary Restaurant (Cookery)
Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: More Than 650 Meatless Recipes from Around the World
On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals (4th Edition) Textbook only
Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006 ... Read more

Product Description
Three Stories. And Be a Villain, Black Orchids and Champagne For One ... Read more

Product Description
"Target Practice" brings together for the first time the complete short fiction that Rex Stout wrote for the popular "All-Story Magazine", the famous journal which published the cream of his early writings. Including "Secrets", the first crime fiction Stout wrote, and "Justice Ends at Home", with a detective team foreshadowing Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, these 17 stories stand among the master's best. . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Before Nero Wolfe, there was this.
Target Practice is a collection of early Rex Stout short stories which were originally published in the 1910's and 20's in the now long defunct "All-Stories Magazine." Some were published under the pseudonym "Evan Day." Stout had mostly disavowed his early work and didn't have copies of them in his personal papers after he died.

A Stout fan came to the rescue a number of years later while researching Stout's early work. Apparently, he had to go to extraordinary lengths to find them.The only copies left in existence were in the United States Library of Congress. Not only did the library refuse to let the editor look at the magazines because of their fragile state, but they had no intention of preserving them either. Foolish really.

It took intervention by a member of Congress to get permission to have the magazines copied.A transcription later and the stories along with a few novels ("Her Forbidden Knight", "A Prize for Princes", "The Great Legend" and "Under The Andes") were published. The tale of how the editor of this collection managed to get hold of this stuff after being hidden since the 1920's is recounted in the forward of the Carroll & Graf publication of "Under the Andes."

For the fan of Rex Stout, the sixteen stories included in "Target Practice" are a must read. These are the early writings of Stout, and while not up to the level of the best of the Nero Wolfe stories, they are quite readable and entertaining. One can see the development of Stout's characteristic style and wit.

Lest one be misled, not all of the stories contained in this collection are mysteries. Several of them ARE mysteries and they aren't bad. The rest fit into the realm of general fiction or perhaps suspense. Most contain twist endings as well.They're all well written, readable and quite entertaining.

My favorite of the bunch is "Justice Ends at Home", the tale of a man accused of murder and defended by a lawyer who passed the bar only for the prestige of it, not actually to practice law. The story is fun and shows a good dose of the sharp plotting that Stout would use later in his Nero Wolf Novels. Like the best of those novels, it has a twist end that is both well written and clever.

In short, I highly recommend this book to the Stout fan curious about what Stout wrote before he became famous. To the non fan, the stories are both readable and entertaining.

Very Early Rex Stout
This book is VERY EARLY Rex Stout.Devotees to Nero Wolf will be greatly disappointed as the characters are one dimentional (grim)and the stories are poor imitations of O Henry.My advicesave your money.
... Read more

Product Description
A grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America’s greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of fiction’s greatest detectives. Here, in Stout’s first two complete Wolfe mysteries, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth and his trusty man-about-town Archie Goodwin solve their most baffling cases.

Fer-de-lance
The fer-de-lance is among the most deadly snakes known to man. When someone makes a present of one to Nero Wolfe, his partner, Archie Goodwin, suspects it means Wolfe is getting close to solving the devilishly clever murders of an immigrant and a college president. But this is a case with more twists than an angry rattler...and if Wolfe doesn’t handle it with extreme care, he’ll be the next one struck by a killer with poison in his heart.

The League of Frightened Men
Paul Chapin’s Harvard cronies never forgave themselves for the hazing prank that left their friend a cripple. Yet they believed that Paul himself had forgiven them—until a class reunion ends in death and a series of poems promising more of the same. Now this league of frightened men is desperate for Nero Wolfe’s help. But can even the great detective outwit a killer smart enough to commit an unseen murder…in plain sight? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Great writing marred by typos
This Bantam edition of Rex Stout's first two Nero Wolfe novels is littered with typographical errors. They are not arcane errors that only grammar geeks would care about; they are careless errors in which words are misspelled, the wrong words used, or entire phrases seem to be missing. A competent proofreader would have caught the typos. Any reader is likely to be annoyed by them.

The pity of it is that the stories themselves are wonderful, but they need a better setting than this. It's like seeing Wolfe's orchids displayed in a cracked, dime-store vase. Don't miss the stories, but choose a different edition.

The First Wolfe Novels--Among the Best
I love almost all the Nero Wolfe novels [none of the imitators or TV shows match up].The early novels are usually more complex and well-developed than the later ones.These are the first two, I think, and the first is among the best, the second in the top half of Stout's works.Fer-de-Lance is great; the characters aren't fully grown here, but you can see where Stout started in honing in on the archetypal characters Wolfe and Archie.Wolfe deduces one surprise after another;the chains of subtle reasoning are close to being implausible, but are amazing and convincing anyway, more than in almost any of his other novels.The villain is impressive, almost as smart as Wolfe.

I didn't like 'The League...' as much.It's more far-fetched, indulging Stout's interest in almost psychotic characters.It's still complex, and has some entertaining deductive twists, as well as neat confrontations among characters.But Stout shouldn't have started breaking the rules governing his characters so early [Wolfe leaving the house].

Fun Reading
I enjoy reading everything from ancient history to murder mysteries and spy thrillers, butI have found nothing more "fun" to read than Rex Stout books. Stout has developed great characters in Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

Quick, fun read
I've grown up knowing about Nero Wolfe.I remember the TV show when I was a kid, and there's also a more current TV series that looks pretty good, though I have to admit I don't remember watching any of the episodes of either series.I worked in a library for several years, shelving books for a living, and it seems like there were an awful lot of Rex Stout books to put away.But I hadn't read any of them at that time either.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I finally sat down to read these two novels.Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are a fascinating team.Portly, orchid-loving genius Wolfe and tough guy Goodwin are polar opposites, but they work together well.Though these are the first two books in the series, Stout keeps dropping hints that the characters have a long history together.

Fer-De-Lance has Wolfe and Goodwin hunting for the murderer of an immigrant and a college professor.The League of Frightened Men has them hunting for a killer who seems to be bumping off members of a group that had hazed a fellow college student decades ago resulting in his permanent injury.

One of the things I thought was kind of fun with these stories is how un-PC they are.For example, Archie refers to the victim of a hazing prank as "cripple" frequently.No, it's not sensitive, but Archie isn't a sensitive guy.Besides, these were written 70+ years ago.People talked that way then.I'm fascinated by how culture has changed over the years, and because of that, these two books are a blast to read.

Oh, and the mysteries are interesting and well written, too.:) ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Nero Wolfe Novels by Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe Short Story Collections, Trouble in Triplicate, and Four to Go, Three Witnesses, the Doorbell Rang, Too Many Cooks, Homicide Trinity, the Silent Speaker, and Be a Villain, Three for the Chair, in the Best Families, the Golden Spiders, Black Orchids, Fer-De-Lance, Prisoner's Base, Over My Dead Body, Before Midnight, the Second Confession, Some Buried Caesar, Trio for Blunt Instruments, Death of a Doxy, the Father Hunt, Plot It Yourself, Champagne for One, Gambit, Not Quite Dead Enough, the Mother Hunt, Where There's a Will, the Rubber Band, the League of Frightened Men, Murder by the Book, Might as Well Be Dead, a Right to Die, Too Many Clients, Curtains for Three, the Red Box, Three at Wolfe's Door, Triple Jeopardy, Three Doors to Death, Too Many Women, the Black Mountain, if Death Ever Slept, the Final Deduction, Three Men Out, a Family Affair, Death of a Dude, Please Pass the Guilt, Death Times Three. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Trouble in Triplicate is a collection of Nero Wolfe mystery novellas by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1949, and itself collected in the omnibus volume All Aces (Viking 1958). The book contains three stories that first appeared in The American Magazine: Each of the stories involves a character who is posing as someone else. I gazed at my boss in bitter disgust. He had lost all sense of proportion. For the sake of making a wild grab for a rib roast, he had left his chair, walked clear to the front room, opened a window, and invited the most deadly specimen between the Battery and Yonkers into his house. Archie, baffled by Wolfe's priorities, in Before I Die, chapter 2 With illustrations by Stanley Ekman, "Before I Die"first appear...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=9723198 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Rex Stout: A biography
I have read quite a few of the Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout. I always enjoy going into the old brownstone with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. From reading the blurbs on the books, I gathered that Rex Stout had lived a very interesting life. John McAleer does a wonderful job with Stout's biography. He begins with his ancestry, and gives an account of his family, his first and second marriages, and the births of his daughters. He also follows Stout's early career as a writer, and tells us about Stout's EBS, a thrift banking system he invented in the late 1910's. Stout began to write the Nero Wolfe mysteries in 1934, and wrote 72 Nero Wolfe stories until his death in 1975. The thing I found fascinating was that Mr. McAleer gives us the time when each novel was written, with how many days Stout wrote and days he didn't write. This book is extensive, but I was captivated reading about the life of one of my favorite authors, Rex Stout. This biography is highly recommended.

Biography? Rather, A Hagiography of Rex Stout
John McAleer's massive biography, or rather hagiography, of thelate, brilliant Rex Stout, nowadays best remembered for his creation of the fictional detectives Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, goes all the way back to Stout's maternal and paternal ancestors who arrived in America in the 17th century.

While McAleer's volume has been criticized as "one of the most trivia-crammed and uncritical works ever written by a Professor of English" (David Langford, Million Magazine, 1992, reproduced at ...l), nonetheless it is the only complete biography of one of the most astonishing figures of the 20th-century American literary landscape.

Stout, of Quaker ancestry for five generations on both sides of his family, was the embodiment of both the puritan work ethic and the true heir of his distant relation Benjamin Franklin, in that no moss grew on the man: he kept busy from the day he was born until the day he died, originating and becoming independently wealthy from business enterprises, founding and managing literary and charitable foundations, and producing a prodigious literary output which was at once entertaining and also reflecting a liberal and world-federalist social conscience in a fashion acceptable to most Americans even at the depths of the Nixon-Jenner-McCarthy anticommunist hysteria of the late 1940's and early 1950's.

While McAleer's compendium of the minutiae of Stout's existence predicated upon long personal acquaintance, friendship with and love for Stout and his works may not be to the casual reader's taste, those of us who have dimly glimpsed the soul of one the masters of American letters reflected in his witty and amusing detective fiction can savor Stout's genius in this remarkable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

great books, odd publication order
I love Rex Stout. Archie and Nero had to be two of the most obnoxious detectives in the history of detective fiction. Between Nero's eating and Archie's remarks regarding women past their sell-by date, I really like these guys. When I was a young teenager first reading these books, I loved Archie and his hard-boiled ways with women. Now that I'm approaching (or even in) middle age, I can completely get behind Nero using his genius to fund reading and eating.

First a note about the omnibus edition itself. This is a very strange selection of Wolfe novels, and they are bound in a very strange order. First of all, the omnibus publishes the books in an order opposite to the order in which they were published. So, The Doorbell Rang (the first book in the omnibus) was published in 1965; The Second Confession was published in 1949; More Deaths Than One(ISBN: 0727800744) was published in 1948 (the US title was And Be a Villain-- this omnibus was published in the UK). Publishing them in reverse order wouldn't be so bad if the books were totally independent of each other in terms of plot. Unfortunately, that's not true. Second Confession and More Deaths than One are two out of the three Wolfe books that feature Arnold Zeck-- something like Wolfe's ultimate nemesis. It's really just wrong to read them out of order, since they (at least loosely) refer to each other. So if you find yourself with this particular omnibus edition, do yourself a favor and read the novels from back to front. Trust me. You'll thank me later.

Stout is highly recommended in general. If you like intelligent mysteries and you haven't read any of the Wolfe books before then you would be in for a treat with any collection of his work.

I haven't reviewed the individual books here, but have put those reviews on the separate product pages. The four star rating refers to the weird publication order and not the novels themselves-- they're all five star. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Unconvincing Reader
David Elias reads this, and does not do the writing justice.His portrayal of Inspector Cramer is especially bad.He over-accents Cramer, making him sound like an ignorant lower East Sider, and fans of the genre know Cramer deserves much more than that.

The writing, though, is strong, as always.And, though I am not positive about this, I think this audio version is, despite the packaging, an abridgement.Everything is put onto one cassette, which seems like too little time for a complete Wolfe short story.All other collections use two or even two and a half cassettes for the work...

Who can tell?

Include Relatives
A wealthy widow is grooming her newly acquired trophy husband to take over the family business (a chain of restaurants), much to the chagrin of her five children and her deceased husband's business manager.When the new husband is discovered with a knife in his back, Inspector Cramer arrests the business manager.As a favor to a friend, Nero Wolfe agrees to prove the business manager's innocence.The flying fickle finger of suspicion points to one of the five greedy children, and Wolfe sets out to discover which one.But how to get the tightly knit family to agree to come to his house after midnight to be interviewed by Wolfe?Can Archie achieve the impossible and haul them in?Can Wolfe untie the Gordian Knot of lies, false clues, and withheld information?

Wolfe turns in his usual masterful performance, but he arrives at his conclusions in uncharacteristic fashion.He usually solves cases based on sound conclusions drawn from hard evidence.In this case his conclusions were more intuitive than deductive.When, in the final scene, Inspector Cramer takes the guilty party to the pokey, I could not help but ask myself, "Where's the proof?"

Listening to the tape as I took my half hour evening walk, I lost track of time and didn't return home until the tape was completed and the case solved.

Misled but enjoyed
This, like all Stout's works, is very enjoyable and a very good story to drive with. My only complaint is that it is not unabridged as advertisedthough I suspected a mistake when I ordered it. I liked everything else -the reader is very good and of course the story lots of fun. ... Read more

Product Description
DEATH OF A DOXY: A NERO WOLFE NOVEL by Rex Stout (1966 Hardcover in dust jacket 185 deckle edged pages Viking Press, NY Book Club Edition) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Omnibus edition of 5 unrelated cases
Although this omnibus consists of 3 Nero Wolfe books (_Fer de Lance_, _Murder by the Book_, and _Three Witnesses_), a royal flush consists of *five* cards. The title in this case was chosen partly because _Three Witnesses_ isn't a novel, but a short story collection, so that _Royal Flush_ does indeed consist of 5 individual stories. (There isn't any other obvious connection with cards or other royalty in the stories herein, however.)

As with most Wolfe omnibuses (omnibi?) to date, the titles selected for _Royal Flush_ are an odd assortment, without being connected by theme or even consecutive publication order, and the omnibus provides no added value that individual copies of the books wouldn't supply. For more detailed discussion of the individual works making up _Royal Flush_, see their separate reviews.

_Fer de Lance_ (1934) was the first Wolfe story. For those unfamiliar with it who may be hoping to see Wolfe's first meeting with Archie or one of the other recurring players, I'm sorry to disappoint you: the characters have some rough edges, but nothing marks this book as the beginning of an era. (Inspector Cramer changed over time, of course; he was initially fairly cordial, even as late as the opening of _The Rubber Band_, but after some of Wolfe's more embarrassing charades, their relationship went downhill at an alarming rate.) As with the other very early Wolfe books, _Fer de Lance_ inflicts more drama on the denizens of the brownstone than some later works; the title is drawn from an incident involving a snake of that species planted in Wolfe's desk. :)

_Murder by the Book_ (1951), the 19th Wolfe book, is unusual in that Inspector Cramer, of all people, opens the story by calling on Wolfe to ask for help. (Archie makes appropriate noises, of course.) Leonard Dykes, a law clerk with no life, was fished out of the river on New Year's Day, and the only anomaly that *might* provide a lead on his murder is a list of names found in his apartment - names of men who don't appear to exist. Wolfe has no suggestion to offer, and that would have been the end of it, except that a client seeking to catch the hit-and-run driver who killed his only daughter - in the Bronx rather than Cramer's Manhattan precinct - provides a letter containing one of those names a few weeks later. This story is unusually strong on character development for Stout, particularly concerning the families of the victims.

_Three Witnesses_, the 26th Wolfe book, collects 3 short stories that previously appeared in magazines.

"The Next Witness" (1954), a.k.a. "The Last Witness" subjects Wolfe to one of the perils of his profession - not to life and limb, but to a subpoena. He usually tries to arrange matters so that Archie, not he, testifies in court, but this defendant never even achieved clienthood, so Wolfe had no control over the case. But after hearing testimony in the trial of Leonard Ashe for the murder of his wife, Wolfe becomes convinced of his innocence, and rather than awaiting his turn as the next witness, Wolfe leaves court to concoct an alternative to helping convict an innocent man. Very enjoyable, not least because Archie more than half suspects that the *real* issue was the heavily perfumed woman sitting next to Wolfe in the crowded courtroom.)

"When a Man Murders..." (1954) The title parodies the rhyme, "When a man marries, his trouble begins." This case is a rare exception (in fact, the *only* one I can recall) in which Wolfe completely breaks the rule about refusing divorce cases. After Sydney Karnow was reported missing-believed-killed in Korea 3 years ago, his wife Caroline inherited half his estate, his sponging relatives the other half. Caroline remarried a year after his "death" - and *now* Sydney has come back alive. But for how long?

"Die Like a Dog" (1955), a.k.a. "Body in the Hall", "A Dog in the Daytime" begins with a black Labrador following Archie home. Archie, finding that the dog's collar is engraved with a kennel-club name including "Nero", can't resist the temptation to yank Wolfe's chain a little. But his joke backfires in a completely unexpected manner - not only with the genius' - and Fritz' - reaction to a dog, but with the news that the four-legged Nero may be a witness in a murder investigation. ... Read more