only been there he would probably have seen it so. It
may yet materialize; it is still worth some small
effort. I believe though it is getting ready to
rain.”
GOODWIN: “It was clouding up as I came in. Is it
going to rain all over your clues?”
WOLFE: “Someday, Archie, when I decide you are no
longer worth tolerating, you will have to marry a
woman of very modest mental capacity to get an
appreciative audience for your wretched sarcasms.”
Not exactly the Holmes-Watson relationship, but a symbiotic one. Without Goodwin’s badgering, Wolfe would certainly starve, collapsing under the weight of his own sloth. Without Wolfe—well, we learn from In the Best Families that Goodwin can get along only too well without any oddball geniuses around to coddle, but we may assume by how readily he takes up his old post when Wolfe returns from his enforced sabbatical that for all Archie’s grousing he prefers the status quo, as do we.
We read Nero Wolfe because we like a good mystery. We re-read him not for the plots, which lack the human complexity of Raymond Chandler’s or the ingenuity of Agatha Christie’s, but for the chemistry between the orchid-fancying enfant terrible and his optimistic-cynical amanuensis and all-around dogsbody, and for the insular complacency of life in the venerable townhouse where world-class meals are served three times daily, the Cattleyas Laelias continue to get on splendidly with the Laeliocattleya Lustre, and a peek through the tricked-up waterfall picture in Wolfe’s office may provide a glimpse of the Great Man relaxing in his custom-built chair with some arcane volume, or pushing his lips in and out with his eyes closed over some dense pattern of facts, while his legman sits by the telephone, waiting for his cue to gather all the suspects and other interested parties for the denouement. It is a world where all things make sense in time, a world better than our own. If you are an old hand making a return swing through its orbit, welcome back; pull up the red leather chair and sit down. If this is your first trip, I envy you the surprises that await you behind that unprepossessing front door.
Oh—about the snake. You didn’t think I was going to spoil that, did you?
RECOMMENDED READING
Baring-Gould, William S. Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street. New York: Viking, 1969. Baring-Gould, to all intents and purposes, invented the biography of characters of fiction with his seminal Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. His is the first serious attempt to gather the sly hints and offhand comments supplied by Archie Goodwin into a coherent account of their partnership.
Darby, Ken. The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe. New York: Little, Brown, 1983. Purporting to be an architectural “life” of the premises in which Wolfe and Goodwin began all their adventures, Darby’s book undertakes to solve the conundrum of the many discrepancies in Archie’s accounts, seasoning their exploits with arch commentary along the way.
Goldsborough, Robert. Death on Deadline. New York: Bantam, 1987. Those who have exhausted the Stout canon and crave more could do a good deal worse than Goldsborough, who captures the tone and cadence of the originals as well as can be done. However, I counsel readers not to approach this first in the extended series until they’ve read A Family Affair, Stout’s last Wolfe, as he commits the cardinal sin of giving away the identity of the murderer in that book; something his predecessor never did.
Lescroart, John T. Son of Holmes. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1986. Lescroart has moved on from the ghetto of the midlist writer to bestsellerdom, and well served; but this early work has a special place in my heart. The title flushes Stout out from the cover of his sly hints about Wolfe’s parentage, and the densest flatfoot in Lieutenant Cramer’s detail would draw a straight line from Nero Wolfe to Lescroart’s “Auguste Lupa.” This affectionate tribute is so winning, one almost regrets the stunning success that prevented the author from continuing the series.
Steinbrunner, Chris, and Otto Penzler. Encyclopedia of Mystery & Detection. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. Pages 426–429 provide a valuable primer and “CliffsNotes” introduction to Archie’s prose edda, chronicling the principals’ professional and personal characters in detail, and including all of Wolfe’s appearances on film, radio, and television to date of publication.
Stout, Rex. The Nero Wolfe series, of course; any edition. It’s still in print and always will be. Start with Fer-de-Lance (1934) and read straight through A Family Affair (1975).
Stout, Rex. The Nero Wolfe Cookbook. New York: Viking, 1973. With the help of his editors, Wolfe’s creator provides mouth-watering details to aid the ambitious cook in replicating the sumptuous dishes referred to throughout the canon. This is to be recommended to mystery aficionados and amateur chefs alike.
Symons, Julian. Great Detectives: Seven Original Investigations. New York: Abrams, 1981. I was privileged to have spent a jolly couple of hours boating down the Thames, courtesy of our mutual British publisher, with Symons, and to enjoy his wit and erudition on all things, the mystery included. So it was with great pleasure I obtained and read this tongue-in-cheek collection of “interviews” with crime fiction’s most celebrated sleuths. Symons’s “session” with Archie Goodwin, comfortably retired with his wife, the former Lily Rowan, clears the muddy record, and provides a tantalizing answer to the question of what became of Nero Wolfe after he departed the fabled brownstone.
Winn, Dilys. Murder Ink: The Mystery Reader’s Companion. New York: Workman, 1977. Winn’s is a spine-tingling (and toe-warming) hommage to the best of mystery fiction from Day One. Although I take issue with its cynical evaluation of “overrated” entries in the rich world of melodramatic mayhem (the book is, after all, aimed toward wide-eyed readers new to the genre as well as veterans), self-described private investigator Anthony Spiesman’s “Nero Wolfe Consultation” provides a delightful visit to the Great Man’s storied office.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Janet Hutchings, editor-in-chief of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Otto Penzler for placing Claudius Lyon before the world; also Ben LeRoy and his excellent staff at Tyrus Books for allowing me to collect some of my favorite works between two covers.
COPYRIGHTS
“Who’s Afraid of Nero Wolfe?” copyright 2008 by Loren D. Estleman. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (hereinafter EQMM) June 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Boy Who Cried Wolfe” copyright 2008 by Loren D. Estleman. First appeared in EQMM September/October 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Wolfe at the Door” copyright 2009 by Loren D. Estleman. First appeared in EQMM February 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Wolfe in Chic Clothing” copyright 2011 by Loren D. Estleman. First appeared in EQMM September/October 2011. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Wolfe in the Manger” copyright 2011 by Loren D. Estleman. First published separately by Crippen & Landru in 2011. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Wolfe on the Roof” copyright 2012 by Loren D. Estleman. First published by the Mysterious Press in 2012. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Wolfe Trap” copyright 2014 by Loren D. Estleman. First published separately by the Mysterious Bookshop in 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Wolfe and Warp” copyright 2016 by Loren D. Estleman. First appeared in EQMM January 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Peter and the Wolfe” copyright 2016 by Loren D. Estleman. First appeared in EQMM (TBA). Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Wolfe Whistle” copyright 2017 by Loren D. Estleman. Published here for the first time by permission of the author.
“Snakes and the Fat Man: The Case of Nero Wolfe” copyright 1992 by Loren D. Estleman. First appeared in Fer-de-Lance, Bantam, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
An authority on both criminal history and the American West, LOREN D. ESTLEMA
N has been called the most critically acclaimed author of his generation. He has been nominated for the National Book Award and the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Estleman, Loren D., author.
Nearly Nero / Loren D. Estleman.
New York, NY: Tyrus Books, 2017.
LCCN 2016053678 (print) | LCCN 2017001015 (ebook) | ISBN 9781507203279 (hc) | ISBN 9781507203286 (ebook)
BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective General. | FICTION Mystery & Detective / Short Stories.
LCC PS3555.S84 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3555.S84 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053678
ISBN 978-1-50720327-9
ISBN 978-1-50720328-6 (ebook)
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