This is the very last Wolfe novel written by Rex Stout. The book begins with a literal bang as a favorite waiter of Wolfe’s comes seeking Wolfe’s advice in the middle of the night. Archie puts him up in the South Room for safety, only for the man to be blown up by a bomb that rocks Archie and Wolfe’s world.
This case is personal for Wolfe who is determined to catch the killer himself. It’s an unprecedented case where we get a whiff of Watergate, Wolfe turns down a one hundred thousand dollar fee, and ends up going to jail all leading up to a conclusion that was shocking at the time and still is if you don’t search the Internet too much before reading.
Written while Stout was 85, the book was clearly intended to bring the series to an end. I lost count of the number of times Archie said something happened for the first time. In one scene, Archie gives one person a thousand to one odds on something and he ends up being wrong. Cramer shows a softer side even while Wolfe abandons all pretense of anything but perfunctory cooperation with the police.
This is a book that you should ideally read at the end of the other Stout books, or at least after reading a couple dozen. You can’t appreciate how deeply ingrained the rules that get broken in this book are unless you understand the world these characters inhabit.
Family Affair doesn’t give us new insights into Wolfe’s past but it does tell us a lot about what matters most to him and his closest associates: honor. There is an honor in being the greatest detective in the world and someone people can turn to, and there’s honor in working for him and woe to the person who puts that at risk.
The book is a perfect finale and it leaves me a little bit hesitant to pick up Robert Goldsborough’s Wolfe novels, because I can’t imagine anything doing a good enough job to follow up this story.
Rating: Very Satisfactory
If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered automatically to your Kindle.
You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our Nero Wolfe page.
