Reading Please Pass the Guilt right after The Silent Speaker provided quite an interesting contrast. Both cases involve Archie and Wolfe drumming up business, but the times have changed in 25 years.

In the first place, technoligically things are quite different. In, The Silent Speaker, recording cylinders were a cumbersome  yet important part of the case that Wolfe and Archie didn’t really understand. By the time of Please Pass the Guilt, Wolfe and Archie are recording nearly every conversation to occur in the office. (Them and Richard Nixon both.)

Perhaps, more striking is the cultural change. Archie has to compete with a television when trying to pitch the widow of a murder victim on hiring Wolfe. Wolfe for his part remains the same iconoclastic figures as always. When asked if he watches television, Wolfe responds curtly, “I turn on the television rarely, only to confirm my opinion of it.”

Stout was clear that Nero and Archie had not changed in their basic temperment and behavior in the past thirty-eight years of the series while the world around them has transformed and that tension manifests itself. Stout even brushes with the more modern times and approaches (but back away from) edgier profanity when a women’s libber obsessed with the supposed sexism of language asked. “What is one of men’s favorite four-letter colloquial words that begins with f?” Archie demurred, claiming not to know what she was getting at. Acceptance of the use of that language may have been growing in the late 1960s and early 1970s but not in Rex Stout novels.

In a key moment, Archie expressed exasperation when unable to convince a female suspect go on a date as is his usual practice. Archie declared, “I’m done. Washed up. I’ve lost my touch, I’m a has-been. You knew me when.”

Fritz provides a rare moment of sagacity. “Then she is washed up, not you. You are looking at the wrong side. Just turn it over, that’s all you ever have to do, just turn it over” Perhaps, this served as a metaphor for the book and for Nero Wolfe and Archie’s place in a rapidly changing world. If 1970s American readers reached the point where they could no longer appreciate these characters, then readers were washed up, not them.

As one reviewer pointed out on Amazon, this is as much a period piece as the Wolfe stories from the 1940s. For most of Wolfe’s long-time fans, it’s just not a period they like as well. The case begins when Doc Volmer asks Wolfe to do a favor for a friend of his. A young man has shown up at a local psychological clinic and states he has blood on his hands, but he won’t even give his right name. He suggests Wolfe apply his skills to the problem to help unearth the truth. When the young man shows up, the most Wolfe is able to do is to connive to find out his real name. Wolfe discovers he’s one of the figures in the murder of an executive who went into another executive’s room and opened a drawer he kept whiskey in.

With the bank balance low and Wolfe having worked even less than usual the first five months of 1969, Archie goes on his own initiative to the widow of the executive to lobby her to hire Wolfe. She does so and answers a key question: What was her husband doing in another executive’s private office? Simple, he was spiking his whiskey with LSD so his would blow his interview with the board to become the next president of the company. Welcome to the 1960s, man.

From there, Wolfe embarks on an investigation to find the truth. Along the way, he runs into a steady stream of lies: from employees of the firm, complete strangers who respond to an ad for information, and even from his client. Wolfe has never treated a client with such contempt as he does in Please Pass the Guilt. However, the contempt was well-earned. What’s perhaps most astounding is that a truth embedded in one of the lies Wolfe’s told leads him to the true solution of the case.

So, while it’s not vintage 1940s Wolfe, Please Pass the Guilt shows the timeless power of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

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I hadn’t planned on getting into Nero Wolfe novels that had been adapted to TV until after finishing the novels that weren’t adapted (except for A Family Affair) and the novella collections. However, the Silent Speaker was included in the library edition of Black Orchids, so I thought to go ahead and enjoy the bonus.

The Silent Speaker starts is set in the aftermath of the World War II. The head of the federal Bureau of Price Regulation was bludgeoned to death just before he was scheduled to address the National Industrial Association, a group that bore him ill-will. Suspicion falls upon the NIA as culprits.

With Wolfe’s banking balance suffering, Archie undertakes “Operation Payroll” to ensure that all of Wolfe’s employees (including him) get paid, Archie cleverly horns in on the case after clearing it with Inspector Cramer and the FBI, neither of which are getting anywhere. So Wolfe is hired by the NIA to solve the case, which centers on a case of missing Dictaphone cylinders.

Wolfe is able to interview all the principle players in the case in a group interview, except for the dead man’s secretary: a beautiful and extremely intelligent woman.  After Wolfe interviews her individually, he issues an unusual injunction to Archie. Archie’s not to see the woman unless Wolfe order him to. Wolfe warns, “A woman who is not a fool is dangerous.” Someone else agrees as she becomes the murderer’s second victim when she’s found dead outside the second gathering of the witnesses and suspects.

The case is fantastically written with plenty of red herrings. It all comes down to a search for ten transcription cylinders that disappeared on the night of the murder and finally just one. And Wolfe and Archie are initially duped by a very clever ruse.

This book is notable for many reasons. Wolfe’s relationship with his client has rarely been more complicated, and his relations with Inspector Cramer have never been friendlier. When Cramer is relieved of command, Wolfe has to not only solve the case but to solve in it such a way as to restore Cramer and avoid having Cramer’s pig-headed replacement permanently in charge of Homicide. This leads Wolfe to take some of the most extreme measures of his career to avoid police harassment. And before it’s all over, Archie provides a revelation of its own. All in all, The Silent Speaker is one book that far exceeds the TV version.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

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Nero Wolfe had twice as many novels published as Sherlock before he ever broke into short fiction. However, author Rex Stout would create some of his most memorable stories in the Wolfe novellas. The first two of these are collected in Black Orchids.

Black Orchids

The title story for the collection was originally published as Death Wears an Orchid. Archie has found himself assigned to flower show duty to watch a new Black Orchid bred by Lewis Hewitt to see whether it wilts or not. Wolfe finally makes a trip down in person to see it. But then fate takes a hand when Archie triggers the murder when he picks up a stick, triggering a Rube Goldberg style murder, which is the least practical part of the story.

The stick that served as the trigger belonged to Hewitt. Wolfe offers to solve the case and protect Hewitt in exchange for all three of the black orchid plants, insisting on them in advance.

To hold on to his plants, Wolfe has to not only sift through blackmail and jealousies of orchid growers, but he has to endure not one, but two women living under his roof, all while keeping his client’s name out of the press. Wolfe has a clever and somewhat shocking way of doing this that makes for a great twist ending.

Rating: Satisfactory

Cordially Invited to Meet Death

New York’s Premier party planner, Beth Huddleston, engages Wolfe to stop malicious letters that are threatening to ruin her business.  Wolfe has her entire household under suspicion and sends Archie out to investigate. Archie finds a virtual mad house with a Chimp that blocks his way in unless he plays tag with him as well as bears roaming around. Their investigation is cut short when Huddleston dies of a tetanus infection with Wolfe only having learned one key thing: the secret to preparing great Corned Beef hash which Wolfe achieved through a precedent-breaking decision to  allow a woman suspect into the kitchen to help him.

However, her brother is convinced its murder. When Archie and the brother both get the same idea and proof is found that the death was no accident, Wolfe has little reason to be engaged as he has no client. However, when Cramer insults Wolfe by taking a dinner guest downtown for questioning, Wolfe not only resolves to solve the case. He plans to rub Cramer’s face in it.

Within the story, Archie offers a mystery as to why Wolfe sent some of the rare black orchids to Huddleston’s funeral and never answers the question. The question is left open though Archie offers readers their choice of potential theories. Archie confesses there may even have been some past association between Wolfe and Beth Huddleston, but that much of Wolfe’s past remains a mystery to him.  And the puzzle of the black orchids only adds to Wolfe’s mystery.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

Collection Rating: Very Satisfactory

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Having firmly established the rules of Nero Wolfe’s first few books, Rex Stout felt free to force Wolfe to bend or break some of his rules.  Other than In the Best Families, Stout never forced Wolfe to break so many rules as he did in The Black Mountain.

Wolfe’s lifelong friend Marco Vukcic is killed and Wolfe leaves the Brownstone in a cab to pay a visit the crime scene and goes to question witnesses. Then, tracing Marco’s murder to his support of Montenegrin rebels opposing the Yugoslav Government under Tito, he and Archie  fly to Italy and cross the Adriatic an old boat and begin a hike to the place o f Wolfe’s birth under assumed names with no passports. Archie doesn’t speak any of the languages, so he has to rely on Wolfe’s translations to even let us know what is being said.

This is definitely not the typical Nero Wolfe story, which is what some people don’t like about it. However, I thought this story worked very well. It was thought provoking in many ways, not the least of which was how much of Wolfe’s eccentricity was put on as he abandons many of them in order to complete this mission to track down Vukcic’s killer. We also have a few hints of what Wolfe’s life was like before he departed for America.  Stout as he does in countless novels, breathes life into his setting.

Stout’s Yugoslavia is a Cold War backwater where you don’t know quite who to trust and the oppression of the Communists has cowed the Montenegrin people, a fact that clearly pains Wolfe.  The story is filled with intrigue and espionage on multiple levels.

The story does lack the same level of influence for Archie. There’s no girl for Archie to chase  as he can’t understand one word of the languages, thwarting any romantic inquiries.  Archie also gets little chance to mouth off to authority except in the first few chapters which are set in New York.

However, this is one novel where the spotlight is rightly on Nero Wolfe, who shines. The story encounters Wolfe dealing with his most personal loss. Wolfe, ever the master of words, uses action instead to show his feelings about Marco as he travels half way around the world to bring Marco’s killer to justice. Of course, words come in handy when, in the face of the lawlessness dominating his homeland, he decides to get killer back to the United States trial without extradition. To achieve this, he has to create one of his most elaborate and risky rouses he’s ever undertaken. And even then, the action doesn’t let up until the final page.

Overall, one of the best I’ve read yet.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our Nero Wolfe page.

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