{"id":4835,"date":"2011-11-12T00:01:59","date_gmt":"2011-11-12T06:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=4835"},"modified":"2013-10-02T21:03:31","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T03:03:31","slug":"book-review-final-deduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/book-review-final-deduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Final Deduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Final Deduction<\/em>, Wolfe is hired as insurance by a woman whose husband has been kidnapped. However, Wolfe’s client is being particularly cagey about the information she’ll share with Wolfe. Wolfe does manage to get a meeting with the woman’s secretary who has said she heard the call from the kidnapper. Wolfe and Archie both conclude that she was part of the kidnapping plot.<\/p>\n

After the money drop, the husband is returned alive, but soon afterwards the secretary and the hush and are both murdered while Wolfe and Archie find themselves in a spot as their client had told them not to tell about the kidnapping until 48 hours after it occurred.<\/p>\n

However, along with trouble comes opportunity. With their duty complete, the son of their original client wants Wolfe’s help to recover the half million dollars in ransom money which his mother has told him he can keep if he finds it. In exchange for this, Wolfe will get a 20% cut.<\/p>\n

This book was a very well-balanced Nero Wolfe mystery. Plenty of Archie and Wolfe interactions, a good cast of characters in the victim’s family, and a decent mystery. Stout also has some clever word play. The word “deduction” is worked throughout the book in both its meaning to tax law and its meaning to the detective.<\/p>\n

It’s also of somewhat historical interest as a peek at the world of the pre-JFK Income Tax Code. Wolfe’s reason for accepting the 2nd case was that if he managed to collect, he’d work himself into the 80% Tax Bracket. At which point, it wouldn’t make sense for him to take on any more work as he’d end up in the 90% bracket and only keeping a dime of every dollar earned. His clients were in the slightly higher 91% tax bracket. Both would play a key factor in the story, so you have to wrap your mind around that which can be difficult when the current top marginal rate is 36%.<\/p>\n

Rating: Very Satisfactory<\/p>\n

You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our\u00a0Nero Wolfe page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0automatically to your Kindle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Final Deduction, Wolfe is hired as insurance by a woman whose husband has been kidnapped. However, Wolfe’s client is being particularly cagey about the information she’ll share with Wolfe. Wolfe does manage to get a meeting with the woman’s secretary who has said she heard the call from the kidnapper. Wolfe and Archie…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golden-age-article","category-nero-wolfe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-1fZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4835"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9293,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions\/9293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}