Paul Chapin’s college cronies have never completely forgiven themselves for the tragic prank that left their friend a twisted cripple. Yet with their Harvard days behind them, they thought it was all in the past — until a class reunion ends in a fatal fall, and mysterious poems swearing deadly retribution begin to arrive. Now this league of frightened men seeks Nero Wolfe’s expert help. But are Wolfe’s brilliance and Archie’s tenacity enough to outwit a most cunning killer?

In all his years of detecting, the unflappable Nero Wolfe has never encountered an investigation as damnably messy as this one. For what began as a clean case of larceny quickly sank into a quagmire of blackmail and broken promises, international scandal and cold-blooded murder. Now Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin must bridge eras and oceans to find the link between a Wild West lynching and a respected British peer. Only then can they save Wolfe’s beautiful young client—and a hotly disputed stake of a cool million dollars

Wolfe and Archie investigate the death of a model who ate a piece of poisoned candy. One of the suspects begs Wolfe to handle his estate and especially the contents of a certain red box. Wolfe is at first concerned about a possible conflict of interest, but feels unable to refuse when the man dies in his office before telling Wolfe where to find the red box. The police naturally think that he told Wolfe somewhat more before dying. This novel presents the series’ first instance of a murder taking place in Wolfe’s office

Investigating the bizarre will of late multimillionaire Noel Hawthorne — who left the bulk of his estate to his mistress and nearly nothing to his three sisters — astute sleuth Nero Wolfe stumbles upon a legacy of murder

Wolfe’s cook is in bed with the flu which is a total disaster for the corpulent Nero, estimated to weigh between 310 and 390 pounds. He opens a can of pate, takes a bite and promptly spits it out assured that he has been poisoned. Archie Goodwin, his do-it-all assistant and the story narrator, proceeds to investigate only to find the owner of the company murdered and his relatives suspected

Wolf’s lust for a unique black orchid combined with his envy of the orchid fancier who hybridized it impel him to attend the annual New York flower show. A nursery/seed company employee is murdered at the show. Wolfe offers to solve the murder in exchange for the rare plant; and he does solve it with some clear thinking and a dramatic stratagem

Wolfe is hired by a society party planner to find out who is writing poison pen letters about her and sending them to her clients and potential clients. Since it appears that the letters are coming from a member of the party planner’s household, Archie is sent up to her Riverdale mansion to investigate. The client dies a few days into the investigation. Was it an accident or murder? Is there a connection between the death and the letters? If it was murder how was it done?

The U.S. army wants Nero Wolfe urgently, but the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth refuses the call to duty. It takes his perambulatory confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, to titillate Wolfe’s taste for crime with two malevolent morsels: a corpse that won’t rest in peace and a sinister “accident” involving national security. So as Goodwin lays the bait on the wrong side of the law, Wolfe sets the traps to catch a pair of wily killers

In this story Nero working for the War Department. The case presented to him involves widespread industrial sabotage, and without much in the way of clues, Nero, with Archie’s help, sets his own “booby traps” to catch a murderer and a traitor

In this story Nero Wolfe investigates the murders of Ben Jensen, a well-connected publisher

In this story Nero Wolfe investigates the murders of Eugene R. Poor, an inventor of novelties

There has been no new full-length Nero Wolfe mystery novel in six years, a wartime shortage which we are delighted to remedy. The brilliant deductive methods of the fabulous fat man, beloved by so many thousands of readers, are put to another stiff test. It is a pleasure to report that Archie is back from the wars as Wolfe’s leg man (Nero himself has been a consultant for the War Department). A murder has been committed, so daring and with such vital national implications that the whole country is shaken. The newspapers are having a field day; the corridors in Washington are buzzing with gossip. The murder took place at the Waldorf, just before the annual dinner of the National Industrial Association, as the guests sipped cocktails in the adjoining room. The murdered man was none other than Cheney Boone, the Director of the Bureau of Price Regulation, who was scheduled to be the principal speaker before this group of the country’s leading business men. industrialists, and manufacturers. Why has he been silenced — and by whom? Again Rex Stout proves that he is still the old maestro in the field of the murder story lightened with wit and written with intelligence and skill. The Viking Press, which has not published a mystery for years, is proud to re-enter the field with this odds-on favorite

In this story Nero Wolfe investigates the murders of Dazy Perrit, an underworld kingpin

A high-fashion designer consults Wolfe after she sees her uncle — believed to have committed suicide a year before — in disguise and in the audience at one of her shows

In “Bullet for One,” a man with a lot of enemies is shot dead while riding his horse in the early morning in Central Park; five of the six suspects believe the sixth man is the culprit, but he’s got an ironclad alibi

As a favor for his oldest friend Marko Vukcic, Nero Wolfe takes the case of Virgil Pompa, a chef who traded his genius for a high-paying job as the supervisor of a restaurant chain. He is in jail, charged with murder. Archie begins the story with the statement, "In my opinion it was one of Nero Wolfe's neatest jobs, and he never got a nickel for it."

When orchid nurse Theodore Horstmann leaves the brownstone indefinitely to tend to his sick mother, Nero Wolfe goes out — in the snow and on foot — into the raging wilds of Westchester to find a replacement. He and Archie find a corpse in the greenhouse, as well

The Second Confession by Rex Stout in which Nero Wolfe is retained by a tycoon to expose an alleged Communist... has his home tommy-gunned and his orchid collection destroyed, and actually stirs himself and leaves his house

A young couple deeply in love comes to seek Nero Wolfe’s help because the young woman’s husband has died. She believes he was murdered but because of her affair is afraid to go to the police. The mystery clue seems to concern the movement of the murder weapon. It takes much persuasion by Wolfe to get the young man to admit that he moved the gun, placing it next to the body. Both he and she were afraid that that the other had committed the crime. Would Wolfe help them uncover the truth? He consents and begins to interview all who may have a motive to kill the husband, a famous singer

“The Twisted Scarf” finds Nero Wolfe having a gardening group and their guests visiting his orchid collection. During the event, a young woman confides in Archie that she has recognized one of the guests as having killed a good friend whose murder has gone unsolved. She gives him no more details and Archie is called to assist with the guests. While he is gone someone murders the young woman. Wolfe has little to go on to discover who murdered the young woman. His only clue is that it had to have been a guest and he believes that the murderer did not leave the scene of the crime

In both And Be a Villain and The Second Confession, Nero Wolfe had sharp but long-distance encounters with a certain powerful mystery man of crime named Zeck. That Zeck was a blackmailer was obvious. That he was perhaps the most potent and utterly ruthless of all underworld characters seemed more than possible. These episodes hinted that in some future book Zeck would play a leading role — and now he does, in this new full-length novel. It all begins when a woman whose homeliness is exceeded only by her wealth brings to Nero the problem of discovering where her handsome husband has been getting the money she refused him. Next, Nero answers his phone and Zeck, on the other end, says, “Lay off this case.” Nero once told Archie that it he ever had to come to grips with Zeck, he would disappear first so as not to endanger Archie, his orchid plants, or his house in lower Manhattan, and Nero is a man of his word. Where Nero went, what happened in his absence, how he came back, and the manner of his coming are as fine a combination of outright drama and downright hilarity as was ever put together in a novel of crime. One of the corollary mysteries of this book is: how the devil is even Rex Stout ever going to top it?

Archie Goodwin attempts to help two scared illegal immigrants only to learn that they are prime suspects in the murder of a policeman. The man nearly breaks Archie’s back in trying to get away from Nero Wolfe’s before homicide cops come for him. A star-struck girl gets bopped with a bottle and tries to frame Sgt. Purley Stebbins, but Wolfe solves the case as he gets his hair cut

Both Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are at their furious best when a murder is committed with Archie’s gun and the client lies to the cops, indicating that Goodwin is the prime suspect. Inspector Cramer threatens to cancel Wolfe’s detective license and arrests Archie. Wolfe is so angry that he works during an orchid session, begins a million dollar suit against the client, and reveals Cramer’s threat to the newspapers before finally exposing the culprit; Archie merely slams the client against a wall

Nero Wolfe again exposes a communist-murderer in a case both the FBI and the police try to keep hushed. Two female suspects smack it out in Wolfe’s office and one drunken woman pats him on the head after pouring scotch in his beer. The feds and cops try to raise hell when they learn that Wolfe offers to “bribe” a suspect

The character of Beaky Durkin is not presented as being related in any way to Fred Durkin, a free-lance detective often hired by Wolfe to assist with cases

Readers who have long followed the adventures of Nero Wolfe will surely agree not only that this is one of the neatest murder puzzles ever set down by Rex Stout, but also that it is the most exciting, adventure-filled, and breathless story he ever told. Nero Wolfe has represented some pretty unusual clients in his time, but in this one, his client — believe it or not — is the fast-talking, hard-hitting, skirt-chasing assistant and companion to Nero, Archie Goodwin himself. We’ll make three bets with you abut Prisoner’s Base: First — you won’t solve it. Second — you’ll agree that no author ever played more fair with his readers. Third — when you finish it, you will feel as if you have been on a forty-eight-hour, breath-taking, danger-filled chase up and down the avenues of New York, into some of Manhattan’s darkest and more terror-filled alleys

Ptomaine poisoning killed the heiress. Now their client can cozy up to the money. But there are too many beautiful women in the mansion, and the slimy little parasite is confused when he should be scared. After Archie Goodwin drops the ball, Nero Wolfe is ready to break a few laws — like extortion

A woman with a man seated beside her in a Cadillac mouths soundlessly to a street urchin, “Help, get a cop!” One of these three very presently is murdered, and as a result Nero Wolfe delivers himself of his first recorded lecture on crime detection. Even more surprising, Nero and Archie take on a case for the smallest retainer in their history: four dollars and thirty cents. “The Golden Spiders”, Rex Stout introduces a new kind of criminal engaged in a peculiarly contemporary and particularly vicious kind of crime. Nero never had to think faster and Archie never encountered greater perils than in this, undoubtedly one of the very finest novels of detection or our day

Nero Wolfe can’t stand Leo Heller, a mathematician who uses operations research to solve mysteries and seems to be superseding Wolfe’s own reputation. But then Heller is murdered by one of his clients. He managed to leave a cryptic message that Wolfe eventually decodes, partly with the help of Lancelot Hogben Mathematics for the million

When a Man Murders is about a man who is believed killed in the Korean War; his supposed widow marries another man; when her first husband turns up alive, and is then murdered, the second husband is a natural suspect, but it turns out the dead mam’s will had been tampered with

The newest full-length Rex Stout novel provides not only a new experience for Nero Wolfe fans, but also a new experience for Nero himself. It’s one thing for Nero to move his hand across a glove and put his finger on a distant seat of murder; it’s quite another thing for him to move his ponderous body father than across a room. Yet, believe it or not, in The Black Mountain Nero not only leaves his house but he actually leaves the United States, crosses and ocean, a continent, and a sea, and — with Archie — penetrates, disguised, into one of the most dangerous and controversial places on earth. From there on it’s Nero Wolfe as Nero never was before: a Nero compelled to cope with sinister international plotters, to deal with an enemy to whom murder is but a trivial incident, to return to New York on one of the strangest missions in all detective fiction

The Body in the Hall, involves a dog as the only witness to a murder

The Last Witness involves an ingenious way of using a phone-answering service for a blackmail racket

When Nero Wolfe comes up against murder in the advertising business it isn’t surprising that the world’s largest detective (one-seventh of a ton of orchid-loving, beer-drinking genius) should find himself involved with one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. The agency is conducting the biggest prize contest ever, with prizes totaling one million dollars. Just one man knows the solutions in the million-dollar contest, and it’s his disappearance that introduces Nero and Archie to the world of four-color spreads and TV spectaculars. It introduces them also to a murderer who has the audacity to kill in Nero’s office and before Nero’s very eyes. After Rex Stout unfolds this novel, it is possible that the advertising world will never be the same — and this may be a public service

Nero Wolfe agreed to cook the Ambassador’s trout — not to catch the diplomat’s killer

The great detective was baffled by a misfit piece in the puzzle of a millionaire’s murder

The famous sleuth, involved in a wire-tapping investigation, finds himself prime suspect in the murder of a deceptive client

In the newest full-length Nero Wolfe novel, crime ranges from embezzlement through murder to a great national scandal. At the outset, Nero and Archie undertake to find a man who has disappeared in New York — a man once accused of theft by his own father and now known to be innocent. Nero and Archie accomplish for the father what the Bureau of Missing Persons couldn’t: they locate the young man — but only to find him in ultimate peril. Meanwhile a national embezzlement on a heretofore unheard-of scale has attracted the interest of a Congressional committee. Nero, Archie, and various of Nero’s other assistants become deeply involved in both the peril and the scandal. Nero never had to think faster. Archie never had to act faster, than in this latest from the mystery master

The guests had seemed full of good will — until their host was poisoned. Then the truth began to merge, and even Wolfe was baffled

Leaving the church, Mrs. Bynoe seemed unaware of the cameras — and of danger

NERO WOLFE, in this complete mystery novel, admired the knives displayed at the picnic until he found one in a corpse in the tent

“I want you to get a snake out of my house. Out of my family.” Thus spoke millionaire Otis Jarrell, offering Nero Wolfe ten thousand dollars in cash as a retainer. If it hadn’t just happened that Jarrell called on Wolfe during a time when relations between the great detective and his faithful assistant Archie Goodwin were less cordial than usual, Archie, victim of Wolfe’s spite, would not have found himself posing as secretary to Jarrell. But it did so happen, and as a result Archie became part of the Jarrell menage in the twenty-room duplex penthouse on Fifth Avenue. Here he met the “snake” — Jarrell’s handsome, charming daughter-in-law — as well as an assortment of other ladies and gentlemen, including a pretty young girl who danced well and wrote poetry, a lazy brother-in-law who cheerfully lost other people’s money on horses, and an almost too efficient stenographer named Nora. When Archie found Jarrell’s former secretary face down on the floor, with a .38-bullet hole in back of his head, he knew indeed that there was a snake somewhere. The story of how he and Nero Wolfe identified and caught that reptile is herewith set down in Archie’s own lively words

"Murder Is No Joke,” a workaday whodunit in a couturier’s salon, is a sample, par excellence, of the master’s inimitable ability to relate the unrelated — put the round peg in the square hole, so to speak — and nail two killings on one murderer

Faith Usher tells anyone willing to listen that she wants to kill herself. So when she dies after drinking champagne at the annual gala for unwed mothers, everyone insists that it was suicide. Everyone except Archie Goodwin, the perennial wise guy, who was watching her drink

It was the most distinguished group ever to gather in Nero Wolfe’s study: two of America’s foremost novelists, a world-famous playwright, and the heads of three great publishing houses. Somebody, or maybe a league of somebodies, was accusing America’s most celebrated living writers of plagiarism — and getting away with it. Nero had never encountered a case like this before — until the first body was found. And no other investigator could have cracked it, for the solution rested on determining who had written what manuscript, and this required an uncanny eye for literary style. With Nero tracking down nuances while Archie encounters more than his usual quota of cool-looking girls and much cooler corpses, with both of them up to their raised eyebrows in the world of best sellers, smash hits, and the people columnists stay up to quote, Plot It Yourself is one of the freshest, liveliest, wittiest Rex Stout novel ever to challenge a reader

The lady taxi-driver’s cab was parked in front of Nero Wolfe’s brownstone with a dead fare in the back seat. Someone chose Method Three for Murder

Nero Wolfe has always considered murder slightly illegal, but in the three stories in this volume It becomes something far worse — a personal affront. He is in fact, “ruffled beyond the bounds of tolerance” — three times For usually murder takes place at a decent distance from his presence, and now in succession violent death arrives (with the blinis and sour cream) at a dinner for gourmets attended by Wolfe himself, one body comes to the famous West 35th Street address by taxi, and a third murder takes place at a luncheon party where Nero and Archie have gone to partake of some blue grouse. Altogether, these three situations are really intolerable, and Wolfe is forced to work his brain even faster, and Archie’s feet and fists even harder, than ever before. Shapely blond, brunette, and titian cupbearers — in flowing robes — attend gourmets’ banquet cooked by Nero Wolfe’s own chef, in prelude to Poison à la Carte