Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.) Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best

What could make Nero Wolfe so determined to solve a crime that he would be willing to work entirely without fee or client? What would it take to put him, for the first time, at a loss for words? What would make him so angry about a case that he would refuse to speak to the police, even if he has to spend fifty-one hours in jail as a result? Never before in the Nero Wolfe books has Rex Stout shown us the extremes to which the greatest detective in the world can be pushed, but never before has a bomb blown up in the old brownstone on West 35th Street, murdering someone right under Wolfe's nose. When in October 1974 Pierre Ducos, one of Wolfe's favorite waiters at Rusterman's, Wolfe's favorite restaurant, dies just down the hall from Archie's bedroom, Wolfe is understandably eager to find the perpetrator, but when that murder somehow becomes connected with tape recorders, Washington lawyers, and maybe even a conspiracy to obstruct justice, his fury becomes so intense that even Archie is puzzled. Not only is this a great chapter in the Nero Wolfe legend; A Family Affair is a splendid mystery novel that should capture many new fans and will delight (and amaze) the longstanding admirers of Wolfe and Archie

Twenty-five years ago, in one of Rex Stout’s most famous mystery novels, Too Many Cooks, Nero Wolfe was aided in the solution of a murder by a twenty- year-old Negro. Now, in A Right to Die, Stout’s latest full-length novel, this same Negro is a man of forty-five and a professor of anthropology. He comes to Nero and to Archie Goodwin with a pressing problem concerning his son and a young, beautiful, and wealthy white girl. Both the son and the girl are active in a civil-rights group. Their entanglements with each other and with the group lead to two murders, and Nero and Archie, in their search for the murderer, become fascinatingly involved in America’s most immediate domestic problem. They unearth a murder motive unique in mystery fiction, and encounter some of the most interesting people ever invented by the master of the modern mystery, Rex Stout

Here is a new detective by Rex Stout, creator of the famous and beloved Nero Wolfe, who is the antithesis in many ways of his illustrious colleague, Nero. Where Wolfe is sedentary, Hicks is a dynamo of energy, where Wolfe is subtle. Hicks is brusque and direct; only in one thing are they alike — eccentricity. Alphabet Hicks, a lawyer more or less happy in disbarment, was content to make his living driving a taxi-cab until a certain woman happened to ride in his cab. This fare was the reason why Hicks left his cab and agreed to take a case, a case that turned out to have an intimate connection with the manufacture of plastics, and an even more intimate connection with some killings at a plastics laboratory some fifty miles from New York. That is the beginning, but by no means the end. This is a story with the pace of an airplane written with the skill of Rex Stout

The sexes battle, the mind feuds with emotions it cannot control and crime extorts and strikes and kills but it does not pay in this collection of stories by Rex Stout at the outset of his celebrated career in mystery and suspense. Again and again in these tales taken from the pages of pulps that originally published him — from popular magazines like All Story Weekly, the Black Cat and the Smart Set — the creator of the immortal Nero Wolfe proves himself to be the master of the sudden reversal and unexpected revelation as he probes the thwarted heart, the wounded soul and the criminal intelligence

The old-fashioned firm of Tingley’s Titbits had built up over a number of years a good and solid reputation, which was now in danger of being ruined. Indignant customers were returning jars of liver paté, sandwich spread, spiced anchovies and other such delicacies. Analysis showed that the contents had been adulterated with quinine. Arthur Tingley, the proprietor, was at his wits’ end. It was not only bad for business, it looked like being fatal. And it was... for Arthur. Here is a fine new murder story by that most entertaining of all detective writers, Rex Stout, featuring one of his famous characters, Tecumseh Fox, in the rôle of detective

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

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

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

In Blood Will Tell: In which Archie mysteriously receives a tie in the mail and Nero finally receives a fee for solving the murder of the too curious Greenwich Village wife

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 “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

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

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?

Under suspicion for murder and too angry to deny it, harried Hattie Annis offered 42 grand to Nero Wolfe to make the cops eat dirt. If she was innocent, you can ask her whether he earned his fee

“Here’s the gun I’m not going to use to kill my husband.” That’s what she said. But he was killed, and with that gun, or with one just like it... and Archie Goodwin had tampered with the gun himself

The only man who has ever given Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin any real trouble is Rex Stout himself. In this, his latest full-length novel, Stout sets before his famous detecting pair a seemingly insoluble problem. Orrie Cather, one of Nero Wolfe’s occasional employees, is in jail, suspected of murdering a lovely young thing. The lovely young thing has been the well-kept possession of a certain wealthy and influential man who has reasons for not wishing his name dragged into the case. The wealthy man offers to share his wealth with Nero — providing Nero will keep his name from ever being connected with the murder. Nero, at the same time, must get Orrie out of jail. He could easily do this by using his client’s name. It seems impossible to do it otherwise. Problem: How does Nero get Orrie out of jail? How does he keep his client’s name out of the press? And how does he find the true murderer? He does it with the avid and skilled assistance of one Julie Jacquette, a swinging songstress from the Ten Little Indians. That, at least, is partly how he does it

So you think you know Nero Wolfe, do you. So you’re reasonably sure that only the most dire emergency will induce Nero to heave his home on West Thirty-fifth Street, and that no case since his early days could make him budge from Manhattan Island or miss a meal cooked by his own precious Fritz? Well, brace yourself! In this latest full-length Nero Wolfe adventure, Nero not only leaves house, cook, and orchid planes, but also flies nearly cross-continent to Montana to join Archie Goodwin on a lavish but very private dude ranch. Here he settles down to solve murder by rifle shot, resigned to the necessity of performing such unWolfean activities as tramping through underbrush, wading in an icy trout stream, eating canned soup, and attending a rowdy Saturday night hoedown in a cattle town. He also has to deal with a young unmarried mother, some uncooperative cowhands, a highly belligerent sheriff, an off-Broadway actress, and any number of chairs which don’t begin to fit his bulk. Yet, throughout, he remains the same inimitable Nero Wolfe. How does Rex Stout know enough about the Far West to write this novel? Every summer, for a large part of his life, he spent his time riding pack trains, fishing mile-high streams, and enjoying night after night around campfires, yarning with genuine cowpunchers. So there isn’t a misplaced piece of harness or an unauthentic Western Vista in this, one of the funniest, most engaging, and most out-of-doors of all Nero Wolfe adventures

THREE RECENTLY DISCOVERED NERO WOLFE CLASSICS Now, with the aid of the Stout estate and Stout’s official biographer, John McAleer, Bantam Books is proud to publish for the first time in book form this newly discovered collection of three Nero Wolfe novellas. ASSAULT ON A BROWNSTONE, the never-before-published version of a novella featuring Wolfe in his most shocking confrontation with the law when his Thirty-fifth Street brownstone is invaded by Treasury officials. FRAME-UP FOR MURDER, concerning a famous fashion designer and a neatly stitched plot that weaves a deadly pattern of death. And BITTER END, a suspenseful story containing one of the nastiest incidents ever to occur at Wolfe’s dinner table

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 most engaging new detective of the year — Tecumseh Fox! Meet him in a neatly dovetailed mystery which is right up to the unbeatable standard of Rex Stout’s best. Two shots in the dark and a silent figure sprawled on the floor of Ridley Thorpe’s bungalow hideaway start thins mystery of a millionaire’s death in which passion spin the plot through he lanes and highways of New York’s suburbia. You will be hearing a lot more about Tecumseh Fox in the future, so you will do well to make his acquaintance right now. Maybe you will agree with the local police officials in the story who think the name most appropriate to the man

It was preposterously inconvenient. The outer door was locked as usual, yet there she lay — on Nero Wolfe’s carpet, in Nero Wolfe’s office, strangled by Nero Wolfe’s own necktie!

a book to remember... In this book you will investigate crime with such Famous Detectives as Perry Mason Nero Wolfe Ellery Queen and read stories of detection and suspense by such Famous Mystery Writers as Agatha Christie John Dickson Carr George Harmon Coxe Charlotte Armstrong Hugh Pentecost and be surprised at tales of mystery and crime by such Famous Literary Figures as W. Somerset Maugham Ben Hecht, John Van Druten A book to remember, a book to read and reread — a book to treasure and keep permanently in your library

In Rex Stout’s latest full-length mystery, the victim is a mental freak — a man capable of successfully playing a dozen simultaneous chess games against first-rate players while he himself is out of sight of any of the boards. It is while thus engaged that he is killed. A millionaire — his opponent in more realms than chess — is accused, and Nero Wolfe is given what appears to be the most hopeless case he and Archie Goodwin have ever tackled. You need know nothing about chess to follow this tale, but some understanding of beautiful mothers and daughters will help. We believe that Gambit will surely be counted among the two or three finest full-length mysteries produced by Rex Stout, and, hence, one of the great works in the whole genre

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

A crime story about counterfeiting with no continuing characters, set in New York City. Serialized in The All-Story, August — December 1913

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

Step by step, all of the threads of Bill Sidney’s life lead inexorably to his bewildering rendezvous with strange doom — as he is drawn, helplessly, toward the murder of the one woman he can never get out of his blood!

“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

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

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?

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

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

Kill Now, Pay Later: In which Nero Wolfe vindicates his favorite bootblack — for no fee — and Archie Goodwin protects the bootblack’s daughter

Cuando un poderoso representante gubernamental de la O.R.P. (Oficina de Regulación de Precios) está preparándose para hablar ante un grupo de millonarios pertenecientes a la A.I.N. (Asociación Industrial Nacional) muere asesinado. El mundo de los negocios se tambalea ante las sospechas vertidas sobre los magnates asistentes a la conferencia. La A.I.N. exige que se encuentre al asesino y Nero Wolfe decide hacerse cargo del caso

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

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

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

Murder Is Corny: In which the farmer’s daughter involves Archie Goodwin in a murder charge and Nero finds himself again at work for no fee

"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

XMAS MARKS THE PLOT Twelve Christmas mysteries — gift wrapped in entertainment and suspense — ready to take home for the holidays in this delightful collection selected from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, British detective extraordinaire, solves a country killing in which delivering a Christmas card was simply murder. Rex Stout sends a crotchety patrolman out to investigate a yuletide jewel theft on Manhattan’s mean streets. John D. MacDonald leaves us a secretary’s corpse on Christmas Street along with a cop’s clever ruse to catch her killer. And Santa Claus himself hitches up a sleighload of chills in stories by George Baxt, Malcolm McClintick, James Powell, and many more... for it’s ho, ho, homicide in the season to guess whodunit. MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS

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

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

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."

A new Nero Wolfe mystery at last — after a gap of four years — and it will be a delight to all Stout fans. The story is set in the summer of 1969, during that memorable period when the Mets were battling for the pennant and bomb scares abounded in Fun City. The mystery involves the explosion of a bomb in the office of a potential candidate for the presidency of a large corporation; the bomb kills another man, however, and no one can figure out whether the actual victim was the intended victim or not, and of course no one knows who set the bomb in the first place. The unraveling of the mystery, during which Archie encounters his first Women’s Liberationist, is full of suspense, humor, orchids, etymology, and good food in the best Stout tradition

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

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

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

SEED ON THE WIND is a revealing dramatization of Lora Winter, who has had many lovers but only one beloved. The story opens when the father of Lora’s youngest child first betrays that he is disturbed by an incident from her past that has arisen to cloud the present; the author then proceeds, in a series of vivid scenes, to unfold the past before our eyes. To the reader this is not a novel — rather the living, breathing substance of reality. Not even in the magic pages of How Like a God did Mr. Stout reveal himself so completely a master of feminine psychology. As in his first work, the author has provided both an engrossing story and a deep, moving study of human motivation. When How Like a God was issued, critics and the public alike realized that a new and powerful novelist had arisen. SEED ON THE WIND generously fulfills the promise of Mr. Stout’s first book and goes far to sustain the contention of those critics who compared him to D. H. Lawrence