Robert Goldsborough's 2nd Nero Wolfe novel began poorly but improved to mediocrity by the end.Wolfe is concerned that a Scottish newspaper baron with a reputation for sensationalism will purchase the Gazette, Wolfe's long time ally and source of information. Wolfe sets out to prevent it. However, when one of the principals in the Gazette is killed and everyone else thinks its suicide, Wolfe concludes that it's actually murder and sets out to prove it.The book has one upside. Compared to the last book, Goldsborough's Wolfe reads in a more Wolfian manner based on the books Wolfe read.The first third to half of the book is carnival of flummery. To start with, Goldsborough brings partisanship into the book. Notice, I send partisanship, not politics. In finding out about the misdeeds of the news tycoon, Wolfe learns from Lon Cohen that McLaren's papers have consistently endorsed Republicans and Wolfe expresses disapproval and expresses his disapproval of endorsing Republicans and includes this as a talking point in his full page New York Times ad. (more on that in a bit.)Politics is nothing new to Wolfe's world. Wolfe books include anti-Communism, anti-McCarthyism, concern about civil liberties, and civil rights. Even individual political figures such as J Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, and Richard Nixon. However, in each of those cases, he was upset about their specific action. Wolfe never expressed loathing of an entire political party in Stout's work. Of course, a progressive could argue that the Republican Party of Stout's age was more diverse and the modern version was more uniformly wrong by Wolfe's standards. However, this case is never made. Rather, Wolfe is presented as a partisan with unexplained animus against a political party that won 49 states in the 1984 elections. And this animus was never actually raised again and had no relevance to the plot. Indeed, had Goldsborough merely had Wolfe object to shotty journalism, the story would have lost nothing and he wouldn't have violated the Wolfe character. Beyond partisanship, Wolfe's scheme of putting a full page ad in the New York Times was dumb. Doubtless, Goldsborough remembered the countless times Wolfe placed display ads in the paper, but never a full page ad for something that really didn't need it. The point of the full page ad was to get public attention so Wolfe could meet with people involved with the Gazette and the attempt to sell it to prevent the sale to McLaren. However, Wolfe could have run a smaller ad, or given his notoriety sent in an op-ed and saved the money. In addition, we get to read the ad and it's dull and sounds nothing Archie is even more vapid when he bets Wolfe $10 that the Times won't publish the ad. Given that Archie has read The Times for years, this was just a stupid bet and it's unbelievable Archie would have proposed it. Like most attempts to reconstruct the Wolfe-Archie magic in this book, this one fails.Goldsborough also has mixed success at updating Archie and Wolfe to the 1980s. On one hand, it's reasonable to imagine that Archie would want a personal computer and Wolfe not wanting to do it. Stout's Wolfe objected to buying newer cars and buying Archie a new typewriter. However, in one lazily written scene where Wolfe shows respect to a woman, Archie wished he had a VCR so he could record the moment. However, as he was not watching this on TV, he really meant he wished he had a video camera. The mystery itself was decent but forgettable. There was no suspect, client, or interview in this story that was memorable. Wolfe did no stunning act of showmanship. There was no big surprise twist in the investigation. It was bland and the solution we were presented strained credulity. The best thing about this novel for the person who has read Stout's Wolfe is that it truly makes you appreciate all the little touches Stout put in that make reading his Nero Wolfe stories so memorable. One thing this book made me notice was the way that Stout chose dinner conversations. Stout's Wolfe talked about a wide variety of topics from agriculture to histories of the ancient world, to obscure scientific questions, and anthropology. I never knew what exactly Wolfe was talking about, but I felt like this was the type of thing a well-read genius would discuss. Unfortunately, Mr. Goldsborough's line of conversation for Wolfe seems far more limited with him mostly talking politics, political books, American history, and sports. Yes, Nero Wolfe discusses whether College athletes should be paid at the dinner table in this book creating the feeling that this is what the average reader of the New Yorker discusses around the dinner table. Still, I admit being eager to see Wolfe hold a confab and name a murderer when I got to that part of the book. Goldsborough's book allows you a chance to see Wolfe and Archie in action. If you can past all the flummery and just think about better Nero Wolfe stories, you may enjoy this book more than I did.
#2 in the Goldsborough continuation of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series.Praise for the series being true to the Stout originals is well deserved. This quarter century old novel does have a rosy view of the finances of newspaper publishing, a view which doesn't stand the test of time. I did note a few internal inconsistencies though: On p.22 Archie is quoted a rate of $32,932 for a full page ad in the NY Times and later on the same page has "a cashier's check drawn for the twenty-nine-grand-plus" (plus almost four-grand); and, on p.132 Dean says of Mrs. Haverhill "As she told you when we were here last week, she felt confident of holding Scott on her side by offering him one of the three chairs on that board of trustees..." but p.43 at that meeting, attended by Dean, Mrs. Haverhill says of Scott "I'm sure he was hurt that I didn't name him one of the three trustees." This second slip had me suspecting the right person, for the wrong reason - apparently it was only a proofreading error. Lest it appear that I'm harping on Goldsborough, I has been widely reported that one of the addresses Stout gives for Wolfe's home/office on W.35th St. would place it in the middle of the Hudson River.Nero Wolfe series - Convinced that elderly Harriet Haverhill was murdered, the detective disputes the official verdict of suicide. Proud of her family-owned newspaper, the Gazette, Haverhill had rejected lucrative offers from a sleazy tycoon who wants to turn the daily into another of his sensationalistic scandal sheets. Mrs. Haverhill's kin and other stockholders seem eager to sell out, however, and Wolfe intends to prove that one of them is a killer for profit.
What do You think about Death On Deadline (1988)?
I read 'Archie Meets Nero Wolfe' by this author some time ago. It was an OK novel but not at all Wolfian. This book has an altogether different problem. It is a lousy crime. Overall it captures the essence of Wolfe with a few exceptions, as when Archie refers to a woman as a hooker, which he would never do. It is altogether too chatty between Archie and Nero without the pithyness, but hey Rex Stout was a genius so, to come close is an achievement. Despite this I found myself immersed in the story until the resolution.*****SPOILER ALERT******The actual crime and solution is ridiculous. It is an old whodunit standard-The suicide that isn't. This style of story becomes, not only a whodunit but a howdunit. Half of the mystery is awaiting the clever way the culprit makes a murder look like suicide. In 'Death on a Deadline' we are told that everyone except Wolfe thinks it is a suicide because there are no discernable clues otherwise, yet, in the resolution, we are presented with a scenario which would leave nothing but clues. The murder took place in an office on a crowded floor of the publisher, yet no one heard the shot. The villian wrestled the gun away from the victim an then shot her,yet, there were no signs of struggle, fingerprints, powder burns, angle and distance of the weapon, nothing. Incredible. The author has never heard of basic crime novel forensics. It is difficult to recommend a crime novel when the crime is so ludicrous.
—Will Pfister
