I'm on record as being extremely skeptical of attempts by other authors to continue beloved series. I generally avoid all such mutations scrupulously, but what can I say? Archie Goodwin was my first book boyfriend and I have a weakness for him still, even when he's written by someone who truly cannot hold a candle to the late great Rex Stout. It's not that Goldsborough is a terrible writer; he's just not Stout, and his Nero and Archie are not my Nero and Archie. They are the methadone to Keith Richard's heroin, if you will. And I? Well, I am a junkie through and through. The needle and the damage done, indeed. ( )

Someone has just taken a pot shot at Archie Goodwin outside Nero Wolfe’s domicile –seems someone doesn’t like them, probably not surprising given the number of bad guys the two have put away over the years. Trouble is, this means that finding the guilty party before he tries again and perhaps succeeds is going to be a whole lot of work.

And this isn’t their only problem – clients have been as thin on the ground as hen’s teeth lately meaning the bank account isn’t too healthy either. So when a wealthy damsel in distress comes calling with a tale of blackmail and romance woes, Archie convinces Nero to take the case. When Archie tries to deliver the blackmail money, he is again shot at and this time the thug doesn’t miss. But before he can make the killshot, the bad guy is shot in the back, shooter unknown, and Archie gets away with a bullet in his shoulder and all of the money. It’s pretty clear pretty fast that it’s gonna take a lot of legwork on Archie’s part and a whole lot of deep thought and beer on Nero’s to figure out who is out to get them while, at the same time, saving the dame.

This is certainly not the first time a new author has tried to fill the shoes of a popular author after their death and not always successfully so I was interested to see how author Robert Goldsborough would do filling Rex Stout’s very large brogues. After all, Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin are two of the best known and loved fictional American detectives whose careers spanned something like four decades. Add to this Wolfe’s well-known eccentricities, his penchant for fine food and finer orchids, and his refusal to budge from his brownstone unless absolutely positively necessary and it makes for some fairly restrictive footwear. And I have to say Goldsborough does one hell of a job. In fact, it could be said that he has found the perfect fit. Rather than try to abandon the attitudes and language of the original series (the last one was written in 1975), he seems to revel in them. All of this could make the novel feel outdated but fedoras off to Goldsborough for making it a whole lot of fun returning to the days when men wore fedoras, women wore pearls, suspects are gathered together to discover who among them ‘dunnit’, and bad guys are sure to get their come-uppance. ( )

I have always loved Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series, so, of course, it was a tragedy when he died and the series came to an end. Trying to emulate a writer must be a very difficult task, one taken up by several different writers for Robert Parker, but only one so far for Rex Stout: Robert Goldsborough. They are pretty good. Not perfect, mind you, but they do, in spots, capture the master.

Rex Stout had a formula that worked very well. Nero reluctantly takes on a client, usually after Archie's nagged him enough because the bank balance is low. Then it's Archie's job to collect information and relay it verbatim to Nero who then summons all the participants to his brownstone, usually with Inspector Cramer in attendance, whereupon he solves the case. Stout had the formula down to perfection. It wasn't so much the plots that garnered such a devoted following but rather the wordplay of the characters. Goldsborough has captured that pretty well.

Archie is the ostensible target in this novel. Two shots have been fired at Archie as he enters the brownstone. He and Wolfe assume it's someone out for revenge especially after the phone calls. A man Wolfe helped put away years before has vowed to kill Archie in revenge. Saul and Fred are enlisted to help dig through the cases in attempt to find the culprit. In the midst of this, Cordelia Hutchinson, a railroad millionairess, wants Wolfe to find who is blackmailing her about an affair she had in Florence that threatens her upcoming nuptials. Since the Wolfe's bank account has suffered mostly withdrawals Archie is badgering Wolfe to take the case.... Then the two cases begin to cross.

A little slow in starting, once I got into it, I felt comfortably back in the world of Nero Wolfe and couldn't put it down.

My thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy in return for my unbiased review. ( )