And Be a Villain

Nero Wolfe is crafty. The way he finds clients is to insert himself into a dilemma (pretty much always a murder) with the promise of a solution (usually by proving someone's innocence)...for a price (usually pretty steep). However it is up to Archie Goodwin to sell that service and bring the client onboard. When on-air guest Cyril Orchard is murdered by cyanide poisoning during Madeline Fraser's radio program, Archie's spin is that the heat will be off Madeline as a suspect if she hires the great Nero Wolfe to find the real killer. Logic prevails and Madeline agrees to Wolfe's demands; except now it looks like the poison was meant for her. Is someone out there is trying to kill her? At the same time Beula Poole is found shot to death show more and a seemingly unrelated gynecologist is being blackmailed. Then a third person is poisoned. Are all of these events related? The case so stumps Wolfe that he begrudgingly involves his on again-off again nemesis, Inspector Cramer. As usual, Goodwin is the star of the show. show less

I am in the process of rereading (listening to the perfectly matched Michael Pritchard) many of the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin mysteries. They hold up very well; in fact, as each novel takes place contemporaneous to its writing, many could be considered period pieces. And be a Villain takes place in 1948 so there are no cell phones, everything is typed, etc. Commercials were done live on the radio, and that features prominently in the mystery as one of the murders is committed on-the-air during a live broadcast, the featured product being spiked with cyanide.

The usual marvelous characters are in place: Inspector Cramer, Fritz (the incomparable cook,) Sgt. Stebbins, and delightfully the Asst. police commissioner O’Hara who, show more because the case is high-profile insist on horning in. (“Wolfe said to tell you. you’re a nincompoop but I’m too polite to mention it.”) For those not familiar with the series, Nero Wolfe (pay absolutely no attention to the execrable TV series with Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin - they make me gag) is an enormously fat and brilliant detective who never leaves his house (well, almost never) and his wise-cracking side-kick, Archie who follows Wolfe’s directions and reports conversations verbatim.

The language is precise and clever replete with comments such as “Someday, sir, you’ll get on the wrong train by trying to board yours before it arrives,” and “there was no finger pointed without wavering,” and finding a solution by “tramping down the improbabilities.”

One could argue that the books are formulaic and I suppose they are, but when you have such a perfect combination, what’s not to enjoy? show less

Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series is the first detective series I remember getting myself hooked on. The good news back then (the mid-sixties) was discovering that the series had started years before I was born (with 1934’s Fer-de-Lance), so there were already lots of Nero Wolfe books for me to enjoy. Even better, Stout kept writing new ones every couple of years right up until his death in 1975, so for a long time there was always another new Nero Wolf story to look forward to. And as I’ve just been reminded, author Robert Goldsborough added another sixteen Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin books between 1986 and 2021, meaning I have even more Nero Wolfe material to explore now than I ever imagined.

As I began And Be a Villain, I had vivid show more memories of the Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin characters and the amusing relationship that developed between them over the years. Theirs was/is much more than an employer/employee relationship; the men respect each other, care for each other, and are real friends. That, in fact, is part of what makes their verbal sparring so much fun. But even though this is not the first time I’ve read And Be a Villain, I remembered very little about it’s actual plot, so reading it now was almost like reading it for the first time.

Nero Wolfe is almost literally an “armchair detective” — and he’s a good one. Wolfe is a large man (I picture him as someone approaching a weight of 300 pounds) who refuses to leave his New York City apartment for any reason. Archie Goodwin, considerably younger than Wolfe, and a whole lot more agile, does all of the leg work involved in a Nero Wolfe investigation. In the meantime, Wolfe happily follows his own schedule of meals at specific times and two daily sessions with his beloved orchids.

This time around, popular radio talk show host Madeline Fraser has had the unthinkable happen during one of her live broadcasts. A guest has dropped dead on-air after taking a sip of from a soda provided by one of the show’s sponsors. All the police know for certain is that someone slipped cyanide into one of the bottles, and that this particular guest drew the unlucky bottle. It is exactly the kind of case that appeals to Wolfe, and because he has a large tax bill due just when his cash flow is at a low point, he offers his services to the radio network and the show’s sponsors on a contingent basis. If he solves the case before the police do it — or if the police solve it only because of a Wolfe-provided clue — he cashes their $20,000 check. If he fails, they get the check back.

But when Wolfe gathers up all the principals involved with Madeline Fraser’s radio show, he makes his first discovery: they are all lying — maybe not all for the same reason, but each and every one of them is holding something back. And that’s a fatal mistake, because now Nero Wolfe is ticked.

Bottom Line: And Be a Villain (1948) is the thirteenth Nero Wolfe mystery, and by this time fans of the series were familiar with the Wolfe and Goodwin characters. Feature films based on the Rex Stout characters had been produced by 1948, and television was going to make Nero Wolfe a household name in various TV series over the coming decades. The Nero Wolfe novels are usually not very long, but they are always satisfying. Fans of character-driven mysteries will particularly enjoy them, I think, but the mysteries are always solidly constructed ones that readers will also enjoy trying to solve before Wolfe gives them all the answers. show less

With its setting in radio, satire on advertising, subtlety, tightly-written scenes, and cast of interesting, distinct female characters, this is one of my favorite Nero Wolfe mysteries. The villain is one of his best. And to top it all, Arnold Zeck is introduced, and used with a controlled menace I still admire.

My first Nero Wolfe and I will come back for more. The case involves a man who died on the radio, during a broadcast, when his drink, High Top, a sponsor of the show, is laced with poison and kills him on the air. You can imagine the sensation! Wolfe and his associate Archie Goodwin, are on the case. The criminal is sneaky but you suspect them from the start. The proving is the fun part. I think that Wolfe, a man who rarely leaves his home to do anything, is an interesting hero and Archie has some of the best one-liners written down.

A radio show guest is murdered live on the air, poisoned after drinking some of the sponsor's beverage. Was the guest the intended victim or did the bottle end up in the wrong person's hand? What was the motive? While there were a few places the plot bogged down, it rarely did so while Nero Wolfe was in the detecting mode. We listened to this on audiobook downloaded from Overdrive and were amused every time it told us to change the cassette or to flip the cassette or hit reverse. Could these directions not be edited out? Still, it provided a laugh every thirty minutes or so, and the rating is unaffected by this oddity.

When a radio talk show guest is murdered during a live broadcast, Nero Wolfe is hired to investigate. The fee will come in handy to pay the IRS the large sum he owes. Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin uncover additional criminal activity as they investigate the murder. As usual, they beat Inspector Cramer to the solution of the crime and the identification of the criminal.

I borrowed the audio version from OverDrive, and it has not been updated for the digital era. Every 30-40 minutes, the reader instructed us to either flip the cassette over or insert the next cassette. The reader's voice also reminded me very much of radio broadcaster Paul Harvey. If you think either of these things would annoy you, I suggest sticking with the show more print version. show less