Rex Stout

With Nero Wolfe on the job, you'd think murderers would take caution. But even the master detective can't stop a killing, especially if it's an inside job—right under the roof of his client, millionaire Otis Jarrell. What's more, it's Jarrell's own missing revolver that the killer uses. Wolfe...

Desiree Le Mire ran into the cave, anxious to explore, tempted by the legends of Inca gold....

As any herpetologist will tell you, the fer-de-lance is among the most dreaded snakes known to man. When someone makes a present of one to Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin knows he's getting dreadfully close to solving the devilishly clever murders of an immigrant and a college president. As for Wolfe...

There’s no one and nothing the great detective Nero Wolfe wouldn’t take on if the price was right. That’s something wealthy society widow Rachel Bruner is counting on when she writes him a check for a whopping hundred grand. But even Wolfe has a moment’s doubt when he finds out why the...

With a rich man footing the bills and a handsome lover on the side, Isabel Kerr seemed to have the perfect setup. Now the well-kept lady is stone-cold dead, and the cops have nabbed a Manhattan private eye who just happens to be an acquaintance of Nero Wolfe. Unable to refuse a friend in need...

When Priscilla Eads, heiress to cotton-towel millions, first pleads for Nero Wolfe’s assistance, the portly detective decides to wash his hands of a case that has more than its share of dirty laundry. Just hours later Miss Eads and her maid are found strangled to death under circumstances that...

Nero Wolfe, lover of fine food and prize orchids, is a genius at daring detection. But he is always on guard when it comes to women. Now murder at a fencing studio engages him and his confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, in a dangerous duel with death. The prime suspect is a Balkan beauty who...

Madeline Fraser, radio talk show host extraordinaire, had a natural dread of dead air. So when one of her on-air guests signed off at the mike after drinking a glass of a sponsor’s beverage, it was a broadcaster’s nightmare come true. Enter Nero Wolfe. He agrees to take the case, with his...

The army wants Nero Wolfe urgently, but he refuses their clarion call to duty. It takes Archie Goodwin to titillate Wolfe’s taste for crime with two malevolent morsels: a corpse that refuses to rest in peace and a sinister “accident” involving national security. It’s up to the Grandiose...

“It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.”—The New York Times Book Review Introduction by David Handler It wasn’t Leonard Dykes’s writing style that offended. But something in his unpublished tome seemed to lead everyone who read it to a very...

A brilliant Rex Stout murder mystery featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin A bomb explodes in the desk drawer of a top TV executive. Was it intended for him or the man who opened the drawer? They each had enemies enough to die a dozen times over. Was it the jealous wife or the ambitious...

Three clever murderers challenge Nero Wolfe in cases involving lovers who want to make sure neither is a killer, a stable full of suspects in the search for a killer on horseback, and a murderer stalking Wolfe's brownstone...

Jerin 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...

“It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.”—The New York Times Book Review Eleven years ago, wealthy Nebraska businessman James Herold gave his only son, Paul, a very raw deal. Now he wants Nero Wolfe to track Paul down so that he can make amends...

It’s a wily killer who dares to strike on Nero Wolfe’s hallowed turf—and leave a corpse strangled with Wolfe’s own soup-stained tie. But no sooner does the gourmandizing sleuth clean up this first course of murder than he faces a gun-toting wife who serves up a confession of homicidal...

An automobile breakdown strands Nero Wolfe and Archie in the middle of a private pasture—and a family feud over a prize bull. A restaurateur’s plan to buy the stud and barbecue it as a publicity stunt may be in poor taste, but it isn’t a crime . . . until Hickory Caesar Grindon, the...

The aging millionairess has a problem: where is her young playboy husband getting all his money? To help find the answer, Archie infiltrates a party at her palatial estate. But her late-night murder ruins the festive mood . . . and a letter bomb from a powerful crime boss makes Nero Wolfe do the...

“It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.”—The New York Times Book Review Embark on a year of murder and mystery. It begins at Christmas with a party and a poisoning, then blossoms into spring with sudden death at the Easter Parade. With a killer...

Nero Wolfe has left his comfortable brownstone for the promise of a remarkably rare black orchid at a flower show—but before Wolfe and his perennially hardy sidekick, Archie Goodwin, have a chance to stop and smell the roses, a diabolically daring murder takes place right under their noses and...

Archie Goodwin has his hands full when three baffling murders make him the recipient of a poisonous lunch, the fall guy for a beautiful woman, and the target of the U.S. Federal Government...