One by one they knocked on Nero Wolfe's door, each with a case more perplexing than the last: a suicide victim who turns up alive, only to be murdered anew; a murder victim's family who provides his killer with an alibi; and a master horticulturalist who finds the woman of his dreams--dead and cooling in his hothouse.
Orchids and machine guns, the privileged rich, and tough private eyes make for a heady mix, which reader Michael Prichard spins in classic late 1940s' style. The phlegmatic, cerebral, orchid-and-food-fancying sleuth Nero Wolfe, like a twentieth-century Mycroft Holmes, accepts a case involving not only the players mentioned, but also a search for Communists. Prichard tells the story in the first- person point of view of Wolfe's right hand, the tough, canny, and pleasure-loving Archie Goodwin.
Nero Wolfe is sleuthing as usual in these three mysteries. In the Best Families deals with Mrs. Rackam, an aging millionaire who approaches Wolfe to investigate why her young and penniless husband suddenly and mysteriously has large sums of money. Wolfe's inquiry leads him to a confrontation with Arnold Zeck; later a letter bomb causes Wolfe to resign from detective work and go into hiding, leaving his assistant, Archie Goodwin, to solve the case. Has Wolfe's career ended in humiliation?
Trouble in Triplicate tells a trio of tales in which the murder victim comes to Wolfe before being killed. In "Before I Die" a crime boss brings a blackmail case to Wolfe, never expecting to die. But just in case, he makes Wolfe the executor of his estate, thereby making Wolfe and Archie Goodwin the prime suspects in his murder. Wolfe's task: solve the crime boss's murder before he and Archie are erased by the boss's vengeful hit man. In "Help Wanted--Male" Wolfe blows off a prospective client who has received a death threat mere hours before the man's brutal murder.
A murder before a studio audience on a radio broadcast means a high-profile case and a $20,000 paycheck, both important to Nero Wolfe, who needs to boost his bank account quickly to pay for his luxurious living. Reading in Archie Goodwin's first-person voice, Michael Prichard gives the narration a touch of noir tone but keeps the emphasis on Rex Stout's witty dialogue as the wise-guy sidekick. His Nero Wolfe is suitably commanding as he belittles and deceives to get the truth from a gallery of dishonest suspects.
