When the 1920s' most glamorous lady detective, the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher, arranges to go to Ballarat for the week, she eschews the excitement of her red Hispano-Suiza racing car for the sedate safety of the train. The last thing she expects is to have to use her trusty Beretta .32 to save lives. As the passengers sleep, they are poisoned with chloroform. Phryne is left to piece together the clues after this restful country sojourn turns into the stuff of nightmares...
Prisoner's Base finds Nero Wolfe's legman Archie guilt-ridden and seeking the detective's help. Three women have been murdered, one a towel company heiress. Is her fortune-hunting husband involved, or were greedy business associates behind her death? As usual Wolfe's sleuthing talents puzzle out the truth. Michael Pritchard's clear, strong, and pleasant reading supports the tale and helps keep the atmosphere charged. Entertaining and suspenseful; recommended.
Nero Wolfe applies his detection skills to crack the case of a poisoned health nut, the death of a policeman in a barber shop, and a comic killer who makes a joke out of murder.
Manhattan Police Inspector Cramer asks for Wolfe’s help in solving the suspicious death of a law office clerk who has been fished out of the Hudson River. His probable homicide-causing offense? Submitting a manuscript for publication! With the manuscript missing and the only two to read it dead, the only clues are a cryptic quotation from the Bible and a list of names in the dead man’s pocket.Wolfe baits his trap. When it springs shut, he finds that truth is stranger (and bloodier) than fiction.
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.
