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.
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?
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.
An employee of a very large corporation dies in a hit-and-run accident. Rumors abound that it was murder, disrupting morale. Nero and Archie are hired to either scotch the rumors or find the truth re: the mysterious death. These circumstances put Archie smack dab in the middle of hundreds of young working women -- many of them suspects, most of them of interest to Archie on other levels.
