Three for the Chair
Encyclopedia
Three for the Chair is a collection of Nero Wolfe
mystery
novella
s by Rex Stout
, published by the Viking Press
in 1957, and by Bantam Books
in various paperback printings beginning in 1958. The book contains three stories:
Twenty years earlier, Bert was charged with the murder of his father. Bert was acquitted, largely on the basis of an alibi provided by Vincent Tuttle, at the time his roommate and later his brother-in-law. After his acquittal Bert broke contact with his family and moved to Canada, where, in partnership with Arrow, he struck it rich in uranium. Having recently returned to New York to re-establish ties with his family, Bert invited them to his hotel suite for dinner, and to a Broadway show. But Bert fell ill with pneumonia and required bed rest and 24-hour nursing care. Paul, a masher, manhandled nurse Anne Goren, who phoned the attending physician to send another nurse. Louise Tuttle volunteered to watch Bert, and Miss Goren left. Then Paul got into a fistfight with Arrow over Miss Goren, who had aroused romantic and protective feelings in Arrow. Arrow beat Paul so badly that he was arrested and spent the night in jail. That night, Bert died, and his doctor certifies that the death was due to pneumonia. Paul now suggests that Arrow might have found a way to substitute something toxic for the morphine that the doctor had left with the nurse.
There are several strange aspects to Bert's death. One is that Bert's father had died in a similar fashion 20 years earlier – someone had opened the bedroom windows on a snowy winter night as the father lay asleep, also suffering from pneumonia. Louise Tuttle has felt guilty ever since, because she was supposed to be looking after him but had fallen asleep in the next room.
Then there's the matter of the missing ice cream. Paul had brought two quarts of ice cream to Bert's hotel room and put them in the refrigerator. It went uneaten due to the subsequent events, but somehow it has disappeared. Wolfe sends Archie to see Paul, Louise and Vincent in Mount Kisco to check on the morphine, and while he's there to investigate the ice cream's disappearance.
Yet another strange aspect is that when Bert's body was found, there were two hot water bags next to him. The presence of the bags was expected; that they were both empty was not.
Secretary Leeson has invited Wolfe to the lodge because the ambassador, Theodore Kelefy, wants to catch and eat an American brook trout, and, furthermore, wants the trout to be cooked by Nero Wolfe himself. To accommodate Kelefy, Wolfe agrees to cook trout Montbarry for the guests on the final day of the conference.
On the night of Wolfe's arrival at the lodge, hard feelings are evident. Dinner is served at a table that is placed far too close to a fireplace for everyone's comfort. Kelefy's assistant, Spiros Papps, is describing the participants' interests to Archie over the entrée, but Bragan has seated both Archie and James Ferris, Bragan's competitor for the oil rights, so close to the fire that they are in serious discomfort. At last Ferris angrily leaves the table, followed shortly thereafter by Archie.
The next morning, the five negotiators – Bragan, Ferris, Kelefy, Papps and Leeson – go fishing. Each is assigned a different stretch of the river that runs by Bragan's lodge, and each is competing to catch the most trout before an 11:30 deadline. After the deadline has passed, Archie takes the opportunity to do some fishing himself, and less than a mile downstream from the lodge he gets a strike from a huge trout. As he is working the trout in, he sees something unexpected: the body of Assistant Secretary Leeson, lying on the riverbank with his head submerged in the water. Enough of his head is visible, though, that Archie can tell it was bashed with a blunt object.
Apparently inured to unexpected death, Archie reels in the trout before he returns to the lodge to report his discovery to Wolfe, who, having prepared the trout Montbarry, is packing to leave. After Archie explains to Wolfe what will happen if they try to leave, and after Wolfe has upbraided Archie for insisting on going fishing, Bragan is notified and the police called. The authorities investigate and conclude that Leeson was murdered, probably by someone staying at the lodge. This conclusion outrages Bragan, and District Attorney Colvin is appropriately obsequious, but he does not bend to the implicit political pressure.
That evening, Kelefy and his beautiful wife Adria visit Wolfe's room at the lodge. Kelefy has heard that the police investigation revealed that Wolfe did not cook the trout that Kelefy caught, and he wants to know why. Wolfe tells Kelefy it was just a whim – he is, after all, a confirmed eccentric. Kelefy accepts the explanation with some reluctance, and then asks Wolfe to keep confidential a heated exchange that took place between Bragan and Ferris. Wolfe agrees, and Kelefy removes an emerald ring from his finger and tells Adria to give it to Wolfe as an expression of his appreciation. After the Kelefys leave his room, Wolfe and Archie examine the emerald and find that, although large, it is flawed and probably fairly cheap.
Wolfe is irked rather than pleased by the tawdry gift, and is moved to action. He wants to speak with his lawyer, Nathaniel Parker, but the police are everywhere at the lodge so there is no possibility of making a telephone call in private. Wolfe solves that problem by conversing with Parker in French, a language that the officers do not speak. Once he has obtained the information he needs, he calls the U.S. Secretary of State, the only person to whom he can safely reveal the murderer's identity.
But something in the conversations they are monitoring soon arouses Archie's own suspicions. He calls at the Ross apartment and learns that Otis Ross is not the man who hired Wolfe. The tap is cancelled immediately and the real Mr. Ross is apprised of the deception. Wolfe and Archie spend a month trying to locate the man who posed as Ross, without success.
Nothing further happens until now, when Wolfe and Archie have been summoned to Albany to submit to questioning by the office of New York's secretary of state, which licenses private investigators. It seems that there have been several wiretapping scandals involving private investigators lately and the state government wants to take some action.
Wolfe reiterates his written statement on the Ross matter for Albert Hyatt, a special deputy of the secretary of state, including his own irritation that Archie argued for accepting the job because of the ". . . novelty and diversion a wiretapping operation would offer him personally." But then a body is discovered in a room across the hall, which Archie recognizes as that of the man who impersonated Otis Ross at Wolfe's office.
Wolfe and Archie are not the only private investigators who have been called to Albany that morning. Five others, each from New York City, are present and because they each had opportunity to commit the murder they all are detained in Albany by the police. They are taken one by one to view the corpse and identify it if possible.
Then Hyatt provides information that causes the police to arrest Wolfe and Archie. The dead man had called on Hyatt earlier that day, and told him that not only had he hired Wolfe, but also that Wolfe knew that the wiretap was illegal and went ahead with it anyway. This contradicts Wolfe's statement, and Wolfe and Archie are jailed until Wolfe's lawyer Nathaniel Parker arranges for their bail.
That night, Wolfe invites the other detectives to attend a conference in his hotel room to share information. After some back and forth, Wolfe breaks down their initial mistrust of one another and they each reveal that the murdered man hired them to wiretap his own office, giving a different name and address to each of them.
In some Wolfe novels and novellas, Archie is denied information about some fact or about activities that Wolfe has undertaken through hired operatives. In Too Many Detectives, though, Wolfe shuts Archie completely out of the operation. He is dispatched to answer questions for the district attorney, and is not invited to take part in Wolfe's solution of the murder case. Archie knows only that the other detectives have assisted by making their own employees in New York City available to track down information.
And the reason that Wolfe shuts Archie out of the investigation is not revealed until the final two sentences of the story.
in The New York Times and dispraise from Julian Symons
in The Sunday Times (London).
(2001–2002). The episode made its debut August 18, 2002 — the last original broadcast on the A&E Network. Directed by John R. Pepper, the teleplay was written by Stuart Kaminsky
. Interviewed by Publishers Weekly upon being named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America
, Kaminsky was asked about his work on Nero Wolfe:
Timothy Hutton
is Archie Goodwin; Maury Chaykin
is Nero Wolfe. Other members of the cast (in credits order) include David Schurmann (O.V. Bragan), Robert Bockstael (David Leeson), Carlo Rota
(Spiros Papps), Susannah Hoffmann (Sally Leeson), Giancarlo Esposito
(Ambassador Theodore Kelefy), Seymour Cassel
(James Arthur Ferris), Manon von Gerkan
(Adria Kelefy), George Plimpton
(Cook), Richard Waugh (Capt. Jasper Colvin), Matthew Edison
(Nate the Trooper) and Steve Cumyn (D.A. Herman Jasper).
The soundtrack includes music by Michael Small
, composer for Nero Wolfe, and Angel Villaldo.
In international broadcasts, the 45-minute A&E version of "Immune to Murder" is expanded into a 90-minute widescreen telefilm.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery is available on DVD from A&E Home Video. ISBN 0-7670-8893-X
Nero Wolfe
Nero Wolfe is a fictional detective, created in 1934 by the American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe's confidential assistant Archie Goodwin narrates the cases of the detective genius. Stout wrote 33 novels and 39 short stories from 1934 to 1974, with most of them set in New York City. Wolfe's...
mystery
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
s by Rex Stout
Rex Stout
Rex Todhunter Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. Stout is best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the...
, published by the Viking Press
Viking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
in 1957, and by Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
in various paperback printings beginning in 1958. The book contains three stories:
- "A Window for Death," first published in The American Magazine (May 1956) as "Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue"
- "Immune to Murder," first published in The American Magazine (November 1955)
- "Too Many Detectives," first published September 14, 1956, in Collier'sCollier's WeeklyCollier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
A Window for Death
Plot summary
David Fyfe, a high school English teacher, brings Wolfe a problem regarding a contract and inheritance. His brother Bert has just died of pneumonia and left his estate to David, another brother Paul, and their sister Louise Fyfe Tuttle. But under the terms of an agreement with Bert's business partner, Johnny Arrow, all assets from their uranium mining operation go to Arrow, and the assets represent nearly all of Bert's five million dollar estate. Paul Fyfe thinks that Arrow might have killed Bert before he could shelter his assets by giving them to his relatives. The family hires Wolfe to determine whether there's enough evidence of a crime to refer the matter to the police.Twenty years earlier, Bert was charged with the murder of his father. Bert was acquitted, largely on the basis of an alibi provided by Vincent Tuttle, at the time his roommate and later his brother-in-law. After his acquittal Bert broke contact with his family and moved to Canada, where, in partnership with Arrow, he struck it rich in uranium. Having recently returned to New York to re-establish ties with his family, Bert invited them to his hotel suite for dinner, and to a Broadway show. But Bert fell ill with pneumonia and required bed rest and 24-hour nursing care. Paul, a masher, manhandled nurse Anne Goren, who phoned the attending physician to send another nurse. Louise Tuttle volunteered to watch Bert, and Miss Goren left. Then Paul got into a fistfight with Arrow over Miss Goren, who had aroused romantic and protective feelings in Arrow. Arrow beat Paul so badly that he was arrested and spent the night in jail. That night, Bert died, and his doctor certifies that the death was due to pneumonia. Paul now suggests that Arrow might have found a way to substitute something toxic for the morphine that the doctor had left with the nurse.
There are several strange aspects to Bert's death. One is that Bert's father had died in a similar fashion 20 years earlier – someone had opened the bedroom windows on a snowy winter night as the father lay asleep, also suffering from pneumonia. Louise Tuttle has felt guilty ever since, because she was supposed to be looking after him but had fallen asleep in the next room.
Then there's the matter of the missing ice cream. Paul had brought two quarts of ice cream to Bert's hotel room and put them in the refrigerator. It went uneaten due to the subsequent events, but somehow it has disappeared. Wolfe sends Archie to see Paul, Louise and Vincent in Mount Kisco to check on the morphine, and while he's there to investigate the ice cream's disappearance.
Yet another strange aspect is that when Bert's body was found, there were two hot water bags next to him. The presence of the bags was expected; that they were both empty was not.
Cast of characters
- Nero Wolfe — The private investigator
- Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories)
- Bert Fyfe — A wealthy uranium prospector, now deceased
- David Fyfe, Paul Fyfe, and Louise Fyfe Tuttle — Bert's two brothers and sister
- Vincent Tuttle — Louise's husband
- Johnny Arrow — Bert Fyfe's business partner
- Anne Goren — Bert Fyfe's nurse
- Frederick Buhl, MD — Bert Fyfe's doctor
Immune to Murder
Plot summary
Wolfe and Archie travel to an oil tycoon's hunting lodge in the Adirondacks. The oilman, O.V. Bragan, is hosting a gathering of dignitaries who are apparently negotiating the acquisition of oil rights in another country; the country is not identified. Included are the country's ambassador to the U.S., his wife and assistant, a U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and his wife, and the head of a consortium of U.S. oil firms that are in competition with Bragan's for the oil rights.Secretary Leeson has invited Wolfe to the lodge because the ambassador, Theodore Kelefy, wants to catch and eat an American brook trout, and, furthermore, wants the trout to be cooked by Nero Wolfe himself. To accommodate Kelefy, Wolfe agrees to cook trout Montbarry for the guests on the final day of the conference.
On the night of Wolfe's arrival at the lodge, hard feelings are evident. Dinner is served at a table that is placed far too close to a fireplace for everyone's comfort. Kelefy's assistant, Spiros Papps, is describing the participants' interests to Archie over the entrée, but Bragan has seated both Archie and James Ferris, Bragan's competitor for the oil rights, so close to the fire that they are in serious discomfort. At last Ferris angrily leaves the table, followed shortly thereafter by Archie.
The next morning, the five negotiators – Bragan, Ferris, Kelefy, Papps and Leeson – go fishing. Each is assigned a different stretch of the river that runs by Bragan's lodge, and each is competing to catch the most trout before an 11:30 deadline. After the deadline has passed, Archie takes the opportunity to do some fishing himself, and less than a mile downstream from the lodge he gets a strike from a huge trout. As he is working the trout in, he sees something unexpected: the body of Assistant Secretary Leeson, lying on the riverbank with his head submerged in the water. Enough of his head is visible, though, that Archie can tell it was bashed with a blunt object.
Apparently inured to unexpected death, Archie reels in the trout before he returns to the lodge to report his discovery to Wolfe, who, having prepared the trout Montbarry, is packing to leave. After Archie explains to Wolfe what will happen if they try to leave, and after Wolfe has upbraided Archie for insisting on going fishing, Bragan is notified and the police called. The authorities investigate and conclude that Leeson was murdered, probably by someone staying at the lodge. This conclusion outrages Bragan, and District Attorney Colvin is appropriately obsequious, but he does not bend to the implicit political pressure.
That evening, Kelefy and his beautiful wife Adria visit Wolfe's room at the lodge. Kelefy has heard that the police investigation revealed that Wolfe did not cook the trout that Kelefy caught, and he wants to know why. Wolfe tells Kelefy it was just a whim – he is, after all, a confirmed eccentric. Kelefy accepts the explanation with some reluctance, and then asks Wolfe to keep confidential a heated exchange that took place between Bragan and Ferris. Wolfe agrees, and Kelefy removes an emerald ring from his finger and tells Adria to give it to Wolfe as an expression of his appreciation. After the Kelefys leave his room, Wolfe and Archie examine the emerald and find that, although large, it is flawed and probably fairly cheap.
Wolfe is irked rather than pleased by the tawdry gift, and is moved to action. He wants to speak with his lawyer, Nathaniel Parker, but the police are everywhere at the lodge so there is no possibility of making a telephone call in private. Wolfe solves that problem by conversing with Parker in French, a language that the officers do not speak. Once he has obtained the information he needs, he calls the U.S. Secretary of State, the only person to whom he can safely reveal the murderer's identity.
Cast of characters
- Nero Wolfe — The private investigator
- Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories)
- O.V. Bragan — Oil magnate and host of a conference to negotiate oil rights
- Theodore Kelefy — Ambassador of the country offering the oil rights
- Adria Kelefy — His wife
- Spiros Papps — Kelefy's advisor
- Assistant Secretary of State David M. Leeson
- Sally Leeson — His wife
- James Ferris — Head of an oil consortium in competition with Bragan for oil rights
- District Attorney Jasper Colvin
Too Many Detectives
Plot summary
Wolfe is seriously chagrined. A year earlier, Otis Ross came to the brownstone asking that Wolfe arrange for a wiretap of Ross's own phone line. Ross is a businessman who handles his affairs from home. He suspects that his secretary has been making personal use of confidential information and wants his line tapped so as to determine whether his suspicions are valid. Wolfe knows nothing of wiretaps, but Archie is eager to learn, and so after verifying the client's identity Wolfe accepts the job.But something in the conversations they are monitoring soon arouses Archie's own suspicions. He calls at the Ross apartment and learns that Otis Ross is not the man who hired Wolfe. The tap is cancelled immediately and the real Mr. Ross is apprised of the deception. Wolfe and Archie spend a month trying to locate the man who posed as Ross, without success.
Nothing further happens until now, when Wolfe and Archie have been summoned to Albany to submit to questioning by the office of New York's secretary of state, which licenses private investigators. It seems that there have been several wiretapping scandals involving private investigators lately and the state government wants to take some action.
Wolfe reiterates his written statement on the Ross matter for Albert Hyatt, a special deputy of the secretary of state, including his own irritation that Archie argued for accepting the job because of the ". . . novelty and diversion a wiretapping operation would offer him personally." But then a body is discovered in a room across the hall, which Archie recognizes as that of the man who impersonated Otis Ross at Wolfe's office.
Wolfe and Archie are not the only private investigators who have been called to Albany that morning. Five others, each from New York City, are present and because they each had opportunity to commit the murder they all are detained in Albany by the police. They are taken one by one to view the corpse and identify it if possible.
Then Hyatt provides information that causes the police to arrest Wolfe and Archie. The dead man had called on Hyatt earlier that day, and told him that not only had he hired Wolfe, but also that Wolfe knew that the wiretap was illegal and went ahead with it anyway. This contradicts Wolfe's statement, and Wolfe and Archie are jailed until Wolfe's lawyer Nathaniel Parker arranges for their bail.
That night, Wolfe invites the other detectives to attend a conference in his hotel room to share information. After some back and forth, Wolfe breaks down their initial mistrust of one another and they each reveal that the murdered man hired them to wiretap his own office, giving a different name and address to each of them.
In some Wolfe novels and novellas, Archie is denied information about some fact or about activities that Wolfe has undertaken through hired operatives. In Too Many Detectives, though, Wolfe shuts Archie completely out of the operation. He is dispatched to answer questions for the district attorney, and is not invited to take part in Wolfe's solution of the murder case. Archie knows only that the other detectives have assisted by making their own employees in New York City available to track down information.
And the reason that Wolfe shuts Archie out of the investigation is not revealed until the final two sentences of the story.
Cast of characters
- Nero Wolfe — The private investigator
- Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories)
- Steve Amsel, Dol Bonner, Sally Colt, Harland Ide and Jay Kerr — Private investigators based in Manhattan
- Albert Hyatt — Special deputy of the New York secretary of state
- Leon Groom — Chief of detectives of the City of Albany
Reviews and commentary
Stout's work sometimes occasioned conflicting viewpoints among the critics. Three for the Chair drew praise from Anthony BoucherAnthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
in The New York Times and dispraise from Julian Symons
Julian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons 1912 - 1994) was a British crime writer and poet. He also wrote social and military history, biography and studies of literature.-Life and work:...
in The Sunday Times (London).
A Nero Wolfe Mystery (A&E Network)
"Immune to Murder" was adapted for the second season of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe MysteryA Nero Wolfe Mystery
A Nero Wolfe Mystery is a television series adapted from Rex Stout's classic series of detective stories that aired for two seasons on the A&E Network. Set in New York City in the early 1950s, the stylized period drama stars Maury Chaykin as Nero Wolfe and Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin...
(2001–2002). The episode made its debut August 18, 2002 — the last original broadcast on the A&E Network. Directed by John R. Pepper, the teleplay was written by Stuart Kaminsky
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Stuart M. Kaminsky was an American mystery writer and film professor. He is known for three long-running series of mystery novels featuring the protagonists Toby Peters, a private detective in 1940s Hollywood; Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, a Moscow police inspector; and veteran Chicago...
. Interviewed by Publishers Weekly upon being named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....
, Kaminsky was asked about his work on Nero Wolfe:
- I ended up writing the last episode, "Immune to Murder," based on one of Rex Stout's short stories. I thought it was a terrific series, by the way. I don't know for sure why it didn't continue. I love the Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin novels. I just loved listening to those characters in my mind talking to each other...
Timothy Hutton
Timothy Hutton
Timothy Tarquin Hutton is an American actor. He is the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which he won at the age of 20 for his performance as Conrad Jarrett in Ordinary People . He currently stars as Nathan "Nate" Ford on the TNT series Leverage.-Early life:Timothy...
is Archie Goodwin; Maury Chaykin
Maury Chaykin
Maury Alan Chaykin was an American-born Canadian actor. Best known for his portrayal of detective Nero Wolfe, he was also known for his work as a character actor in many films and on television programs.-Personal life:...
is Nero Wolfe. Other members of the cast (in credits order) include David Schurmann (O.V. Bragan), Robert Bockstael (David Leeson), Carlo Rota
Carlo Rota
Carlo Rota is a British-born Canadian actor, best known to Canadian audiences for his role on Little Mosque on the Prairie and to international audiences for starring on the FOX series 24.-Early life:...
(Spiros Papps), Susannah Hoffmann (Sally Leeson), Giancarlo Esposito
Giancarlo Esposito
Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito is a Danish-born American film and television actor and director.-Early life:Esposito was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Italian father and African-American mother. His mother was an opera and nightclub singer from Alabama, who once appeared on the same...
(Ambassador Theodore Kelefy), Seymour Cassel
Seymour Cassel
Seymour Joseph Cassel is an American actor.He first came to prominence in the 1960s in the pioneering independent films of writer/directorJohn Cassavetes...
(James Arthur Ferris), Manon von Gerkan
Manon von Gerkan
Manon von Gerkan is a German model and actress. who reached the height of her popularity during the 1990s. She is the daughter of German architect Meinhard von Gerkan and a former girlfriend of American illusionist and stunt performer David Blaine.- External links :...
(Adria Kelefy), George Plimpton
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...
(Cook), Richard Waugh (Capt. Jasper Colvin), Matthew Edison
Matthew Edison
Matthew Edison is a Canadian actor born in 1975.A great, great, great grand-nephew of Thomas Edison, he has appeared in the television series At The Hotel and A Nero Wolfe Mystery, and in various television movies....
(Nate the Trooper) and Steve Cumyn (D.A. Herman Jasper).
The soundtrack includes music by Michael Small
Michael Small
Michael Small was an American film score composer best known for his scores to thriller movies such as The Parallax View, Marathon Man, and The Star Chamber. Relatively few of his scores are available on compact disc...
, composer for Nero Wolfe, and Angel Villaldo.
In international broadcasts, the 45-minute A&E version of "Immune to Murder" is expanded into a 90-minute widescreen telefilm.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery is available on DVD from A&E Home Video. ISBN 0-7670-8893-X
"A Window for Death"
- 1956, The American Magazine, May 1956 (as "Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue")
- 1965, Favorite Sleuths, ed. by John Ernst, New York: Doubleday, 1965
- 1970, Ellery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction...
, March 1970 - 1975, Ellery Queen's Anthology, Fall–Winter 1975
"Immune to Murder"
- 1955, The American Magazine, November 1955
- 1957, Ellery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction...
, February 1957 - 1967, Ellery Queen's Anthology, 1967
- 1969, Ellery Queen's Murder—In Spades, ed. by Ellery QueenEllery QueenEllery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...
, New York: Pyramid T-2036, September 1969
"Too Many Detectives"
- 1956, Collier'sCollier's WeeklyCollier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
, September 4, 1956 - 1958, Ellery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction...
, October 1958 - 1965, Ellery Queen's Anthology, Mid-year 1965
- 1970, Ellery Queen's Mystery Jackpot, ed. by Ellery QueenEllery QueenEllery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...
, New York: Pyramid T-2207, April 1970
Three for the Chair
- 1957, New York: The Viking PressViking PressViking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
, May 3, 1957, hardcover
- In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #10, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part II, Otto PenzlerOtto PenzlerOtto Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction in the United States, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, where he lives.-Biography:...
describes the first editionEdition (book)The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed “from substantially the same setting of type,” including all minor typographical variants.- First edition :...
of Three for the Chair: "Yellow cloth, front cover printed with black and blue lettering and design; spine printed with black lettering; rear cover blank. Issued in a mainly light orange dust wrapper." - In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of Three for the Chair had a value of between $200 and $350. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.
- 1957, Toronto: MacmillanMacmillan PublishersMacmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, 1957, hardcover - 1957, New York: Viking (Mystery GuildBook of the Month ClubThe Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
), August 1957, hardcover
- 1957, Toronto: Macmillan
- The far less valuable Viking book club edition may be distinguished from the first edition in three ways:
-
- The dust jacket has "Book Club Edition" printed on the inside front flap, and the price is absent (first editions may be price clipped if they were given as gifts).
- Book club editions are sometimes thinner and always taller (usually a quarter of an inch) than first editions.
- Book club editions are bound in cardboard, and first editions are bound in cloth (or have at least a cloth spine).
- 1958, London: Collins Crime ClubCollins Crime ClubThe Collins Crime Club was an imprint of UK book publishers William Collins & Co Ltd and ran from May 6, 1930 to April 1994. Customers registered their name and address with the club and were sent a newsletter every three months which advised them of the latest books which had been or were to be...
, April 21, 1958, hardcover - 1958, New York: BantamBantam BooksBantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
#A-1796, July 1958, paperback - 1994, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 0-553-24813-8 August 1, 1994, paperback
- 1997, Newport Beach, California: Books on Tape, Inc. ISBN 0-7366-3750-8 July 21, 1997, audio cassette (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
- 2010, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 978-0-307-75624-4 May 26, 2010, e-bookE-bookAn electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
- 1958, London: Collins Crime Club
-
External links
- A Nero Wolfe Mystery — "Immune to Murder" at The Wolfe Pack, official site of the Nero Wolfe Society