Too Many Cooks
Encyclopedia
Too Many Cooks is the fifth Nero Wolfe
detective novel by American mystery writer Rex Stout
. The story was serialized in The American Magazine (March–August 1938) before its publication in book form in 1938 by Farrar & Rinehart
, Inc. The novel was collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces, published in 1969 by the Viking Press
.
Wolfe accepts an invitation to address Les Quinze Maîtres, an international group of master chefs that is holding its quinquennial meeting in West Virginia. The Kanawha Spa resort (which may have been based on the famous actual resort The Greenbrier
) is located there, and the current dean of the group, Louis Servan, is the resort's chef de cuisine. Wolfe has been invited by Servan to speak on the subject of Contributions Américaines à la Haute Cuisine. As a courtesy to Wolfe, his oldest friend, Marko Vukcic, has invited Archie to the gathering so that he can accompany Wolfe.
Wolfe is siderodromophobic, but suppresses his anxiety enough to take the 14-hour train ride from New York to Kanawha Spa. On the way, Vukcik visits Wolfe's Pullman compartment, to introduce him to Jerome Berin, another member of the group. Berin is the originator of saucisse minuit, a sausage whose closely guarded recipe Wolfe covets.
But things do not go smoothly with Berin. It comes out that Berin is hostile to Wolfe because he lives in the US, where Phillip Laszio also lives. Laszio, another member of Les Quinze Maîtres, seems to have made theft a habit. According to Berin, Laszio stole the secret of kidneys mountain style from a friend of Berin's and claimed it as his own. Laszio stole his wife Dina from Marko Vukcic and he disparages Vukcic's roast duck Mr. Richards. He stole his position at New York's Hotel Churchill from Leon Blanc, another of the master chefs. He serves something that he calls saucisse minuit at the Churchill. Berin, in full flood, threatens to kill Laszio.
Hoping to acquire Berin's secret, Wolfe adopts with Berin the obsequious line that he uses some years later in an attempt to wheedle a black orchid plant
from Lewis Hewitt. Berin regards Wolfe's proposal that he sell the recipe to Wolfe with astonishment and scorn. Disgusted by Wolfe's behavior, Archie leaves the Pullman for the club car, where he finds Berin's beautiful daughter Constanza.
Things progress nicely with Constanza until Archie perceives that his acquisitive instinct has been awakened, and he decides to call a halt to the progress. He gives Constanza to understand that he is married with several children. Constanza's attitude toward Archie shifts, and she manages to acquaint herself with another man in the club car by spilling her ginger ale on him. The man is Barry Tolman, the prosecuting attorney for the county where Kanawha Spa is located. Archie leaves the two in the club car to get better acquainted. (Their budding relationship continues as a minor subplot throughout the book.)
The next night, at the resort, Archie mingles with the chefs and their guests in a parlor off the dining room and adjacent kitchen. He notices that Laszio does appear to inspire hard feelings. First Rossi comes running into the parlor, carrying a steaming dish and shrieking that it had curdled – Laszio suggests that the eggs might have been old, thus insulting both Rossi and their host. Then he stares with disapproval at his wife, who is dancing with another chef. Blanc deals with Laszio by avoiding him, and Berin does so by glaring at him.
That night, after dinner, a taste test takes place. A properly prepared Printemps dressing must contain a variety of seasonings: chervil, tarragon, chives, shallots, and so on. Laszio prepares nine dishes of it, each missing a different ingredient. The masters, and Wolfe, are to taste from each dish and mark down which seasoning is missing from that dish. The tasting takes place in the dining room, with only Laszio and the current taster present.
The test begins. After the first five chefs have finished tasting, it's Berin's turn. When he returns from the dining room to the parlor, Vukcic, who is up next, is dancing with Dina. He continues to do so for several minutes, interfering with the progress of the test. Servan finally convinces Vukcic to take his turn. Then, after Vallenko and Rossi, it's Wolfe's turn. After a few minutes, Wolfe calls Archie into the dining room. Archie enters, and Wolfe shows him Laszio's body, hidden behind a room divider with a knife in his back.
The authorities are called, including Barry Tolman, the prosecuting attorney who Archie and Constanza met on the train. After hours of inquiry, Tolman decides to arrest Berin, who has already expressed a motive to kill Laszio. Furthermore, all the chefs who preceded Berin in the test saw Laszio alive and well in the dining room, but Vukcic and the other chefs who followed Berin did not. And, at Wolfe's suggestion, Tolman compares the chefs' answers to the taste test. No one other than Berin got more than two of the nine seasonings wrong, but Berin missed seven: Tolman's inference is that the murder left Berin so distraught that he couldn't judge correctly.
Meantime, Wolfe has had a visit from Raymond Liggett, Laszio's employer at the Churchill, and Alberto Malfi, Laszio's first assistant. Liggett has read of the murder in New York's morning papers and flown, with Malfi, to West Virginia to consult with Wolfe. Liggett needs to replace Laszio as soon as possible with another culinary luminary – Berin, if at all possible. Wolfe refuses to intercede for Liggett, but the question is rendered moot when Tolman arrests Berin.
Wolfe decides to do what he can to find evidence exonerating Berin. He has two reasons: having seen Berin return from the dining room after taking his turn tasting the sauce, he does not believe that Berin could have just committed murder – his demeanor is too calm. And he sees a way to put Berin in his debt.
In one of the best known scenes in the series, Wolfe meets with 14 black men, each of them a member of either the kitchen or the wait staff. A witness to the crime's aftermath has told Wolfe that she saw a black man, dressed in the livery worn by the resort's workers, in the dining room at the time that the murder occurred. The man was holding a finger to his lips, hushing another black man who was peering through the door between the dining room and the pantry. Wolfe wants to explore that statement with the kitchen and wait staff.
In contrast to the treatment the men receive from the prosecuting attorney and, particularly, the sheriff, Wolfe offers them courtesy and civility. Even that approach is bootless, though, until Wolfe makes an appeal to their sense of equity. He is looking for the man who was seen in the dining room, and says:
This speech so impresses Paul Whipple that he blurts out what he saw in the dining room from his vantage point in the pantry: a white man in blackface, warning him to be silent.
This information is sufficient, when presented to Tolman, to get Berin released from custody. Having accomplished his objective – to put Berin in his debt – Wolfe turns his attention to the speech he is to give. While rehearsing the speech in his room, however, Wolfe is wounded by a bullet, shot through an open window. The bullet tears his cheek open but does no other damage, and a local doctor is able to stitch the wound. But now Wolfe, enraged, returns his attention to Laszio's murder: clearly, the same person who killed Laszio tried to kill Wolfe, and Wolfe intends to deliver the murderer to Tolman.
He initiates further inquiries, carried out mainly by Saul Panzer, and later presides over a dinner for the remaining members of Les Quinze Maîtres composed exclusively of American cuisine. The Maîtres are overwhelmed by the quality of the dishes and Wolfe, in another famous scene, has the chefs responsible brought to the room to be applauded by the diners - all are black men. After the meal and despite the handicap of the facial wound, Wolfe delivers his speech regarding American cuisine, and – to the surprise of the gathered masters – continues by delivering the evidence that will convict Laszio's murderer and Wolfe's assailant. On the train returning to New York, Wolfe shames Berin into disclosing to him the recipe for saucisse minuit.
To coincide with the serialization of Too Many Cooks in 1938, The American Magazine sent Rex Stout on a national tour, described by Stout's biographer John McAleer:
Together with golf star Gene Sarazen
, Stout visited a dozen U.S. cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cleveland, Akron, Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis. An editorial luncheon was given in each of the cities, with the menu made up from Too Many Cooks. As a keepsake for guests, The American Magazine created a small red box in the shape of a book, containing the menu of the "Living Issue Luncheon," a statement by Nero Wolfe, and the 35 recipes that appear in Too Many Cooks. The recipe box was wrapped with a reproduction of the title page from the story's March 1938 debut. Made up in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, the recipe box is described by McAleer as "one of the most sought-after items of Stoutiana."
— The masterpiece among three or four by Stout that deserve the name. In addition, it is the most amusing, thanks to such incidents as Nero's being shot in yellow pajamas, the altercation over saucisse minuit, and the triangle of Archie, the young lawyer, and the beautiful girl. Agatha Christie
— I have enjoyed a great many of his books. Archie is a splendid character to have invented and his first person remarks and descriptions are always most entertaining to read. I must also reveal that greed and the general enjoyment of food is one of my main characteristics and the descriptions of the meals served and prepared by Nero Wolfe's cook have given me a lot of pleasure and a great wish to have occasionally tasted these suggestions myself. Perhaps for that reason, I particularly liked Too Many Cooks.
Nora Ephron
— Best meal in English literature? The banquet in Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout.
Clifton Fadiman
, The New Yorker
— Nero Wolfe, bigger and better than ever, is a guest of Les Quinze Maîtres, a society of world famous chefs, at a West Virginia spa. As murder is Mr. Wolfe's business, the polite chefs oblige. By far the best and funniest of Mr. Stout's books.
M.F.K. Fisher
— I think I have read everything Mr. Stout has written about Wolfe and Goodwin, and I have a standing offer for second-hand copies of Too Many Cooks; it is more comfortable to give them to people than to know who has stolen mine, which happened three times before I learned that trick.
Marcia Kiser, Nero Wolfe: A Social Commentary on the U.S. — Referring to Wolfe's speech to the staff at the spa, " '... the ideal human agreement is one in which distinctions of race and color and religion are totally disregarded.' Please note Wolfe does not include 'sex' in his list."http://www.thrillingdetective.com/non_fiction/e002.html
John McAleer, Rex Stout: A Biography — Too Many Cooks is one of the finest Wolfe stories. It is the closest thing to a locked-room mystery that Rex wrote. Accounting for his failure to work in this area, Rex said: "Since the interest is focused on one spot, Nero Wolfe would have to go there, and he wouldn't like that."
Time (August 29, 1938) — Of last month's 13 mysteries, five stood out as best bets: Too Many Cooks — Rex Stout — Farrar & Rinehart ($2). Smooth concoction of crime and cooking in which Nero Wolfe, assisted by faithful, wisecracking Archie Goodwin, solves the murder of one of the world's 15 best chefs. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789200,00.html
J. Kenneth Van Dover, At Wolfe's Door — The occasion of Wolfe's brief foray beyond the walls of his brownstone produces an unusual variety of characters and a very unusual non-urban setting. It also results in the fullest portrait of his gastronomical interests. The chefs are all temperamental artists, and there is much incidental discussion of the fine points of gourmet cooking. Wolfe delivers a formal address on the supremacy of native American cuisine. Race relations become an issue. Archie, prosecutor Tolman, and Sheriff Pettigrew casually employ denigrative epithets ... Wolfe condescends to the black service staff no more than he does to anyone else, and he even surprises one of the waiters, Paul Whipple, by citing a line from Paul Laurence Dunbar
. Tolman and Pettigrew protest Wolfe's misguided decency. ...
The series of black-and-white telemovies stars Tino Buazzelli
(Nero Wolfe), Paolo Ferrari
(Archie Goodwin), Pupo De Luca (Fritz Brenner), Renzo Palmer
(Inspector Cramer), Roberto Pistone (Saul Panzer), Mario Righetti
(Orrie Cather) and Gianfranco Varetto (Fred Durkin). Other members of the cast of Salsicce 'Mezzanotte include Corrado Annicelli (Servan), Carlo Bagno (Berin), Gianni Galavotti (Liggett), Loris Gizzi (Blanc), Evelina Gori (La signora Mondor), Guido Lazzarini (Mondor), Tana Li (Lio Coyne), Walter Maestosi (Vukcic), Giuseppe Mancini (Laszio), Enrico Osterman (Coyne), Luciana Scalise (Constance Berin), Paolo Todisco (Procuratore Tolman) and Halina Zalewska (Dina Laszio).
portrayed Archie Goodwin. After he protested that his story was used without permission, Rex Stout received a $3,500 settlement.
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...
detective novel by American mystery writer 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...
. The story was serialized in The American Magazine (March–August 1938) before its publication in book form in 1938 by Farrar & Rinehart
Farrar & Rinehart
Farrar & Rinehart was a United States book publishing company founded in New York. Farrar & Rinehart enjoyed success with both nonfiction and novels, notably, the landmark Rivers of America Series and the first ten books in the Nero Wolfe corpus of Rex Stout...
, Inc. The novel was collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces, published in 1969 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...
.
Plot introduction
Wolfe, a knowledgeable gourmet as well as a detective, attends a meeting of great chefs, The Fifteen Masters, at a resort in West Virginia, and jealousies among them soon lead to strife; then, one of the chefs is murdered. Wolfe sustains his own injury in the course of finding the culprit but also obtains the secret recipe for saucisse minuit.Plot summary
The Greenbrier
The Greenbrier is a Forbes four-star and AAA Five Diamond Award winning luxury resort located just outside the town of White Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States....
) is located there, and the current dean of the group, Louis Servan, is the resort's chef de cuisine. Wolfe has been invited by Servan to speak on the subject of Contributions Américaines à la Haute Cuisine. As a courtesy to Wolfe, his oldest friend, Marko Vukcic, has invited Archie to the gathering so that he can accompany Wolfe.
Wolfe is siderodromophobic, but suppresses his anxiety enough to take the 14-hour train ride from New York to Kanawha Spa. On the way, Vukcik visits Wolfe's Pullman compartment, to introduce him to Jerome Berin, another member of the group. Berin is the originator of saucisse minuit, a sausage whose closely guarded recipe Wolfe covets.
But things do not go smoothly with Berin. It comes out that Berin is hostile to Wolfe because he lives in the US, where Phillip Laszio also lives. Laszio, another member of Les Quinze Maîtres, seems to have made theft a habit. According to Berin, Laszio stole the secret of kidneys mountain style from a friend of Berin's and claimed it as his own. Laszio stole his wife Dina from Marko Vukcic and he disparages Vukcic's roast duck Mr. Richards. He stole his position at New York's Hotel Churchill from Leon Blanc, another of the master chefs. He serves something that he calls saucisse minuit at the Churchill. Berin, in full flood, threatens to kill Laszio.
Hoping to acquire Berin's secret, Wolfe adopts with Berin the obsequious line that he uses some years later in an attempt to wheedle a black orchid plant
Black Orchids
Black Orchids is a Nero Wolfe double mystery by Rex Stout published in 1942 by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. Stout's first short story collection, the volume is composed of two novellas that had appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine:...
from Lewis Hewitt. Berin regards Wolfe's proposal that he sell the recipe to Wolfe with astonishment and scorn. Disgusted by Wolfe's behavior, Archie leaves the Pullman for the club car, where he finds Berin's beautiful daughter Constanza.
Things progress nicely with Constanza until Archie perceives that his acquisitive instinct has been awakened, and he decides to call a halt to the progress. He gives Constanza to understand that he is married with several children. Constanza's attitude toward Archie shifts, and she manages to acquaint herself with another man in the club car by spilling her ginger ale on him. The man is Barry Tolman, the prosecuting attorney for the county where Kanawha Spa is located. Archie leaves the two in the club car to get better acquainted. (Their budding relationship continues as a minor subplot throughout the book.)
The next night, at the resort, Archie mingles with the chefs and their guests in a parlor off the dining room and adjacent kitchen. He notices that Laszio does appear to inspire hard feelings. First Rossi comes running into the parlor, carrying a steaming dish and shrieking that it had curdled – Laszio suggests that the eggs might have been old, thus insulting both Rossi and their host. Then he stares with disapproval at his wife, who is dancing with another chef. Blanc deals with Laszio by avoiding him, and Berin does so by glaring at him.
That night, after dinner, a taste test takes place. A properly prepared Printemps dressing must contain a variety of seasonings: chervil, tarragon, chives, shallots, and so on. Laszio prepares nine dishes of it, each missing a different ingredient. The masters, and Wolfe, are to taste from each dish and mark down which seasoning is missing from that dish. The tasting takes place in the dining room, with only Laszio and the current taster present.
The authorities are called, including Barry Tolman, the prosecuting attorney who Archie and Constanza met on the train. After hours of inquiry, Tolman decides to arrest Berin, who has already expressed a motive to kill Laszio. Furthermore, all the chefs who preceded Berin in the test saw Laszio alive and well in the dining room, but Vukcic and the other chefs who followed Berin did not. And, at Wolfe's suggestion, Tolman compares the chefs' answers to the taste test. No one other than Berin got more than two of the nine seasonings wrong, but Berin missed seven: Tolman's inference is that the murder left Berin so distraught that he couldn't judge correctly.
Meantime, Wolfe has had a visit from Raymond Liggett, Laszio's employer at the Churchill, and Alberto Malfi, Laszio's first assistant. Liggett has read of the murder in New York's morning papers and flown, with Malfi, to West Virginia to consult with Wolfe. Liggett needs to replace Laszio as soon as possible with another culinary luminary – Berin, if at all possible. Wolfe refuses to intercede for Liggett, but the question is rendered moot when Tolman arrests Berin.
Wolfe decides to do what he can to find evidence exonerating Berin. He has two reasons: having seen Berin return from the dining room after taking his turn tasting the sauce, he does not believe that Berin could have just committed murder – his demeanor is too calm. And he sees a way to put Berin in his debt.
In one of the best known scenes in the series, Wolfe meets with 14 black men, each of them a member of either the kitchen or the wait staff. A witness to the crime's aftermath has told Wolfe that she saw a black man, dressed in the livery worn by the resort's workers, in the dining room at the time that the murder occurred. The man was holding a finger to his lips, hushing another black man who was peering through the door between the dining room and the pantry. Wolfe wants to explore that statement with the kitchen and wait staff.
In contrast to the treatment the men receive from the prosecuting attorney and, particularly, the sheriff, Wolfe offers them courtesy and civility. Even that approach is bootless, though, until Wolfe makes an appeal to their sense of equity. He is looking for the man who was seen in the dining room, and says:
This speech so impresses Paul Whipple that he blurts out what he saw in the dining room from his vantage point in the pantry: a white man in blackface, warning him to be silent.
This information is sufficient, when presented to Tolman, to get Berin released from custody. Having accomplished his objective – to put Berin in his debt – Wolfe turns his attention to the speech he is to give. While rehearsing the speech in his room, however, Wolfe is wounded by a bullet, shot through an open window. The bullet tears his cheek open but does no other damage, and a local doctor is able to stitch the wound. But now Wolfe, enraged, returns his attention to Laszio's murder: clearly, the same person who killed Laszio tried to kill Wolfe, and Wolfe intends to deliver the murderer to Tolman.
He initiates further inquiries, carried out mainly by Saul Panzer, and later presides over a dinner for the remaining members of Les Quinze Maîtres composed exclusively of American cuisine. The Maîtres are overwhelmed by the quality of the dishes and Wolfe, in another famous scene, has the chefs responsible brought to the room to be applauded by the diners - all are black men. After the meal and despite the handicap of the facial wound, Wolfe delivers his speech regarding American cuisine, and – to the surprise of the gathered masters – continues by delivering the evidence that will convict Laszio's murderer and Wolfe's assailant. On the train returning to New York, Wolfe shames Berin into disclosing to him the recipe for saucisse minuit.
The unfamiliar word
In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. Too Many Cooks contains these six:- Surprise. Chapter 1. Highly unusual in the context, but allowed by the Random House Dictionary.
- Coquine. Chapter 2.
- Sinuosities. Chapter 4.
- Werowance. Chapter 5. This was a regional word introduced by Archie and unknown to Wolfe until Archie introduced it to him.
- Gyves. Chapter 5.
- Gibbosity. Chapter 13.
Recurring characters
- Nero Wolfe — The private investigator and guest of honor for this meeting of Les Quinze Maîtres
- Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant, and the narrator of all Wolfe stories
- Saul Panzer — A free-lance operative, Wolfe's first choice when he can't or won't spare Archie
Members of Les Quinze Maîtres
- Jerome Berin — The originator of saucisse minuit
- Marko Vukcic — Wolfe's oldest and best friend
- Phillip Laszio — A villainous chef who steals others' creations, positions and wives; the murder victim
- Leon Blanc — From whom Laszio stole, by innuendo and chicanery, the position of chef de cuisine at the Hotel Churchill in Manhattan
- Louis Servan — Host of the gathering at Kanawha Spa
- Ramsey Keith, Domenico Rossi, Pierre Mondor, Sergei Vallenko, Lawrence Coyne — Master chefs all
Other guests of Les Quinze Maîtres
- Constanza Berin — Jerome Berin's daughter
- Dina Laszio — Wife of Phillip Laszio and ex-wife of Marko Vukcic; daughter of Domenico Rossi
- Lio Coyne — A San Franciscan of Chinese heritage and wife of Lawrence Coyne
Other characters
- Barry Tolman — Prosecuting attorney of Marlin County
- Paul Whipple — A student at Howard UniversityHoward UniversityHoward University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
working a temporary job on the wait staff at Kanawha Spa - Alberto Malfi — A Corsican discovered and groomed by Berin, now Laszio's first assistant at the Churchill
- Raymond Liggett — Manager and part owner of the Churchill
How old is Laszio?
A puzzle is Laszio's age. His wife Dina is Domenico Rossi's daughter. In chapter 2, Rossi complains about his son-in-law and mentions that Laszio is twice his age. In chapter 9, Wolfe notes that Laszio is twice Dina's age. Stout was not known for consistency in minor matters of plot.The American Magazine and the Cooks tour
The Americans spring tour was perhaps the most famous promotional show in publishing history. It was indeed a travelling road show, actors, actresses, and models as well as well-known writers or subjects of articles which had appeared in the magazine. The cast was transported in a chartered Pullman; there was a baggage car for the scenery, and a revolving stage — the first of its kind. The show was scripted by Borden ChaseBorden ChaseBorden Chase was an American writer.Born Frank Fowler, he went through an assortment of jobs, including driving for gangster Frankie Yale and working as a sandhog on the construction of New York's Holland Tunnel, before turning to writing, first short stories and novels, and later, screenplays...
, the Hollywood writer and novelist.
Together with golf star Gene Sarazen
Gene Sarazen
Gene Sarazen was an American professional golfer, one of the world's top players in the 1920s and 1930s. He is one of five golfers to win all the current major championships in his career, the Career Grand Slam:U.S...
, Stout visited a dozen U.S. cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cleveland, Akron, Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis. An editorial luncheon was given in each of the cities, with the menu made up from Too Many Cooks. As a keepsake for guests, The American Magazine created a small red box in the shape of a book, containing the menu of the "Living Issue Luncheon," a statement by Nero Wolfe, and the 35 recipes that appear in Too Many Cooks. The recipe box was wrapped with a reproduction of the title page from the story's March 1938 debut. Made up in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, the recipe box is described by McAleer as "one of the most sought-after items of Stoutiana."
Reviews and commentary
- Jacques BarzunJacques BarzunJacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...
and Wendell Hertig Taylor,
A Catalogue of Crime
A Catalogue of Crime, by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, is a critique of crime fiction first published in 1971. A revised edition was published in 1989 by Barzun after the death of Taylor in 1985. The book was awarded a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in...
— The masterpiece among three or four by Stout that deserve the name. In addition, it is the most amusing, thanks to such incidents as Nero's being shot in yellow pajamas, the altercation over saucisse minuit, and the triangle of Archie, the young lawyer, and the beautiful girl.
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
— I have enjoyed a great many of his books. Archie is a splendid character to have invented and his first person remarks and descriptions are always most entertaining to read. I must also reveal that greed and the general enjoyment of food is one of my main characteristics and the descriptions of the meals served and prepared by Nero Wolfe's cook have given me a lot of pleasure and a great wish to have occasionally tasted these suggestions myself. Perhaps for that reason, I particularly liked Too Many Cooks.
Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, journalist, author, and blogger.She is best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in...
— Best meal in English literature? The banquet in Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout.
Clifton Fadiman
Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality.-Literary career:...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
— Nero Wolfe, bigger and better than ever, is a guest of Les Quinze Maîtres, a society of world famous chefs, at a West Virginia spa. As murder is Mr. Wolfe's business, the polite chefs oblige. By far the best and funniest of Mr. Stout's books.
M. F. K. Fisher
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a preeminent American food writer. She was also a founder of the Napa Valley Wine Library. She wrote some 27 books, including a translation of The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin. Two volumes of her journals and correspondence came out shortly before her...
— I think I have read everything Mr. Stout has written about Wolfe and Goodwin, and I have a standing offer for second-hand copies of Too Many Cooks; it is more comfortable to give them to people than to know who has stolen mine, which happened three times before I learned that trick.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life....
. Tolman and Pettigrew protest Wolfe's misguided decency. ...
Salsicce 'Mezzanotte (Radiotelevisione Italiana)
Too Many Cooks was adapted for a series of Nero Wolfe films produced by the Italian television network RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana). Directed by Giuliana Berlinguer from a teleplay by Belisario L. Randone, Nero Wolfe: Salsicce 'Mezzanotte first aired February 23, 1971.The series of black-and-white telemovies stars Tino Buazzelli
Tino Buazzelli
Tino Buazzelli was an Italian film actor. He appeared in 46 films between 1948 and 1978.-Selected filmography:* Totò Tarzan * Against the Law * Ghosts of Rome...
(Nero Wolfe), Paolo Ferrari
Paolo Ferrari
Paolo Ferrari , Italian dramatist, was born at Modena. His numerous works, chiefly comedies, and all marked by a fresh and piquant style, are the finest product of the modern Italian drama. After producing some minor pieces, in 1852 he made his reputation as a playwright with Goldoni e le sue...
(Archie Goodwin), Pupo De Luca (Fritz Brenner), Renzo Palmer
Renzo Palmer
Renzo Palmer was an Italian film actor. He appeared in 65 films between 1957 and 1988.He was born and died in Milan, Italy.-Selected filmography:* Shivers in Summer * Obiettivo ragazze...
(Inspector Cramer), Roberto Pistone (Saul Panzer), Mario Righetti
Mario Righetti
Mario Righetti was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.He was born at Bologna He became a pupil of Lucio Massari. In Bologna, he painted an Archangel Michael for the church of S. Guglielmo; a Christ appearing to the Magdalen for San Giacomo Maggiore; an Adoration of the Magi for S. Agnese;...
(Orrie Cather) and Gianfranco Varetto (Fred Durkin). Other members of the cast of Salsicce 'Mezzanotte include Corrado Annicelli (Servan), Carlo Bagno (Berin), Gianni Galavotti (Liggett), Loris Gizzi (Blanc), Evelina Gori (La signora Mondor), Guido Lazzarini (Mondor), Tana Li (Lio Coyne), Walter Maestosi (Vukcic), Giuseppe Mancini (Laszio), Enrico Osterman (Coyne), Luciana Scalise (Constance Berin), Paolo Todisco (Procuratore Tolman) and Halina Zalewska (Dina Laszio).
Zu viele Köche (NWRV)
The North and West German Broadcasting Association adapted Too Many Cooks for a black-and-white telefilm that first aired February 27, 1961. Heinz Klevenow starred as Nero Wolfe, and Joachim FuchsbergerJoachim Fuchsberger
Joachim Fuchsberger is a German actor, television host, lyricist, businessman, activist, paratrooper and World War II veteran best known to a wide German-speaking audience as one of the recurring actors in various Edgar Wallace movies Joachim Fuchsberger (born 11 March 1927 in Zuffenhausen, today...
portrayed Archie Goodwin. After he protested that his story was used without permission, Rex Stout received a $3,500 settlement.
Publication history
- 1938, The American Magazine, serialized in six issues (March–August 1938)
- 1938, New York: Farrar & RinehartFarrar & RinehartFarrar & Rinehart was a United States book publishing company founded in New York. Farrar & Rinehart enjoyed success with both nonfiction and novels, notably, the landmark Rivers of America Series and the first ten books in the Nero Wolfe corpus of Rex Stout...
, August 17, 1938, hardcover
- In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #9, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part I, 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 Too Many Cooks: "Red cloth, front cover and spine printed with black; rear cover blank. Issued in a full-color pictorial dust wrapper … The first edition has the publisher's monogram logo on the copyright page. The second printing, in October 1938, is identical to the first except that the logo was dropped." - In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of Too Many Cooks had a value of between $2,500 and $5,000.
- 1938, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1938, hardcover
- 1939, 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...
, September 12, 1938, hardcover - 1940, New York: Grosset and Dunlap 1940, hardcover
- 1941, New York: Triangle #180, June 1941, hardcover
- 1941, Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1941, hardcover
- 1944, New York: Dell (mapbackMapbackMapback is a term used by paperback collectors to refer to the earliest paperback books published by Dell Books, beginning in 1943. The books are known as mapbacks because the back cover of the book contains a map that illustrates the location of the action. Dell books were numbered in series...
by Gerald Gregg) #45, 1944, paperback; new edition (with new mapback by Robert Stanley) #540, 1951, paperback - New York: Lawrence E. SpivakLawrence E. SpivakLawrence Edmund Spivak was an American publisher and journalist who was best known as the co-founder, producer and host of the prestigious public affairs program Meet the Press...
, Jonathan Press #J-2, not dated, abridged, paperback - 1951, London: Pan, 1951, paperback
- 1963, New York: Pyramid (Green Door) #R-894, August 1963, paperback with second and third printings in the same format in June 1966 and May 1968 respectively.
- 1969, New York: The Viking Press, Kings Full of Aces: A Nero Wolfe Omnibus (with Plot It YourselfPlot It YourselfPlot It Yourself is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1959, and also collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces .-Plot introduction:...
and Triple JeopardyTriple JeopardyTriple Jeopardy is a collection of Nero Wolfe mystery novellas by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1952. Itself collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces , the book comprises three stories that first appeared in The American Magazine:* "Home to Roost" * "The Cop-Killer" Triple...
), January 28, 1969, hardcover - 1972, London: Fontana, 1972, paperback
- 1973, London: Tom Stacey, 1973, hardcover
- 1976, New York: Garland, Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction 1900–1950, #45, 1976, hardcover
- 1979, New York: Jove #M4866, February 1979, paperback
- 1995, New York: Bantam Books ISBN 0-553-76306-7 November 1995, trade paperback
- 2004, Auburn, California: The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters ISBN 1-57270-392-X May 2004, audio CD (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
- 2009, New York: Bantam Dell Publishing Group (with Champagne for OneChampagne for OneChampagne for One is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1958.The back matter of the 1995 Bantam edition of this book includes an exchange of correspondence between Stout and his editor at Viking Press, Marshall Best...
) ISBN 978-0-553-38629-5 April 28, 2009, trade paperback - 2010, New York: Bantam ISBN 978-0-307-75627-5 July 21, 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...