Customer Reviews

Too Many Clients: A Nero Wolfe Mystery

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This short Nero Wolfe-Archie Goodwin novel is great fun! It has a fair-play puzzle plot for readers to test their wits with, and, as an added source of enjoyment, its collection of Archie's patented quips and insights are among the best Stout wrote.

A philandering corporate vice president is found dead near the New York City apartment building he bought to serve as his private love nest, and Wolfe and Goodwin are hired by the widow of the victim to solve the murder, by the company's president to preserve the reputation of the company, and by the couple who managed and inherited the apartment building, whose beautiful daughter is also murdered. There is a third killing in the book, but to say any more about it would be a "spoiler."

Published in 1960, TOO MANY CLIENTS is quite a bit more sexually explicit than many earlier books by Stout--let's say about PG-13. It actually has a couple of direct references to parts of female and male anatomy that were frequently mentioned in many other books of that decade.

I have rated this mystery four-stars (for a letter grade of "B+") and would have rated it higher if Stout had dealt with four plot points just a little bit better: (a) what about blood at the scene of the vice president's murder? (b) was the same gun used to kill the first and the second victim? (c) was the same gun used in the final killing? and (d) why did the second victim trust the person who shot her? These four points could have been cleared up easily with about fifty words. If these questions seem "stupid" or "picky," read the book yourself before making a final judgment. Two of them have to do with evidence Goodwin and Wolfe have or don't have, three of them have to do with evidence that the police have or don't have, and one has to do with the credibility of a victim's actions.