Nero Wolfe: Three Witnesses, Three for the Chair, Champagne for One, And Four to Go

[cimorene]

• “Where did you get the idea,” she asked back, “that vulgarity is the best policy?”
  
  “It’s not policy; I was born vulgar."

—"When a Man Murders..." in Three Witnesses

• She has character, but she hasn’t decided what to do with it.


• "In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted."

—Champagne for One

The short story collection Three for the Chair features a story in which two murders are committed by making pneumonia patients cold, and also a story featuring all the licensed PIs in NYC working together under Wolfe's direction. These are especially fun, so I wanted to make a note of them even though I haven't saved any quotes from them. Probably the most amusing part is how (exaggeratedly, unwarrantedly) jealous Archie gets in the PI story, "Too Many Detectives", about Wolfe cooperating with the female PI Dol Bonner, who also appears in the novel If Death Ever Slept, although "Too Many Detectives" seems to be her first appearance. The story "Christmas Party" in the collection And Four to Go provides the inverse, Wolfe jealous (over the possibility of Archie getting married), and includes some gruff wordless gestures because Wolfe is emotionally repressed.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I enjoyed Champagne for One.

[cimorene]

It was a fun ride. And it developed Saul's character a bit more. Apparently he likes to play the piano and also pinochle as his hobbies. I think Stout has forgotten at this point that in one of the early books he gave him a wife. More recently he was living in a two-room apartment with a kitchenette, when Archie and Wolfe had to hide at his place overnight in Might As Well Be Dead.

In Champagne for One he and Archie are tailing two witnesses who meet at a restaurant and run into each other there, leading to

“They’re together in a booth in a rear corner. No one is with them. He’s eating oysters.”

“He’ll soon be eating crow. What do you want for Christmas?”

“I have always wanted your autograph.”

“You’ll get it. I’ll tattoo it on you. Now we have a problem. She’s yours and he’s mine. Now they’re together. Who’s in command?”

“That’s easy, Archie. Mr. Wolfe.”

Also Archie indignantly telling Wolfe that Saul "isn't ten times as smart as me, he's only twice as smart".

[princessofgeeks]

what is it with wife continuity in detective fiction!

Shades of the Two Mary's in Sherlock Holmes. Or was it 3?

[cimorene]

I feel like 2 is what people usually go with but I think I read there was some date or fact somewhere that didn't match up with those 2 and would have made 3. But I could be wrong.