Private Eye on the FBI The Doorbell Rang: A. Nero Wolfe $100,000 as a retainer and asks him to Novel, by Rex Stout (Viking. 186 pp. look into things. $3.50), is the auth011s forty-first 1'e­ The sedentary sage and his ambulant aide get to work. There is a murder, cital of the adventures of the weight­ and in the comse of the investigation iest member (282 pounds) of the Inspector Cramer of Manhattan's Homi­ private-eye fmtemity, who here cide South appears-a somewhat chast­ meets "his toughest opponent ever." ened, occasionally even courteous John T. Winterich is a contributing Inspector Cramer. Inspector Cramer is, of course, the perpetual bumbler, or editor of Saturday Review. semibumbler, of the Wolfe saga. He is a reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes's By JOHN T. WINTERICH bete noire, Inspector Lestrade of Scot­ land Yard, and there may be some sig­ AS A comment on a mystery-mm·­ nificance in the fact that the names -Snndy Noyn. H der-detective novel ever begun by Cramer and Lestrade have identical quoting the final 160 words of the text? vowels. Early in Wolfe's career some Rex Stout- a plot in twenty minttles. One thinks not. So here we go on the Baker Street Inegular discovered that doyen of mystery writers in English and great adventure (the narrator is Archie the names Nero Wolfe and Sherlock probably in any language, though Erle Goodwin, the great man's fidus Achates, Holmes also have identical vowels and Stanley Gardner, two and a half years dogsbody, and thom in the abundant in the right places. The Cramer-Les­ younger, is a close runner-up, and his flesh; the "he" is Nero Wolfe himself) : h·ade parallel ends with the vowels. output far exceeds Stout's. Archie Goodwil1, as every Wolfeite The doorbell rang. I got up and Rex Stout has written fourteen non­ went to the hall and saw a character knows, is not Dr. JohnS. Watson's oppo­ Wolfe novels. Tlll'ee of these extolled the on the stoop I had never seen before, site number save for the fact that each attainments of a peeper named Tecum­ but I had seen plenty of pictures of is the teller of the tales in which the seh Fox; seven have been straight-out him. I stepped back in and said, great man, either great man, scores. Ar­ novels. The first Nero Wolfe story was "Well, well. The big fish." chie Goodwin is himself a licensed pri­ Fer-de-Lance (and we all know what He frowned at me, then got it, and vate detective who is frequently in some that is!), published in 1934, when Stout did something he never does. He left fear of losing his license; Watson has was forty-seven years old. This may his chair and came. We stood side by only a medical certificate, which he is have made him the senior starter il1 the side, looking. The caller put a finger in danger of losing only through ob­ national or even world mystery field, to the button, and the doorbell rang. solescence. "No appointment," I said. "Shall I ce1tainly for a writer who concentrated take him to the front room to wait a Inspector Cramer tells Archie Good­ on mystelies thereafter. Again Gardner while?" win that the murder victim "had been is probably runner-up; he tmveiled Perry "No. I have nothing for him. Let collecting material for an article on the Mason in 1933 at the age of forty-four. him get a sore finger." He turned and FBI for Tick-Tock magazine, and not a At the other end of the spectrum ( agail1 went back in to his desk. sign of it, nothing, was there in the probably) is Phoebe ~twood Taylor, I stepped in. "He probably came all apartment." Further, that same night who gave the world her first Asey i\ fayo the way from Washington just to see "three FBI men left the house at sixty­ Cape Cod bloodletting at a precocious you. Quite an honor." tru:ee Arbor Street and went around the twenty-nvo (Norton is now reissuing her "Pfui. Come and finish this." comer to a car and drove off." The li­ stories fer a later generation). I returned to my chair. "As I was cense number was noted. Cramer admits saying, I .~ay have to tell her priv­ The Wolfe-Goodwin formula is simple ately ... that from here onward the going will and effective. The granitic Wolfe does The doorbell rang. be tough. "I've seen plenty of murder­ the headwork, the peripatetic Goodwin ers I could name," he contilmes, "but so (England has named a sands for him) Let us go back to the beginning of what, if I couldn't prove it. Hut this the legwork, and the rough stuff when the story. Rachel Bruner, a wealthy, one, that goddam outfit, I'd give a year's required. \!Volfe rarely goes abroad, us­ middle-aged New York widow, greatly pay to hook them and make it stick. This ing the term in its narrowest sense of impressed by Fred Cook's book The isn't their town, it's mine. Ours. The outdoors, though once he went abroad FBI Nobody Knows, has distributed New York Police Department. They've with a big A, all the way to Montenegro. 10,000 copies of it far and wide. For had us gritting ow· teeth for years." The late Bernard De Voto, former editor doing this, she tells Wolfe and Goodwin, No more of the story will be revealed of The Saturday Review of Literature she has been and is still being !'tailed" here. and for several years conductor of the (she throws the word between quotes) ; When Rex Stout reached his seventy­ Easy Chair in Harper's Magazine, went her telephones have been tapped; the fifth birthday, on December 1, 1961, exhaustively into Wolfe's background il1 hundred-plus employees of her late hus­ the Viking Press, who have been his one of his papers, "Alias Nero Wolfe" band's corporation have been ques­ publishers since 1946, made him a gra­ (Harper's, July 1954). De Voto noted tioned, as have numerous associates and cious obeisance: they ran two-column that the spelling "Monte-negro" is the friends. She is convinced that a single tributes il1 the metropolitan dailies which Venetian variant of the Italian name agency is responsible for these indigni­ reproduced his portrait and wished him "Monte Nero," and he added: "The ill­ ties. She hands Wolfe a check for many happy returns. He is easily the escapable conclusion is that 'Nero Wolfe' 54 SR/ October 9, 1965 is a pseudonym." Of at least moderate beginning to think that the book may got my nrst idea fro;n the newspapers importance if true, doubtless; but names lead people to stand up and speak out years ago when I read that he frequently need not concern us here. a!!ainst the FBI. went to the races with Senator ~lcCar­ More pertinent to our present pur­ "It is conceivable to me that the FBI thy. I was astonished that a man­ poses is DeVoto's mention. in this sam::­ might tail me or tap my phone because Hoover-whose function is to presPrve paper, of the fact that Wolfe had had of this book. I think it is wonderful I've and uphold the law would take as a previous contacts (one might almost sa\· written so often about ditchinl! t<l ils. I'd social companion a man who was so huddles) with the FBI. " Before the like to tr~ ' to do it. ' ob,·iouslv a threat to the \ ·er v basis of Second \Vorld \Var,'' De Voto \\Tok. ..In a democratic eonnt1Y. .J. Eclgar clt>mocra.cr. "Wolfe did confidential work for the HoO\·er is a comp l ete!~· impossible per­ ··r would like to .~ee an FBI managed State Department, and during the war son to be in a position of authnrity. Do and directed in such a manner that the was consulted professionally by the FLH YOU know th<lt he has decreed that no citizens who hire them can contemphlte on at least two occasions and iJ,· C-:! iktional FBI agent ma\· be portra,·ed in them and talk about them even to the repeatedly." But that W<ls in the. good a mo,·ie or on tele\·isiou without the point of se,·ere criticism, as they tlo all old days. FBI's apprm·al of the a<:to r? I Hnder­ other police o rgani7~ltions in this conntr~·· stand wh,· Hoo,·er has done that, but ''I've written a lot of stories in which wh<lt is s~n·prising is that peopk ha,·e the ~ew York police and the D.A. of The Autho1 ·: Rex Stout, whom the let him get away with it. The fa<:t that Westchester County have done ques­ .\lcCormick newspapers used to refer Hoo,·er even attempts such control tionable things btlt it's never kicked up to as "the goat-bearded mystery writer," makes him an impossible person in au­ the dust like this one. I may stick with was born in Indiana in 1886 and "mo,·ed tl:ority in a democratic cotmhY. the FBI for a few more \'e<HS if it makes to Kansas at the age of one because [ ''I've been asked if I know what kind people buy books. Th~ FBI certainly was fed up with Indiana politics." Toda~ of man he is.