Readers who have long followed the adventures of Nero Wolfe will surely agree not only that this is one of the neatest murder puzzles ever set down by Rex Stout, but also that it is the most exciting, adventure-filled, and breathless story he ever told.Nero Wolfe has represented some pretty unusual clients in his time, but in this one, his client — believe it or not — is the fast-talking, hard-hitting, skirt-chasing assistant and companion to Nero, Archie Goodwin himself.We’ll make three bets with you abut Prisoner’s Base: First — you won’t solve it. Second — you’ll agree that no author ever played more fair with his readers. Third — when you finish it, you will feel as if you have been on a forty-eight-hour, breath-taking, danger-filled chase up and down the avenues of New York, into some of Manhattan’s darkest and more terror-filled alleys.

SEED ON THE WIND is a revealing dramatization of Lora Winter, who has had many lovers but only one beloved. The story opens when the father of Lora’s youngest child first betrays that he is disturbed by an incident from her past that has arisen to cloud the present; the author then proceeds, in a series of vivid scenes, to unfold the past before our eyes. To the reader this is not a novel — rather the living, breathing substance of reality. Not even in the magic pages of How Like a God did Mr. Stout reveal himself so completely a master of feminine psychology. As in his first work, the author has provided both an engrossing story and a deep, moving study of human motivation.When How Like a God was issued, critics and the public alike realized that a new and powerful novelist had arisen. SEED ON THE WIND generously fulfills the promise of Mr. Stout’s first book and goes far to sustain the contention of those critics who compared him to D. H. Lawrence.

Target Practice brings together for the first time the complete short works of fiction that Rex Stout wrote for All-Story Magazine, the famous journal which published the cream of his early writings. Including “Secrets,” the first crime fiction Stout wrote, and “Justice Ends at Home,” with a detective team foreshadowing Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, these are sixteen of his best stories.

The newest full-length Rex Stout novel provides not only a new experience for Nero Wolfe fans, but also a new experience for Nero himself.It’s one thing for Nero to move his hand across a glove and put his finger on a distant seat of murder; it’s quite another thing for him to move his ponderous body father than across a room. Yet, believe it or not, in The Black Mountain Nero not only leaves his house but he actually leaves the United States, crosses and ocean, a continent, and a sea, and — with Archie — penetrates, disguised, into one of the most dangerous and controversial places on earth.From there on it’s Nero Wolfe as Nero never was before: a Nero compelled to cope with sinister international plotters, to deal with an enemy to whom murder is but a trivial incident, to return to New York on one of the strangest missions in all detective fiction.

The Body in the Hall, involves a dog as the only witness to a murder.

In this thrilling, ingeniously plotted mystery, Rex Stout relates another adventure of the detective he introduced in DOUBLE FOR DEATH. Tecumseh Fox lives in a big place out near Brewster, New York, and he grows things there. But he’s interested in other things besides detecting and gardening so he gave some money toward the purchase of a fine violin for a promising young violinist named Jan Tusar.Fox was in the audience the night of Tusar’s debut and, although he didn’t know much about music, it didn’t seem to him that the performance was much good.

The guests had seemed full of good will — until their host was poisoned. Then the truth began to merge, and even Wolfe was baffled.

Archie Goodwin attempts to help two scared illegal immigrants only to learn that they are prime suspects in the murder of a policeman. The man nearly breaks Archie’s back in trying to get away from Nero Wolfe’s before homicide cops come for him. A star-struck girl gets bopped with a bottle and tries to frame Sgt. Purley Stebbins, but Wolfe solves the case as he gets his hair cut.

Leaving the church, Mrs. Bynoe seemed unaware of the cameras — and of danger.

A woman with a man seated beside her in a Cadillac mouths soundlessly to a street urchin, “Help, get a cop!” One of these three very presently is murdered, and as a result Nero Wolfe delivers himself of his first recorded lecture on crime detection. Even more surprising, Nero and Archie take on a case for the smallest retainer in their history: four dollars and thirty cents.“The Golden Spiders”, Rex Stout introduces a new kind of criminal engaged in a peculiarly contemporary and particularly vicious kind of crime. Nero never had to think faster and Archie never encountered greater perils than in this, undoubtedly one of the very finest novels of detection or our day.

A young couple deeply in love comes to seek Nero Wolfe’s help because the young woman’s husband has died. She believes he was murdered but because of her affair is afraid to go to the police. The mystery clue seems to concern the movement of the murder weapon. It takes much persuasion by Wolfe to get the young man to admit that he moved the gun, placing it next to the body. Both he and she were afraid that that the other had committed the crime. Would Wolfe help them uncover the truth? He consents and begins to interview all who may have a motive to kill the husband, a famous singer.

NERO WOLFE, in this complete mystery novel, admired the knives displayed at the picnic until he found one in a corpse in the tent.