So you think you know Nero Wolfe, do you. So you’re reasonably sure that only the most dire emergency will induce Nero to heave his home on West Thirty-fifth Street, and that no case since his early days could make him budge from Manhattan Island or miss a meal cooked by his own precious Fritz?

Well, brace yourself! In this latest full-length Nero Wolfe adventure, Nero not only leaves house, cook, and orchid planes, but also flies nearly cross-continent to Montana to join Archie Goodwin on a lavish but very private dude ranch. Here he settles down to solve murder by rifle shot, resigned to the necessity of performing such unWolfean activities as tramping through underbrush, wading in an icy trout stream, eating canned soup, and attending a rowdy Saturday night hoedown in a cattle town. He also has to deal with a young unmarried mother, some uncooperative cowhands, a highly belligerent sheriff, an off-Broadway actress, and any number of chairs which don’t begin to fit his bulk. Yet, throughout, he remains the same inimitable Nero Wolfe.

How does Rex Stout know enough about the Far West to write this novel? Every summer, for a large part of his life, he spent his time riding pack trains, fishing mile-high streams, and enjoying night after night around campfires, yarning with genuine cowpunchers. So there isn’t a misplaced piece of harness or an unauthentic Western Vista in this, one of the funniest, most engaging, and most out-of-doors of all Nero Wolfe adventures.

A new Nero Wolfe mystery at last — after a gap of four years — and it will be a delight to all Stout fans. The story is set in the summer of 1969, during that memorable period when the Mets were battling for the pennant and bomb scares abounded in Fun City.

The mystery involves the explosion of a bomb in the office of a potential candidate for the presidency of a large corporation; the bomb kills another man, however, and no one can figure out whether the actual victim was the intended victim or not, and of course no one knows who set the bomb in the first place.

The unraveling of the mystery, during which Archie encounters his first Women’s Liberationist, is full of suspense, humor, orchids, etymology, and good food in the best Stout tradition.

What could make Nero Wolfe so determined to solve a crime that he would be willing to work entirely without fee or client? What would it take to put him, for the first time, at a loss for words? What would make him so angry about a case that he would refuse to speak to the police, even if he has to spend fifty-one hours in jail as a result? Never before in the Nero Wolfe books has Rex Stout shown us the extremes to which the greatest detective in the world can be pushed, but never before has a bomb blown up in the old brownstone on West 35th Street, murdering someone right under Wolfe's nose. When in October 1974 Pierre Ducos, one of Wolfe's favorite waiters at Rusterman's, Wolfe's favorite restaurant, dies just down the hall from Archie's bedroom, Wolfe is understandably eager to find the perpetrator, but when that murder somehow becomes connected with tape recorders, Washington lawyers, and maybe even a conspiracy to obstruct justice, his fury becomes so intense that even Archie is puzzled. Not only is this a great chapter in the Nero Wolfe legend; A Family Affair is a splendid mystery novel that should capture many new fans and will delight (and amaze) the longstanding admirers of Wolfe and Archie.

THREE RECENTLY DISCOVERED NERO WOLFE CLASSICS

Now, with the aid of the Stout estate and Stout’s official biographer, John McAleer, Bantam Books is proud to publish for the first time in book form this newly discovered collection of three Nero Wolfe novellas. ASSAULT ON A BROWNSTONE, the never-before-published version of a novella featuring Wolfe in his most shocking confrontation with the law when his Thirty-fifth Street brownstone is invaded by Treasury officials. FRAME-UP FOR MURDER, concerning a famous fashion designer and a neatly stitched plot that weaves a deadly pattern of death. And BITTER END, a suspenseful story containing one of the nastiest incidents ever to occur at Wolfe’s dinner table.

Nero Wolfe, the brilliant orchid-growing gourmet detective, and his inimitable confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, are America’s most beloved detection team. Now they are back in a splendid new murder mystery that takes up where Rex Stout left off. In the perfect Stout tradition, author Robert Goldsborough has ingeniously rendered every detail of character and place with such uncanny accuracy that fans will savor every page to its surprising and immensely satisfying conclusion.

Threatening notes have been sent to Milan Stevens, celebrated conductor of the New York Symphony. His niece, Maria, fears for her uncle’s life and travels to the Thirty-fifth Street brownstone of Nero Wolfe. Archie can barely conceal his surprise when Wolfe agrees to investigate — Archie has just spent two spectacularly unsuccessful years trying to pry his employer out of retirement. But Wolfe has his own reasons for taking the case, reasons that have nothing to do with helping a pretty young woman in distress. For while the world knows Milan Stevens as a brilliant conductor, Wolfe knows him as Milos Stefanovic, the brave freedom fighter who saved Wolfe’s life many years ago. It is a debt that must be paid.

But Maria has come to the big detective too late. Milan Stevens is soon found dead, and Maria’s musician boyfriend, Gerald, is in police custody. Despite Maria’s cries that Gerald could not have possibly committed such a bloody act, there are plenty of witnesses who overheard Stevens screaming at Gerald that marrying his niece was out of the question. To make matters worse, Gerald also happened to be the only person seen entering Stevens’s apartment on the night when the final curtain was pulled on his brilliant life.

The juicy public scandal of it all enthralls the city, which is anxious for the next development and the climax of the case. With precious little to go on, and not sold on Gerald’s guilt, Wolfe and Archie begin compiling a list of suspects, discovering very soon that the problem isn’t where to start — it s where to stop. But when the scanty clues finally arrange themselves like notes on a score, Wolfe recognizes a dark melody that only a talented murderer could perform.

Nero Wolfe is back in all his orchid-growing, gourmandizing glory! In The Bloodied Ivy and two previous bestsellers. Robert Goldsborough re-creates Stouts sedentary supersleuth and his energetic aide. Archie Goodwin, so convincingly that even the most devout Stout fans are delighted. John McAleer, Stouts official biographer and editor of The Stout Journal, has said, “A half dozen other writers have attempted it, but Goldsborough’s is the only one that feels authentic, the only one able to get into Rex’s psyche. If I hadn’t known otherwise. I might have been fooled into thinking this was the genuine Stout myself.’

Playboy Sparky Linville has a nasty notion of fun and games. But when he picks popular Noreen James as his unwilling playmate, the result is murder — and a case that will rock Manhattan’s trendy Upper East Side and divide the family of Lily Rowan. Noreens aunt.

As furor rages in the local press and the police fix their attention on her relatives. Lily turns to her old friend and confidant Archie Goodwin for help, hoping he can convey the seriousness of the family’s plight to his eminent employer, Nero Wolfe.

Wolfe decidedly doesn’t enjoy being distracted from his greenhouse and his groaning board. Yet Archies eloquence — and the prospect of an enormous fee — seduce him into accepting the case. It is, of course, understood that since the master detective has no intention of venturing forth from his snug brown stone sanctuary on Manhattan’s West Side, Archie will handle the leg work.

But the more shoe leather Archie burns, the more burning questions arise. There are altogether too many suspects — and every one of them has (a) a strong motive and (b) no alibi.

And on top of that, two people have confessed to the crime! Now as Archie faithfully relates his findings, the great Nero Wolfe is left to ponder this bizarre puzzle — and the deadliest coincidence-in the most baffling case of his career.

For the sixth time Robert Goldsborough invites us into Nero Wolfe’s West Thirty-fifth Street brownstone, and once again he re-creates Wolfe’s world to perfection, as the gourmandizing master detective is roused from his sacred orchid-tending routine — by murder.

Picturesque Richmond County — Staten Island to most people — is the most overlooked borough in New York City, but one of its residents is known throughout the world: the good reverend Barnabas Bay, shepherd of the Tabernacle of the Silver Spire. For the past six Sundays the splashy televangelist has found a nasty surprise in the collection... Bible quotations twisted into death threats.

When one of Reverend Bay’s assistants beseeches Wolfe to find the wicked perpetrator, he refuses — even though the almighty bank account is in need of salvation. After all, the great man does have his convictions, and organized religion offends his sense of morality. And besides, the only plate he’s interested in passing is the one on which a three-star epicurean masterpiece resides.

Never one to shirk his Christian duty. Wolfe’s faithful legman Archie Goodwin refers the case to longtime friend and fellow private detective Fred Durkin.

It proves a fateful decision: Eleven days later someone at the Silver Spire receives a premature call to meet his maker — and Durkin is charged with murder.

As Archie searches for clues and prays for a miracle, the incomparable Nero Wolfe finds himself up against a sinfully clever killer in one of the most baffling — and damning — cases of his career.

Robert Goldsborough returns with his seventh stunning Nero Wolfe novel. Follow along into Wolfe’s famed West Thirty-fifth Street brownstone, where the corpulent orchid-tending genius devours meals, books, and murderers with a passion — and where this time he gets the chance to send a writer’s killer to the pen.Charles Childress, the author tapped to continue the beloved Sergeant Barnstable detective stories when the originator died, may not have been the most gifted writer in the world, but he did have his talents... Contentious, combative, and exceedingly vengeful, Childress had an unsurpassed way of making enemies. Which is why, when the police write off his death as suicide, his publisher, Horace Vinson, comes to Nero Wolfe. Vinson knows all too well that in the cutthroat world of publishing, the competition can be murder.Wolfe, however, is not so easily convinced... or distracted from his more genteel pursuits. After all, the evidence does conform to the official version of the killing: The gun found at the crime scene not only belonged to the victim but bore only his fingerprints. Perhaps Childress finally contrived a successful climax... as the author of his own death.But Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s ever-faithful friend and partner; points out that Vinson’s fee would keep the big man in beer and bouillabaisse for some time to come. That is a reality Nero Wolfe can’t refuse, and soon Archie is posing questions that turn up a whole cast of character assassins, including Childress’s ex-editor and agent, his most scathing critic, and his icily beautiful, ambitious fiancée — each of whom would have taken great pleasure in writing the final chapter in the life of Charles Childress.And then, in a plot twist any auteur would envy, Archie gets wind of the involvement of a mysterious kissing cousin from Childress’s past. Could this be a case of a small-town girl come to right an old wrong? It’s a conundrum so novel even the reluctant Nero Wolfe can’t resist... as extortion, deceit, and jealousy come together in a perfect potboiler of revenge — and murder.

Archie Goodwin is not overly fond of Theodore Horstmann, who takes care of the orchids on the rooftop of Nero Wolfe’s West Thirty-Fifth Street brownstone. But as loyal assistant to the legendary private detective, Archie will put his animosity aside when the surly orchid-keeper stumbles through the front door beaten within an inch of his life.

While the gardener lies in a coma, Nero sends Archie to poke around his apartment near the river. The place is neatly kept, if not quite as elegant as the brownstone, but across the street on Tenth Avenue Archie quickly discovers the longshoremen’s watering hole in whose back room Horstmann has been playing a lot of bridge lately. The smoky tavern is packed with tough dockworkers and recent European immigrants, and Archie does his best to blend in, filling the...