''A Right to Die'' is a
Nero Wolfe
Nero Wolfe is a brilliant, obese and eccentric fictional armchair detective created in 1934 by American mystery (fiction), mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe was born in Montenegro and keeps his past murky. He lives in a luxurious brownstone on West ...
detective novel
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...
by
Rex Stout
Rex Todhunter Stout (; December 1, 1886 – October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels and ...
, first published by the
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquir ...
in 1964.
Plot summary
The novel is set against the background of the
Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act may refer to several acts of the United States Congress, including:
* Civil Rights Act of 1866, extending the rights of emancipated slaves by stating that any person born in the United States regardless of race is an American ci ...
conflict during the early Johnson Administration. At the beginning of the book, Paul Whipple, a black character from the earlier novel
''Too Many Cooks'' (1938), whose trust Wolfe had gained against a strong West Virginia atmosphere of prejudice, tells Wolfe that Wolfe has since become his hero, and that he has also achieved his dream, stated in the earlier novel, of becoming an anthropologist. He has come, however, to draw upon the favor he did Wolfe 26 years earlier, by asking Wolfe to prevent his son Dunbar Whipple from marrying a rich white girl, Susan Brooke, with whom he is apparently in love. While claiming that he is not opposed, in principle at least, to mixed-race couples, Paul Whipple thinks that sensible rich white girls do not fall in love with poor black men, even if the rich white girl is working for a black civil rights organization in
New York, the Rights of Citizens Committee. Wolfe is loath to interfere in the matter, but agrees to at least learn what he can about the true motivations of the socialite girlfriend and why she would be interested in a Negro boyfriend, to settle the debt he owes Whipple. Before the real mystery story gets underway, Stout allows some give and take on the concept of racism being a two-way street: blacks preferring their own as much as whites.
Archie arranges a meeting with Susan Brooke through his girlfriend, Lily Rowan, but is unable to form a conclusion as to her motives. Wolfe has him fly to
Racine
Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditi ...
,
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
, Susan's hometown, to do research on her background. He discovers little except for an incident where a man who wanted to marry her, Richard Ault, shot himself on her front porch after she turned him down. He is doing more research when Wolfe suddenly calls him back to New York: Susan Brooke has been brutally murdered in her Harlem apartment.
Dunbar Whipple is the prime suspect in the murder, and Wolfe agrees to work on his behalf. Wolfe focuses his investigation on Dunbar and Susan's co-workers at the Rights of Citizens Committee, over the objections of Whipple's lawyer Harold Oster, who is also the ROCC's counsel. Those interviewed include the organization's founder Thomas Henchly, Susan's superior Cass Faison, Rae Kallmann and Maud Jordan, two white volunteers, and Beth Tiger, a black stenographer Archie takes immediate interest in. Susan's family is also interviewed, and it becomes apparent that they are bigots who consider her involvement with Civil Rights a "kink" and do not believe she could have been engaged to Dunbar. Her sister-in-law Dolly is particularly vitriolic and Archie takes an instant dislike to her. The family claims that Susan was actually engaged to a white car dealer named Peter Vaughn.
Saul Panzer discovers that Dolly Brooke lied about her alibi the night of the murder by interviewing a garage attendant who saw her take her car out an hour before the murder took place. They cannot prove it because the witness refuses to testify, but stumble upon a lucky break when Vaughn, riddled with guilt, confesses to Archie that he lied to the police to firm up Dolly's alibi. Wolfe and Archie confront Mrs. Brooke, who admits that she went to Susan's apartment, but she could not get in because no one answered her knock. This indicates that Susan was already dead at 8:45, long before Dunbar Whipple arrived at the apartment. Her evidence clears him, but Wolfe elects not to use it because that would not only endanger Vaughn but would complicate matters by destroying the lead he has on the police.
Several days later, Vaughn calls Archie, telling him that he may have more information but that he has to do some checking on it first. The next day he is found dead, shot multiple times. When it emerges that Vaughn went to the ROCC the day before for information on Susan and Dunbar, Wolfe brings the key players to his office for another interview to prevent their being arrested as material witnesses. It is during this interview that Wolfe realizes that the key to the case lies in the unusual frequency of a
diphthong in the names of those involved. It will take another trip to the Midwest for Archie, this time to
Evansville
Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in ...
,
Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
, before the case is solved.
The use of Paul Whipple as a character in a 1964 Nero Wolfe novel was problematic, since Rex Stout never allowed his recurring characters to age. Whipple was a young man in ''Too Many Cooks'', but had aged 26 years and was a middle-aged academic in ''A Right to Die''. In all this time, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin miraculously remained the same age, but Whipple never noticed or mentioned this oddity.
Civil rights
As noted earlier, Rex Stout had already had Nero Wolfe make civil rights a central issue in his 1938 Wolfe novel
''Too Many Cooks'', although in that case his client was a not a black man, and so while many books were being written in that time period about the civil rights of Black Americans, few mainstream authors were writing a civil-rights ''sequel'' to a novel from 1938.
Reviews and commentary
*
Jacques Barzun
Jacques Martin Barzun (; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, and ...
and Wendell Hertig Taylor, ''
A Catalogue of Crime
''A Catalogue of Crime'' is a critique of crime fiction by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, first published in 1971. The book was awarded a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1972. A revised and enlarged edition ...
'' — Archie bestirs himself in Louisville and Evansville on the trail of a murderer whose identity is suggested to Nero by the abnormal frequency of a certain diphthong. How timely all this shown by the fact that Wolfe's client is a black whose son is about to marry a white girl, and by the nature of Wolfe's light reading: ''Science, the Glorious Entertainment''.
[Barzun, Jacques and Taylor, Wendell Hertig. ''A Catalogue of Crime''. New York: Harper & Row. 1971, revised and enlarged edition 1989. ]
Publication history
*1964, New York: The
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquir ...
, October 22, 1964, hardcover
:In his limited-edition pamphlet, ''Collecting Mystery Fiction #10, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part II'',
Otto Penzler
Otto Penzler (born July 8, 1942) is a German-born American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
Biography
Born in Germany to a German-American mother and a German father, Penzler moved to The ...
describes the
first edition of ''A Right to Die'': "Blue boards, blue cloth spine; front cover printed with dark blue; spine printed with black; rear cover blank. Issued in a blue, red, black, and white dust wrapper."
:In April 2006, ''Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine'' estimated that the first edition of ''A Right to Die'' had a value of between $150 and $300. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.
*1964, Toronto:
Macmillan, 1964, hardcover
*1965, New York: Viking (
Mystery Guild
Bookspan LLC is a New York–based online bookseller, founded in 2000.
Bookspan began as a joint endeavor by Bertelsmann and Time Warner. Bertelsmann took over control in 2007, and a year later, sold its interest to Najafi Companies, an Arizon ...
), January 1965, hardcover
:The far less valuable Viking book club edition may be distinguished from the first edition in three ways:
::* The dust jacket has "Book Club Edition" printed on the inside front flap, and the price is absent (first editions may be price clipped if they were given as gifts).
::* Book club editions are sometimes thinner and always taller (usually a quarter of an inch) than first editions.
::* Book club editions are bound in cardboard, and first editions are bound in cloth (or have at least a cloth spine).
[Penzler, Otto, ''Collecting Mystery Fiction #9, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part I'', pp. 19–20]
*1965, London:
Collins Crime Club
Collins Crime Club was an imprint of British book publishers William Collins, Sons and ran from 6 May 1930 to April 1994. Throughout its 64 years the club issued a total of 2,012in "The Hooded Gunman -- An Illustrated History of Collins Crim ...
, April 12, 1965, hardcover
*1965, New York:
Bantam #F-3061, December 1965, paperback
*1966, London: Fontana #1389, 1966, paperback
*1991, New York: Bantam Crimeline April 1, 1991, paperback
*2003, Auburn, California: The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters May 2003, audio CD (unabridged, read by
Michael Prichard)
*2010, New York: Bantam Crimeline May 26, 2010,
e-book
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
Notes
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Right To Die
1964 American novels
Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout
Viking Press books