Stout, Rex. Triple Jeopardy. Viking Press, 1952.
Reason read: I am still working my way through Rex Stout’s entire Nero Wolfe canon.
Home to Roost – Mrs. Benjamin Rackell and her husband come to Nero to find out who killed their nephew. The young man died of cyanide poisoning in the middle of a dinner with five other people. Was it a communist conspiracy? Was he a plant working for the FBI? Stout tries to confuse the matter by introducing a few shady characters. Immediately, readers are supposed to suspect Fifi Goshen. She goads Nero by disturbing his orchids and pouring her cocktail into his beer. Is she trying to cause a commotion to distract everyone from the truth? And speaking of drinks, Archie has moved away from tall glasses of milk and now prefers cool coke and limes.
Cop-Killer – Two Illegal aliens working in a barbershop come to Nero Wolfe for amnesty. They are wanted for murder but cannot claim their innocence because they are too afraid of being deported back to Russia. The cop investigating the murder visited the barbershop to hunt down a lead on a hit-and-run that happened the day before. Carl and Tina Vardas fled thinking their illegal status had been discovered. Their flight makes them look guilty, but as Archie surmises, “to qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to dive a car” (Triple Jeopardy p 94). Dear Archie, I would beg to differ. I would argue that you are more likely to hit someone while driving a car if you have no idea what you are doing. It is during this case that Nero Wolfe leaves his brownstone to get a haircut. Shocking!
Squirt and the Monkey – Harry Koven, a comic book writer, accuses someone on his staff of stealing his gun. To reveal the culprit, Koven enlists the help of Archie. Instead of learning the identity of the thief, Archie is framed for murder, thanks to a rare tropical monkey named Rookaloo. As an aside, this case introduced me to the Sullivan Act of 1911.
True to form, Archie is always flirting with the ladies. I still think it is cute the way Wolfe cares for Goodwin’s appetite.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).
~*LunaSea*~ 