Rex Stout

When the seemingly safe return of an abducted millionaire ends in his murder in his own home, Nero Wolfe sends Archie Goodwin to do his usual legwork, while Wolfe uncovers corruption and greed among Manhattan's elite.

Faith Usher had a decidedly morbid personality. She talked about taking her life, and kept cyanide in her purse. So when she collapses and dies from a lethal champagne cocktail in the middle of a high society dinner party, everyone calls it suicide—including the police. But Archie was watching it all, and suspects it was murder. So does Nero Wolfe, especially after he's warned by four men against taking the case. For the world's most formidable...

Don’t tempt Nero Wolfe to find the culprit. When foul play’s the game, he always wins—and in these three crime puzzles, the stakes are high.
 
Home to Roost
Somebody at the dinner table dropped a poison pellet into the vitamin addict's pill-box.
The Cop-Killer
The murdered cop carried the clue inside his folded newspaper.
The Squirt and the Monkey
The monkey was the only witness...

The army wants Nero Wolfe urgently, but he refuses their clarion call to duty. It takes Archie Goodwin to titillate Wolfe’s taste for crime with two malevolent morsels: a corpse that refuses to rest in peace and a sinister “accident” involving national security. It’s up to the Grandiose Master himself, Nero Wolfe, to set the traps to catch a pair of wily killers—as Archie lays the bait on the wrong side of the law.
...

As Nero Wolfe prepares to speak at a gathering of the world’s great chefs, one is found indelicately murdered. When the target for killing shifts to himself, the great detective must close this case quickly or his next meal may be his last.
World-class cuisine, charming company . . . The secret ingredient is poison.
Everyone knows that too many cooks spoil the broth, but you'd hardly expect it to lead to murder. But that's...

"Her Forbidden Knight gives the reader a glimpse of the cunning devices and charades of the celebrated Nero Wolfe mysteries which followed in the author's later years. Rex Stout's first detective novel follows the fortunes of the beautiful and naïve Lila Williams, a telegraph operator at New York's swankiest hotel--the Lamartine--as she becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the operations of a shady counterfeiting ring. By chance, the innocent Lila, coveted...

When a young, white, financially independent young woman shows up dead, all clues lead to her dapper, black fiance who comes to Nero Wolfe for help. Although the clues seem to indicate that well-educated Dunbar Whipple is the murderer of his beautiful fiancee Susan, Nero Wolfe uncovers a startling new motive for the crime.

Amy Denovo, a young woman assisting Lily Rowan, hires Nero Wolfe because she must find out who her father is, or was. After her mother was killed in a recent hit-and-run, Amy received a locked metal box containing more than a quarter of a million dollars in cash--and a letter from her mother that explained only that the money came from her father. The mystery of Amy's mother's identity rivals that of her father's.

Tecumseh Fox has a sharp eye for solving murders-but this time he's seeing double. Fox has been hired by the headstrong niece of a man charged in the shooting of wealthy financier Ridley Thorpe. The problem is that there are two gorgeous suspects, two powerful motives, two hotheaded suitors, and two murder weapons. And to top it off, Ridley Thorpe, or someone claiming to be him, is not only alive and well but has an airtight alibit for the night of...

When a Balkan beauty gets in trouble over some missing diamonds, whom else can she turn to but the world-famous Nero Wolfe? Especially since she claims to be Wolfe's long lost daughter! The stakes are suddenly raised when a student at this woman's fencing school ends up dead after a pointed lesson. As Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, thrust and parry into a tangle of documents, identities and international intrigue, another student body turns up,...