“To find that without warning one of my favorite dishes has been radically altered is an unpleasant shock.

“You did not consult me,” Wolfe said coldly. Much fresh tarragon, with just a touch of saffron, which is the way-” “I thought you might like it once in a style I have suggested, with saffron and tarragon. When the platter was brought in, steaming, and placed before him, he sniffed, ducked his head and sniffed again, and straightened to look up at Fritz. It is an expensive meal and a happy one, and Wolfe always looks forward to it, but that day he put on an exhibition. Fritz dresses them and sprinkles them with salt, and, at the proper moment, brushes them with melted butter, wraps them in sage leaves, grills them, and arranges them on a platter of hot polenta, which is thick porridge of fine-ground yellow cornmeal with butter, grated cheese, and salt and pepper.

It is understood that they are to be delivered to our door within two hours after they were winged. Each year around the middle of May, by arrangement, a farmer who lives up near Brewster shoots eighteen or twenty starlings, puts them in a bag, and gets in his car and drives to New York. But that evening I went myself, knowing that Fritz was in no mood to handle a caller, no matter who it was.įritz’s mood should be explained. When the doorbell rings while Nero Wolfe and I are at dinner, in the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street, ordinarily it is left to Fritz to answer it. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Now, with his perambulatory man-about-town, Archie Goodwin, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth is back in the original seventy-three cases of crime and detection written by the inimitable master himself, Rex Stout. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained-and puzzled-millions of mystery fans around the world. The man has entered our folklore.”- The New York Times Book ReviewĪ grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America’s greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. “It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery.

The case is all boiling down to a strange taste of greed-and a grumpy gourmand’s unappeasable appetite for truth. In short order, Wolfe finds himself confronted by one of his most perplexing and pressing cases, involving a curious set of clues: a gray Cadillac, a mysterious woman, and a pair of earrings shaped like spiders dipped in gold. So why has he accepted a case for $4.30? And why have the last two people to hire him been ruthlessly murdered? Wolfe suspects the answers may lie in the story of a twelve-year-old boy who turns up at the door of his West Thirty-fifth Street brownstone. Nero Wolfe was almost as famous for his wealthy clients and extravagant fees as for his genius at detection.

The golden spiders rex stout