Plot it Yourself [Mass Market Paperback]

This is later Nero Wolfe, written in the 50s, filled with references to the Eisenhower administration. And this is noteworthy because I've always found the later Wolfe adventures lacking in charm and energy. Not this one. Archie finds himself in the publishing world, helping Wolfe sort out scandals, plagarism and murder. The setting is unique, the plot is engaging, Wolfe is his familiar old idiosyncratic self, and Archie is as witty a narrator as you could ask for. I was pleasantly surprised and delighted by this work.

Archie Goodwin (with his endless battles with the forces of crime, law, and Nero Wolfe) is the chief joy of a Wolfe novel. In this instance, a case of wholesale plagiarism turns into murder, and while there are flaws in the handling of the supporting players and in some details of the investigation, we're given a few spectacular bouts of Wolfe-temperament in compensation, and some clever touches in the construction of the crimes.

In the past 4 years, starting in February 1955, four unsuccessful authors have accused 5 bestsellers of plagiarism, usually settling out of court. Amy Wynn's new bestseller, her first, is now a target, and the BPA (Book Publishers of America) and NAAD (National Association of Authors & Dramatists) have had enough. A joint committee, including some of the victim authors, has approached Wolfe, who accepts partly because Philip Harvey, the chair, wrote a book rating an A. (Archie opens the story explaining how he gauges Wolfe's opinion of a book.) You'll note that I don't name all the committee members; most are stage props, even those relevant to the investigation. Wolfe doesn't pep things up with opinions of their work.

Alice Porter's manuscript was found by a cleaning woman in Ellen Sturdevant's summer home. Simon Jacobs' 'What's Mine Is Yours' was sent to Echols' agent long before Echols' story came out, but nobody can prove whether the forgotten original tallies with the version brandished by Jacobs after the fact. After Marjorie Lippin's case, Jane Ogilvy's manuscript was found in her attic. (Ms. Lippin's heirs not only fought the suit, but demanded an autopsy, striking out on both.) Mortimer Oshin, having heard of the other cases, searched his own premises thoroughly once the accusation was made - only to have Kenneth Rennert's play outline turn up in the files of his ex-agent. Porter is the only repeat; she's making the current accusation against Amy Wynn. In an unrealistic scene, Wolfe undertakes the vaguely defined job without even a signed memo to back it up - and the committee accepts Wolfe's position that he can't say beforehand what his fee might be. They briefly discuss relative proportions of expenses and offer and advance against *that*, but even that isn't documented - and these are supposed to be grown-ups, in the *publishing* industry, dealing with plagiarism.

Wolfe is the first person to handle all the accusers' material - and says that the writing style marks them as coming from the same person, although the typewriters don't. (Given that by the time of the Oshin incident, the pattern was well known and several lawsuits had occurred, it shouldn't have taken Wolfe to begin a competent investigation.) Comparing the writing styles to the individual accusers' known work, though, *all* of them appear to have been cats'-paws - only Porter's 2nd effort matches her own style. Physical evidence is downplayed, even where a *lack* of fingerprints would be *something* in a plagiarism suit. (If it's been in our files for all those years, ma'am, why don't any of the pages bear our readers' prints? Or your typist's? Weak, though.) Archie even seems to be the first to ask the accusers to produce the typewriters used.

Wolfe is ready to bow out, once further investigation requires only brute manpower and luck. However, one committee member asks Archie to nominate one catspaw as a target for bribery. Since 2 claims are in litigation and Ogilvy is a flake, Archie suggests Jacobs, as the poorest candidate with the largest family. When Archie meets Purley of Manhattan Homicide on Jacobs' doorstep, accusations of bungling singe the air - not least, Wolfe's against himself. Thanks to loose-tongued committee members, at least 50 people knew about the bribe offer, and nobody thought to protect Jacobs. (However, Archie remembers the lesson in later years during _Death of a Doxy_.) Naturally enough, the other plagiarism claimants are also dropping like flies. However, given that Archie *cooperated* with Purley, the cops would have been *fools* to take so long to check on the other corpses-to-be. (Not that they could have prevented the deaths, but they certainly ought to have beaten Archie to the bodies.)

On the plus side, when Archie reports murder #3 to Wolfe, Wolfe is beside himself to the point that he not only cusses in Serbo-Croat, but forswears both beer and meat until the culprit is in the bag. :) When Wolfe also voluntarily leaves the brownstone to confront his clients, Harvey is one of the few who ever had sense enough to balk at interfering in a police inquiry. The final confrontation is unusual in that the cops aren't invited, and there is no epilogue after the showdown - Stout experimented a little with that style in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Another feature of that phase of Wolfe's career is that Dol Bonner and one of her assistants join Saul, Fred, and Orrie in the legwork, to Fritz' dismay at the presence of women in his domain.

This is Nero Wolfe in top form. It's about intrigue in the publishing world, something Rex Stout obviously understood thoroughly. There's plenty of humor, which is a staple of the series, but there's a bit more edge than usual, and the end is rather haunting.