A Family Affair by Rex Stout

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


"'Warrants to take Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. You're Goodwin. You're under arrest'"

Rex Stout's A Family Affair (1975) is the last of his 47 Nero Wolfe novels and collections of shorter pieces. It was published just three months before the author's death. I had read all Wolfe books in the 1970's - 1990's and am returning now to a selected few of them curious about how the passage of time - both my chronological time and the fictional time of the novels - has influenced my reception of Mr. Stout's prose.

Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's secretary and right-hand man, the only person able to cajole and tame the obese genius of detection, is woken up at night by a waiter from Wolfe's favorite restaurant. The man believes someone is trying to kill him. Reluctantly, Archie offers him a guest room to stay overnight. But then an explosion happens, the waiter is killed, and Wolfe's old brownstone seriously damaged. Wolfe is enraged by the violation of his precious physical space and commences an investigation, of course through always reliable and intrepid Archie. There is no client this time. "It's a family affair." By the way, the reader will certainly appreciate the cleverly double meaning of the title.

Soon the investigation becomes enmeshed in another case: a wealthy industrialist has recently been murdered and Archie discovers a connection between the waiter and the victim. Of course in the end, despite the efforts of the police and despite getting arrested, Wolfe and Goodwin manage to unmask the guilty person - here the readers will likely enjoy a really major plot twist.

The entire story has the Watergate affair in the background and the author is not shy to demonstrate his outrage at the President's malfeasance. Isn't the following passage cool:

"Five men being tried now in Washington for conspiracy to obstruct justice - Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Mardian, and Parkinson. Five being charged here with conspiracy to obstruct justice - Wolfe, Goodwin, Panzer, Durkin, and Cather."

Certainly far from the best of Nero Wolfe novels A Family Affair is quite readable, and the Watergate connection helps.

Two and a half stars.




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