If Death Ever Slept by Rex Stout
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] Otis Jarrell's new secretary had turned out to be no other than Nero Wolfe's man Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the celebrated detective, Archie Goodwin."

If Death Ever Slept, the 29th installment in Rex Stout's legendary series, has quite an unusual beginning: Archie Goodwin is trying to teach Nero Wolfe a lesson. Wolfe is annoyed by not having been told where Archie was spending an evening. Archie thinks it is not any of Mr. Wolfe's business where he spends his personal time so they are barely talking. Until a client arrives...

The client is one Otis Jarrell, a "capitalist" in Archie's words, who wants to hire Wolfe to "get the snake out" of his house, the reptile being his daughter-in-law. Wolfe and Goodwin are told about her machinations and plotting against Mr. Jarrell. Archie Goodwin agrees to play the role of Mr. Jarrell's secretary and live with him and his family in their 20-room apartment. His real job will be to substantiate the scheming claims.

Naturally, things are not as straightforward as they appear to be. Also naturally, there occurs a murder. Initially, Wolfe and Archie make very little progress and at one point Wolfe gets so exasperated that he returns the big check to the client, trying to drop the case. But then the novel would not get written so... back to work.

The "obese genius of detection" needs to gather suspects in his office three times during the investigation, not just only for denouement purposes, as happens in most Wolfe novels. Inspector Cramer gets involved and for long hours Archie is grilled at the police station.

Wolfe hires the usual crew of Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, Orrie Cather, and even Dol Bonner to follow the suspects. The author invites the readers to solve the case on their own: almost seven pages of extremely detailed timetables are provided to itemize what each of the seven suspects was doing for several days. This will be a bonus for readers who - unlike me - enjoy the detection aspect of the stories.

All in all, for me If Death Ever Slept is a below-the-average installment of the Wolfe saga. Other than the fragment shown in the epigraph I have found only one mildly amusing quote:

"[...] probably put it on the expense account. Transportation to and from a conference to discuss whether anyone present is a murderer is probably tax deductible."

Two-and-a-quarter stars.


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