When a bright young heiress with a flair for romance and one too many enemies is found brutally murdered, Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, find themselves embroiled in a case that is not as black and white as it first appears. Susan Brooke has everything going for her. Men would have killed themselves to marry her, and, in fact, one did. Susan came to New York to find love and fulfillment, and ended up dead on a tenement floor. The police say her black fiance did it, but Wolfe has other ideas. Before he's done, he'll prove that good intentions and bad deeds often go hand in hand and that the highest ideals can sometimes have the deadliest consequences.
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"Published in 1964... a white woman is going to marry a black man until she's found dead in her apartment by him. This is one of a handful of times Stout tackles cultural issues with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin and does so with the sharp wit only a character like Wolfe could provide. "
— Greg (5 out of 5 stars)
" This was a great Nero Wolfe story, bringing back a character from one of Stout's early books. Loved it. "
— Niffer, 4/28/2011" A clever mystery (I expect nothing less of Rex Stout) that actually did keep me guessing. Also, it's not about what you'd think. "
— Kate, 2/25/2011" Pretty good Nero Wolfe story with somewhat dated race elements attached to parts of the main plot. "
— Jeffrey, 10/6/2010" I love the series, but this -- with aged characters from an earlier novel -- was fascinating, particularly seeing Nero and race relations between the 30's and the 60's "
— Bill, 11/8/2009" A good mystery, it takes place during the civil rights movement but succeeds in being about the murder and not the movement. "
— Melissa, 8/30/2009" Companion piece to Too Many Cooks -- read Cooks first -- and, again, be sure you understand when it was written. "
— Amy, 4/5/2009" This was one of my most favorites. Very clever and witty. And interesting to read something about the Civil Rights Movement written during that movement. "
— Saralyn, 6/11/2008Rex Stout (1886–1975), inimitable master of detective fiction, wrote seventy-three mysteries and numerous novels and short stories. He is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Nero Wolfe. He was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America and received the Crime Writers Association’s Silver Dagger Award.
Michael Prichard is a Los Angeles-based actor who has played several thousand characters during his career, over one hundred of them in theater and film. He is primarily heard as an audiobook narrator, having recorded well over five hundred full-length books. His numerous awards and accolades include an Audie Award for Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman and six AudioFile Earphones Awards. He was named a Top Ten Golden Voice by SmartMoney magazine. He holds an MFA in theater from the University of Southern California.