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Some Buried Caesar/The Golden Spiders (Nero Wolfe) Paperback – September 30, 2008
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A grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America’s greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of fiction’s greatest detectives. Here, in this special double edition, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth and his trusty man-about-town, Archie Goodwin, solve two of their most bizarre cases.
Some Buried Caesar
A prize bull destined for the barbecue is found pawing the corpse of a late restaurateur. Wolfe is certain that Hickory Caesar Grindon, the soon-to-be-beefsteak bull, isn’t the murderer. But who among a veritable stampede of suspects—including a young woman who’s caught Archie’s eye—turned the tables on Hickory’s would-be butcher? It’s a crime that wins a blue ribbon for sheer audacity—and Nero Wolfe is the one detective audacious enough to solve it.
The Golden Spiders
A twelve-year-old boy shows up at Wolfe’s brownstone with an incredible story. Soon the great detective finds himself hired for the grand sum of $4.30 and faced with the question of why the last two people to hire him were murdered. To keep it from becoming three, Wolfe must discover the unlikely connection between a gray Cadillac, a mysterious woman, and a pair of earrings shaped like spiders dipped in gold.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBantam
- Publication dateSeptember 30, 2008
- Dimensions5.21 x 1.11 x 8.21 inches
- ISBN-100553385674
- ISBN-13978-0553385670
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THAT SUNNY September day was full of surprises. The first one came when, after my swift realization that the sedan was still right side up and the windshield and windows intact, I switched off the ignition and turned to look at the back seat. I didn’t suppose the shock of the collision would have hurled him to the floor, knowing as I did that when the car was in motion he always had his feet braced and kept a firm grasp on the strap; what I expected was the ordeal of facing a glare of fury that would top all records; what I saw was him sitting there calmly on the seat with his massive round face wearing a look of relief–if I knew his face, and I certainly knew Nero Wolfe’s face. I stared at him in astonishment.
He murmured, “Thank God,” as if it came from his heart.
I demanded, “What?”
“I said thank God.” He let go of the strap and wiggled a finger at me. “It has happened, and here we are. I presume you know, since I’ve told you, that my distrust and hatred of vehicles in motion is partly based on my plerophory that their apparent submission to control is illusory and that they may at their pleasure, and sooner or later will, act on whim. Very well, this one has, and we are intact. Thank God the whim was not a deadlier one.”
“Whim hell. Do you know what happened?”
“Certainly. I said, whim. Go ahead.”
“What do you mean, go ahead?”
“I mean go on. Start the confounded thing going again.”
I opened the door and got out and walked around to the front to take a look. It was a mess. After a careful examination I went back to the other side of the car and opened the rear door and looked in at him and made my report.
“It was quite a whim. I’d like to get it on record what happened, since I’ve been driving your cars nine years and this is the first time I’ve ever stopped before I was ready to. That was a good tire, so they must have run it over glass at the garage where I left it last night, or maybe I did myself, though I don’t think so. Anyway, I was going 55 when the tire blew out. She left the road, but I didn’t lose the wheel, and I was braking and had her headed up and would have made it if it hadn’t been for that damn tree. Now the fender is smashed into the rubber and a knuckle is busted and the radiator’s ripped open.”
“How long will it take you to fix it?”
“I can’t fix it. If I had a nail I wouldn’t even bother to bite it, I’d swallow it whole.”
“Who can fix it?”
“Men with tools in a garage.”
“It isn’t in a garage.”
“Right.”
He closed his eyes and sat. Pretty soon he opened them again and sighed. “Where are we?”
“Two hundred and thirty-seven miles northeast of Times Square. Eighteen miles southwest of Crowfield, where the North Atlantic Exposition is held every year, beginning on the second Monday in September and lasting–”
“Archie.” His eyes were narrowed at me. “Please save the jocularity. What are we going to do?”
I admit I was touched. Nero Wolfe asking me what to do! “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m going to kill myself. I was reading in the paper the other day how a Jap always commits suicide when he fails his emperor, and no Jap has anything on me. They call it seppuku. Maybe you think they call it hara-kiri, but they don’t or at least rarely. They call it seppuku.”
He merely repeated, “What are we doing to do?”
“We’re going to flag a car and get a lift. Preferably to Crowfield, where we have reservations at a hotel.”
“Would you drive it?”
“Drive what?”
“The car we flag.”
“I don’t imagine he would let me after he sees what I’ve done to this one.”
Wolfe compressed his lips. “I won’t ride with a strange driver.”
“I’ll go to Crowfield alone and rent a car and come back for you.”
“That would take two hours. No.”
I shrugged. “We passed a house about a mile back. I’ll bum a ride there or walk, and phone to Crowfield for a car.”
“While I sit here, waiting, helplessly, in this disabled demon.”
“Right.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“You won’t do that?”
“No.”
I stepped back around the rear of the car to survey the surroundings, near and far. It was a nice September day, and the hills and dales of upstate New York looked sleepy and satisfied in the sun. The road we were on was a secondary highway, not a main drag, and nothing had passed by since I had bumped the tree. A hundred yards ahead it curved to the right, dipping down behind some trees. I couldn’t see the house we had passed a mile or so back, on account of another curve. Across the road was a gentle slope of meadow which got steeper further up where the meadow turned into woods. I turned. In that direction was a board fence painted white, a smooth green pasture, and a lot of trees; and beyond the trees were some bigger ones, and the top of a house. There was no drive leading that way, so I figured that there would be one further along the road, around the curve.
Wolfe yelled to ask what the devil I was doing, and I stepped back to the car door.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t see a garage anywhere. There’s a house across there among those big trees. Going around by the road it would probably be a mile or more, but cutting across that pasture would be only maybe 400 yards. If you don’t want to sit here helpless, I will, I’m armed, and you go hunt a phone. That house over there is closest.”
Away off somewhere, a dog barked. Wolfe looked at me. “That was a dog barking.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Probably attached to that house. I’m in no humor to contend with a loose dog. We’ll go together. But I won’t climb that fence.”
“You won’t need to. There’s a gate back a little way.”
He sighed, and bent over to take a look at the crates, one on the floor and one on the seat beside him, which held the potted orchid plants. In view of the whim we had had, it was a good thing they had been secured so they couldn’t slide around. Then he started to clamber out, and I stepped back to make room for him outdoors, room being a thing he required more than his share of. He took a good stretch, his applewood walking stick pointing like a sword at the sky as he did so, and turned all the way around, scowling at the hills and dales, while I got the doors of the car locked, and then followed me along the edge of the ditch to the place where we could cross to the gate.
It was after we had passed through, just as I got the gate closed behind us, that I heard the guy yelling. I looked across the pasture in the direction of the house, and there he was, sitting on top of the fence on the other side. He must have just climbed up. He was yelling at us to go back where we came from. At that distance I couldn’t tell for sure whether it was a rifle or a shotgun he had with the butt against his shoulder. He wasn’t exactly aiming it at us, but intentions seemed to be along that line. Wolfe had gone on ahead while I was shutting the gate, and I trotted up to him and grabbed his arm.
“Hold on a minute. If that’s a bughouse and that’s one of the inmates, he may take us for woodchucks or wild turkeys–”
Wolfe snorted. “The man’s a fool. It’s only a cow pasture.” Being a good detective, he produced his evidence by pointing to a brown circular heap near our feet. Then he glared toward the menace on the fence, bellowed “Shut up!” and went on. I followed. The guy kept yelling and waving the gun, and we kept to our course, but I admit I wasn’t liking it, because I could see now it was a shotgun and he might easily be the kind of a nut that would pepper us.
There was an enormous boulder, sloping up to maybe 3 feet above the ground, about exactly in the middle of the pasture, and we were a little to the right of that when the second surprise arrived in the series I spoke of. My attention was pretty thoroughly concentrated on the nut with the shotgun, still perched on the fence and yelling louder than ever, when I felt Wolfe’s fingers gripping my elbow and heard his sudden sharp command:
“Stop! Don’t move!”
I stopped dead, with him beside me. I thought he had discovered something psychological about the bird on the fence, but he said without looking at me, “Stand perfectly still. Move your head slowly, very slowly, to the right.”
For an instant I thought the nut with the gun had something contagious and Wolfe had caught it, but I did as I was told, and there was the second surprise. Off maybe 200 feet to the right, walking slowly toward us with his head up, was a bull bigger than I had supposed bulls came. He was dark red with white patches, with a big white triangle on his face, and he was walking easy and slow, wiggling his head a little as if he was nervous, or as if he was trying to shake a fly off of his horns. Of a sudden he stopped and stood, looking at us with his neck curved.
I heard Wolfe’s voice, not loud, at the back of my head, “It would be better if that fool would quit yelling. Do you know the technique of bulls? Did you ever see a bull fight?”
I moved my lips enough to get it out: “No, sir.”
Wolfe grunted. “Stand still. You moved your finger then, and his neck muscles tightened. How fast can you run?”
“I can beat that bull to the fence. Don’t think I can’t. But you can’t.”
“I know very well I can’t. Twenty years ago I was an athlete. This almost convinces me . . . but that can wait. Ah, he’s pawing. His head’s down. If he should start . . . it’s that confounded yelling. Now . . . back off slowly, away from me. Keep facing him. When you are 10 feet away from me, swerve toward the fence. He will begin to move when you do. As long as he follows slowly, keep backing and facing him. When he starts his rush, turn and run–”
I never got a chance to follow directions. I didn’t move, and I’m sure Wolfe didn’t, so it must have been our friend on the fence–maybe he jumped off into the pasture. Anyhow, the bull curved his neck and started on the jump; and if it was the other guy he was headed for, that didn’t help any, because we were in line with him and we came first. He started the way an avalanche ends. Possibly if we had stood still he would have passed by, about 3 feet to my right, but either it was asking too much of human nature to expect me to stand there, or I’m not human. I have since maintained that it flashed through my mind that if I moved it would attract him to me and away from Nero Wolfe, but there’s no use continuing that argument here. There’s no question but what I moved, without any preliminary backing. And there’s no question, whoever he started for originally, about his being attracted by my movement. I could hear him behind me. I could damn near feel him. Also I was dimly aware of shouts and a blotch of something red above the fence near the spot I was aimed at. There it was–the fence. I didn’t do any braking for it, but took it at full speed, doing a vault with my hands reaching for its top, and one of my hands missed and I tumbled, landing flat on the other side, sprawling and rolling. I sat up and panted and heard a voice above me:
“Beautiful! I wouldn’t have missed that for anything!”
I looked up and saw two girls, one in a white dress and red jacket, the other in a yellow shirt and slacks. I snarled at them, “Shall I do it again?” The nut with the shotgun came loping up making loud demands, and I told him to shut up, and scrambled to my feet. The fence was 10 yards away. Limping to it, I took a look. The bull was slowly walking along, a hundred feet off, wiggling his head. In the middle of the pasture was an ornamental statue. It was Nero Wolfe, with his arms folded, his stick hanging from a wrist, standing motionless on the rounded peak of the boulder. It was the first time I had ever seen him in any such position as that, and I stood and stared because I had never fully realized what a remarkable looking object he really was. He didn’t actually look undignified, but there was something pathetic about it, he stood so still, not moving at all.
Product details
- Publisher : Bantam; 2nd Printing edition (September 30, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553385674
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553385670
- Item Weight : 15.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.21 x 1.11 x 8.21 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #601,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,761 in Hard-Boiled Mystery
- #5,032 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Books)
- #31,723 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Rex Todhunter Stout (/staʊt/; December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction, particularly the 33 novels and about 40 novellas that featured the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin between 1934 and 1975.
In 1959, Stout received the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon XXXI, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century.
In addition to writing fiction, Stout was a prominent public intellectual for decades. Stout was active in the early years of the American Civil Liberties Union and a founder of the Vanguard Press. He served as head of the Writers' War Board during World War II, became a radio celebrity through his numerous broadcasts, and was later active in promoting world federalism. He was the long-time president of the Authors Guild, during which he sought to benefit authors by lobbying for reform of the domestic and international copyright laws,[specify] and served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by CBS Radio and photographer uncredited [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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I had never read "Some Buried Caesar" before! It is one of the few stories in which Mr. Wolfe leaves his house. It is very different in many ways and the reader observes Archie meet Lily for the very first time! Fun! The plot is a bit obvious but wonderfully crafted. Another Stout masterpiece.
By now, I know who dun it. I've read them all five or six (well, 8 or 9) times (My favorite is "In The Best Families.") but it doesn't matter. To read the sparring that Wolfe and Archie do, the frazzling, sometimes strange running around Archie does, the fireworks in the office, Cramer's and Wolfe's thunder and lightning and - yes- respect, it's all good.
I'll read them all again.
Cheers.
Expensive New York private detective Nero Wolfe is epicene, indolent, insufferably arrogant, and regally Stout, all descriptors that offer possibilities for humor. Archie Goodwin, his acquiescent assistant, does double duty as sarcastic narrator and as indignant victim of any physicality that might unsettle the mental or digestive processes of his employer. Much of the fun in any Nero Wolfe novel comes from the badinage between Wolfe and Goodwin, and most of the reader's involvement comes from the unlikely pleasure one gets from seeing Wolfe bully his clients. Those clients are almost always smug, self-centered rich folk -- naturally, considering Wolfe's rates -- who scream for their comeuppance. If there's an iota of social content in the writings of Rex Stout, it's plainly a kind of sardonic liberal class-consciousness of the "eat-the-rich" variety.
"Some Buried Caesar" features two purse-proud pomposities, rivals since childhood, one of whom is the father of the first murder victim. That blustering and utterly unsympathetic fool of a father hires Wolfe, despite Wolfe's warnings that an investigation will batter his ego mercilessly. Alas, the best part of the novel, for this reader at least, was the first chapter, where all the fun comes from watching the pampered porcine Nero stumble across a pasture, to be chased by another, bovine Caesar. After that it's all a little too soothingly predictable.
Top reviews from other countries
Per chi è in grado di leggere l'inglese, vale assolutamente la pena di leggere le avventure di Nero Wolfe ed Archie in originale, intanto perché le traduzioni della Mondadori per la collana del Giallo erano selvaggiamente tagliate per far rientrare un romanzo di quasi 200/250 pagine nella lunghezza standard di 150 del Giallo Mondadori. Poi perché la traduzione era sciatta, poco curata, perdeva del tutto lo spirito, l'ironia, il fraseggio pronto, sarcastico ed arguto di Rex Stout, confrontare per credere.
E poi perché in qualche caso, e questo è uno, veniva "edulcorato" addirittura il finale! Il colpevole qui, e non rivelo certo chi sia, commette suicidio iniettandosi l'antrace, nella versione italia viene fatto fuggire non si sa dove, forse in Canada, come dice Archie a Lily Rowan in una finale conversazione al telefono!
In conclusione, per chi legge l'inglese, raccomandatissimo!