Some Buried Caesar
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| Author | Rex Stout |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nero Wolfe |
| Genre(s) | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Farrar & Rinehart |
| Released | February 2, 1939 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 296 pp. |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-25464-2 |
| Preceded by | Too Many Cooks |
| Followed by | Over My Dead Body |
Some Buried Caesar is the sixth Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout. The story first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine (December 1938), under the title "The Red Bull." It was first published in book form by Farrar & Rinehart in 1939. The novel is included in the omnibus volume All Aces, published in 1958 by the Viking Press.
This is one of several Wolfe plots that break one of Wolfe's cardinal rules, to never conduct business away from the brownstone house in Manhattan. It also involves minor characters who, under different names and positions, appear in several other Wolfe novels: that is, the self-important county or state police officer who tries to bully Archie, and the bumbling, politically driven district attorney. The book's title is from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
[edit] Plot summary
Wolfe and Archie are on their way to show orchids at an upstate exposition when a car tire blows and their car crashes into a tree. Uninjured, they notice a house across a large pasture and decide to walk there, to phone for help. On their way across the pasture, they are threatened by a large bull. The bull chases Archie from the pasture but Wolfe is left behind and must be retrieved by car.
Wolfe and Archie get a lift to the house, where lives Thomas Pratt, the owner of a large chain of fast-food restaurants. Pratt plans to barbeque a champion Guernsey, the very bull that threatened Wolfe and Archie, a few days later. The idea is to get publicity for Pratt's restaurants by serving beef from a bull that has been purchased for the then-fantastic price of $45,000. The plan has outraged the members of the Guernsey league, who are in town for the exposition.
Clyde Osgood, son of a despised neighbor, shows up and offers to bet Pratt $10,000 that Pratt will not barbeque the bull. Pratt accepts the bet, and Wolfe offers Archie's services in exchange for a comfortable stay at Pratt's house: Archie will help guard the bull from possible theft. During his watch that night, Archie discovers Clyde's body, gored to death in the pasture. The bull is using its horns to push at the corpse. Everyone involved assumes that the bull killed Clyde, but Wolfe thinks not.
[edit] The Unfamiliar Word
In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. Some Buried Caesar contains several examples, including the following. (Stout did not normally resort to Latin phrases, but this novel contains several.) The page references are to the Bantam edition:
- Plerophery. Page 1. A word sufficiently unfamiliar that it does not appear in the 1973 edition of the Random House unabridged dictionary. (It is "the state of being fully persuaded.")
- Ignoratio elenchi. Page 64, near the end of Chapter 4. (The Latin phrase is placed subsequent to "sophistry" and "casuistry". Unfamiliarity is a personal and subjective concept.)
- Petitio principii. Page 97, near the start of Chapter 8.
- Apodictically. Page 122, near the end of Chapter 9.
- Ethology. Page 166, near the start of Chapter 13.
There are quite a few errata in the Bantam editions of the Nero Wolfe books. "Ethology" may be one such: the sentence in which it is used, "Ethology is chaos," barely makes sense in the context of the dialog. Note also that on page 149, near the end of Chapter 11, a minor character misquotes The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: "I sometimes think that never grows so red the rose as where some buried Caesar bled."
[edit] Characters in Some Buried Caesar
- Nero Wolfe – The private investigator.
- Archie Goodwin – Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories).
- Thomas Pratt – The owner of a chain of fast-food restaurants, who plans to barbeque a champion Guernsey bull for publicity.
- Monte McMillan – The stockman who sold the champion bull, named Hickory Caesar Grindon, to Pratt.
- Frederick Osgood – Pratt's neighbor, a wealthy landowner whose prodigal son is found gored to death in a cow pasture.
- Clyde and Nancy Osgood – Frederick Osgood's son and daughter.
- Carolyn and Jimmy Pratt – Thomas Pratt's niece and nephew.
- Lily Rowan – A free spirit from Manhattan with whom Clyde Osgood is smitten. The Rowan character is introduced in this book. She makes frequent appearances later in the series, as a prominent figure in some plots and as Archie's paramour.
- Howard Bronson – A mysterious, sinister acquaintance of Clyde Osgood, also from Manhattan.
