Trio for Blunt Instruments

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Trio for
Blunt Instruments
Author Rex Stout
Cover artist Bill English
Country United States
Language English
Series Nero Wolfe
Genre(s) Detective fiction
Publisher Viking Press
Publication date April 24, 1964
Media type Print (Hardcover)
Pages 247 pp. (first edition)
ISBN NA
Preceded by The Mother Hunt
Followed by A Right to Die

Trio for Blunt Instruments is a collection of Nero Wolfe mystery novellas by Rex Stout, published in 1964 by the Viking Press in the United States and simultaneously by MacMillan & Company in Canada. The book comprises three stories:

Contents

[edit] Kill Now — Pay Later

Wolfe's aging Greek bootblack is accused of murder and Wolfe feels he owes him something since he (apparently) listens eagerly to Wolfe's disserations on ancient Greek culture during every shoe-shining session and moreover has told the police that "Wolfe is a great man"[1].

[edit] Murder Is Corny

[edit] Setting the stage

Inspector Cramer comes to Wolfe's front door unannounced and unexpectedly on a Tuesday evening in September, carrying a carton of freshly picked corn, normally provided by a farmer named Duncan McLeod up in Putnam County, with many questions about the death of Kenneth Faber, a part-time helper of McLeod's who should have delivered the corn much earlier that day, along with 9 other similar cartons to Rusterman's Restaurant, previously owned and run by Wolfe's childhood friend Marko Vukčič, but now in trusteeship to Wolfe under the terms of Marko's will (for the circumstances of Marko's death see The Black Mountain).

Archie Goodwin, who answered the door, tells Cramer he has met Faber briefly only, since he has been delivering Duncan's corn for the past 5 weeks, which Wolfe (and Rusterman's) order according to exacting standards. However, Archie knows that Faber likes Duncan's daughter Susan McLeod. Faber is actually a free-lance cartoonist, but prevailed on his friend to have her father give him a job at the farm. Later on, it transpires that real motive was not the extra money but the chance to see Sue on weekends.

Meanwhile, Wolfe, in an apparent disdain for Archie's situation, unpacks the carton of corn right on his desk, and informs Cramer that the corn is substandard: of the 16 ears of corn, 8 are substandard, 8 are acceptable.

Cramer asks Archie for an alibi for certain times in the afternoon just past. Archie says that he was with Saul Panzer (a long-timer Wolfe operative, but independent) at a ball game at Yankee Stadium. Cramer discounts the alibi saying Panzer would lie for Archie and Wolfe.

Eventually it develops that Susan McLeod found Faber's dead body, skull smashed in at the loading bay of Rusterman's, in the time in question, and has given a statement saying she saw Archie there.

On the strength of her statement, Cramer takes him in as a material witness, with a hint that the charge will be escalated to first degree murder soon.

After being bailed out by Nathaniel Parker, Archie arrives home at 11:20 Wednesday morning, very short of sleep, he finds that Susan McLeod is at Wolfe's house (where Archie lives), waiting to see him, asking for his help, despite the fact that she just got him arrested!

[edit] Dénouement

This sets the stage where Archie, without at first help from Wolfe, must decide between helping a pretty girl in trouble and saving is own skin.

Along the way, we discover, among other things, that Miss McLeod herself used to deliver the corn, and that's how Archie met her two years ago, that Archie's friend (girlfriend) Lily Rowan had found her a place to stay in Manhattan and introduced her to Carl Heydt, a high-class couturier. Since then she has become a high class model, with five male admirers, in the suspicious eyes of the police: Faber, Archie, Heydt, Max Maslow, and Peter Jay. Faber has apparently been spreading stories about his "competitors" for her attentions, including the intimation that one of them has made her pregnant.

[edit] Analysis

The story, apart from its crime detection aspects, is a story about how a simple, very beautiful, country girl comes to the big city, enters the world of high fashion, but cannot escape the risqué side of big city life. Nor is the country life in Putnam County devoid of moral failings, and they both play a part in the final resolution of this story.

[edit] Blood Will Tell

Archie receives a blood-stained tie in the mail from the owner of a small walk-up apartment building in lower Manhattan, who also lives on the top floor. Archie investigates, only to find yet another dead body[2] and now has to sort out the mess, preferably collecting a fee along the way since the other adventures in this volume have not earned the costly Wolfe operation a cent.

[edit] Reviews and commentary

  • Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime — Of these, the first is a compendium of all the author's merits -- a fast tale of double murder, drama, conflict with officialdom, banter about love, and a violent ending on Wolfe's premises, where the vulnerable heroine is a refugee. The second has agricultural elements that do not go well with the quasi-sexual drama; and the third is a premeditated crime rather simply untwisted. Archie is good throughout."[3]

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] A Nero Wolfe Mystery (A&E Network)

"Murder Is Corny" was adapted for the second season of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001–2002). Directed by George Bloomfield from a teleplay by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, the episode made its debut May 5, 2002, on A&E.

Timothy Hutton is Archie Goodwin; distinguished character actor Maury Chaykin is Nero Wolfe. Other members of the cast (in credits order) include Colin Fox (Fritz Brenner), Bill Smitrovich (Inspector Cramer), R.D. Reid (Sergeant Purley Stebbins), David Calderisi (Carl Heydt), George Plimpton (Nathaniel Parker), Robert Bockstael (Max Marow), Bruce McFee (Duncan McLeod), Julian Richings (Peter Jay) and Kari Matchett (Susan McLeod).

A Nero Wolfe Mystery is available on DVD from A&E Home Video. ISBN 076708893X

[edit] La bella bugiarda (Radiotelevisione Italiana)

"Murder Is Corny" was adapted for a series of Nero Wolfe films produced by the Italian television network RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana). Directed by Giuliana Berlinguer from a teleplay by Edoardo Anton, Nero Wolfe: La bella bugiarda first aired January 7, 1971.

The series of black-and-white telemovies stars Tino Buazzelli (Nero Wolfe), Paolo Ferrari (Archie Goodwin), Pupo De Luca (Fritz Brenner), Renzo Palmer (Inspector Cramer), Roberto Pistone (Saul Panzer), Mario Righetti (Orrie Cather) and Gianfranco Varetto (Fred Durkin). Other members of the cast of La bella bugiarda include Gianna Serra (Susan McLeod), Mario Carra (Max Maslow), Leo Gavero (Felix), Giacomo Piperno (Carl Heydt), Marino Masé (Peter Jay) and Mario Carotenuto (McLeod).

[edit] External links

[edit] Release details

  • 1997, USA, Books on Tape, Inc. ISBN 0736640614 October 31, 1997, audio cassette (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
  • 1997, USA, Bantam Crimeline ISBN 0553241915 January 1, 1997, paperback

[edit] References

  1. ^ This story, along with The Golden Spiders and Too Many Clients, is a story where Wolfe goes out of his way to help "the little guy", in this a man who ekes out a meagre existence polishing shoes and boots door to door, who gets entangled in a crime merely by being on the premises when it happens when police prefer to believe the other better-heeled people with stronger motives. The story also goes out of its way to point out the inadequate circumstances of even the so-called middle class people in the story.
  2. ^ In the course of the Nero Wolfe stories, Archie discovers quite a number of dead bodies, not always in the course of an investigation. Before the events told in this story, Archie has already found more bodies than Inspector Cramer, Lieutenant Rowcliffe and other members of NYPD like.
  3. ^ Barzun, Jacques and Taylor, Wendell Hertig. A Catalogue of Crime. New York: Harper & Row. 1971, revised and enlarged edition 1989. ISBN 0-06-015796-8


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Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout
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