Where There's a Will

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Where There's a Will
Author	Rex Stout
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Nero Wolfe
Genre(s)	Detective fiction
Publisher	Farrar & Rinehart
Publication date	June 10, 1940
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	272 pp. (first edition)
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	Over My Dead Body
Followed by	Black Orchids

Where There's a Will is the eighth Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout. Prior to its publication in 1940 by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., the novel was abridged in the May 1940 issue of The American Magazine, titled "Sisters in Trouble."

[edit] Plot introduction

Nero Wolfe is initially retained to assist in a will contest, only soon to find himself engaged in investigating a murder.

[edit] Plot summary

The famous Hawthorne sisters — April, May and June — visit Nero Wolfe in a body to ask his help in averting a scandal. After the shock of their brother Noel's death in a hunting accident three days before, they have been dealt another shock at learning the terms of his will, which are sure to cause a sensation once they are made public. Even if the three sisters agree to the terms of the will, they are certain their sister-in-law, Daisy Hawthorne, will contest it and bring the matter into open court. They suggest that Wolfe come at the problem from the other end, and persuade Noel Hawthorne's primary beneficiary — a young woman named Naomi Karn — to relinquish the bulk of the inheritance.

Their conference is interrupted by the arrival of their brother's widow. Once a most beautiful woman, Daisy Hawthorne was horribly disfigured by her husband in an accident. She is now famous as a tragic and quite unsettling figure — "the lady who wears a veil."

"I sat and stared at it," Archie wrote, "trying to ignore an inclination to offer somebody a ten-spot to pull the veil up, knowing that if it was done I'd probably offer another ten-spot to get it pulled down again."

After a somewhat menacing confrontation, Daisy is assured by Wolfe that he will consider her as well as the Hawthorne sisters as his clients, and will negotiate with Miss Karn on their behalf.

Later that day, another conference in Wolfe's office is interrupted. Inspector Cramer of Homicide arrives at the brownstone to inform the Hawthorne sisters that the shooting accident that killed their brother was no accident at all.

[edit] Cast of characters

Carl Mueller illustrated "Sisters in Trouble,"
the abridged version of Where There's a Will
that appeared in the May 1940 issue of
The American Magazine

• Nero Wolfe — Famous fat detective
• Archie Goodwin — His assistant
• April Hawthorne — Beautiful actress
• May Hawthorne — Her intellectual sister, president of Varney College
• June Hawthorne — The oldest sister
• John Charles Dunn — June's husband, U.S. Secretary of State
• Andrew Dunn and Sara Dunn — Their children
• Celia Fleet — April's secretary
• Daisy Hawthorne — Veiled widow of Noel Hawthorne, brother of the three famous Hawthorne girls
• Glenn Prescott — Eminent attorney who drew Noel Hawthorne's will
• Eugene Davis — His partner
• Naomi Karn — The woman of the case
• Inspector Cramer — Of the New York homicide squad
• Fritz Brenner — Wolfe's chef and major-domo
• Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, Orrie Cather and Johnny Keems — Detectives in Wolfe's employ

[edit] The FBI and "Sisters in Trouble"

Rex Stout was one of many American writers closely watched by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, journalist Herbert Mitgang discovered when he gained limited access to Stout's FBI files for his 1988 book, Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors.

While [World War II] was on, Stout, who had organized the Writers War Board and became its chairman, was placed on something called the "General Watch List." Hoover himself, according to a heavily censored page marked Confidential, requested Byron Price, director of Censorship, Federal Trade Commission Building, Washington, to include Rex Stout of Brewster, New York, on "General Watch List No. 49."

The FBI watched what Stout wrote and somehow turned his fiction into suspicious fact. Because, for example, of a story that appeared in the May 1940 issue of American Magazine called "Sisters in Trouble," he was labeled what might be called "prematurely anti-Nazi." A highly imaginative document from Los Angeles (correspondent's name censored) to the FBI's Communications Division in Washington claimed that the story was "either a deliberate attempt to convey a meaning other than the solution of a mystery story — or else the whole thing is full of coincidences. Note the almost exclusive German cast of characters, particularly Fritz Brenner. Could Fritz refer to the German Consul in San Francisco, and could Brenner have any reference to the Brenner pass? Could 'Nero' refer to Rome by any chance? While for the purposes of the story, April, May and June are the names of three sisters, couldn't it also mean that for three months, or until July, somebody's back was to the door — maybe the door to the Balkans or the Mediterranean?"

When it served its purposes, agents of the FBI could turn into literary critics, finding, however ludicrous, damning symbols in fiction.^[1]

[edit] Literary significance and criticism

"Endless talk over how to keep a kept woman from inheriting millions which only she thinks have been left her, and then — after deceased is shown to have been murdered — more talk about who did it. Wolfe spots the criminal by looking closely at six small photographs (poorly reproduced in the book) and applying his knowledge of floriculture."^[2]

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] Un incidente di caccia (Radiotelevisione Italiana)

Where There's a Will 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 Vladimiro Cajoli, Nero Wolfe: Un incidente di caccia first aired July 13, 1969.

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 Un incidente di caccia include Paola Mannoni (Mary), Gianna Piaz (Clotilde), Esmeralda Ruspoli (Amelia), Antonio Pierfederici (Glenn Prescott), Mariolina Bovo (Diana Karn) Edmonda Aldini (Daisy Hawthorne), Pier Paola Bucchi (Sara Dunn) and Claudio Gora (John Charles Dunn).

[edit] External links

• Nero Wolfe: Un incidente di caccia at the Internet Movie Database
• wiki collection of quotations from Where There's a Will

[edit] Release details

• 2006, USA, The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters ISBN 1572705515 October 28, 2006, audio CD (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
• 1995, USA, Bantam ISBN 0553763016 March 1995, trade paperback

[edit] References