| The Doorbell Rang | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Rex Stout |
| Cover artist | Bill English |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nero Wolfe |
| Genre(s) | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Publication date | October 8, 1965 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 186 pp. (first edition) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | A Right to Die |
| Followed by | Death of a Doxy |
The Doorbell Rang is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1965.
Contents |
An hour later we were having a pleasant evening. The three guests and I were in the front room, in a tight game of pinochle, and Wolfe was in his one and only chair in the office, reading a book. The book was The FBI Nobody Knows. He was either gloating or doing research, I didn't know which.
— Archie Goodwin writing in The Doorbell Rang, chapter 12
Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who gave away 10,000 copies of a book that is critical of the Bureau and its director, J. Edgar Hoover.
The Doorbell Rang generated controversy when it was published, due largely to its unflattering portrayal of the FBI, its director and agents.[1] It was published at a time when the public's attitude toward the FBI was turning critical, not long after Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover clashed and the Bureau was coming under fire for its investigations of Martin Luther King. Some critics did not care for the book: one called it the "most overrated Wolfe."[2] But Clifton Fadiman, quoted in a Viking Press advertisement for The Doorbell Rang, thought it was "… the best of all Nero Wolfe stories."
The backdrop to The Doorbell Rang is supplied by J. Edgar Hoover's redirection of the FBI's resources away from its role in criminal investigation and toward its director's own political and ideological ends.
In 1964, American investigative journalist Fred J. Cook published The FBI Nobody Knows[3] — collecting in book form several of his articles on FBI abuses that had previously appeared in The Nation. Cook's writings affected Stout profoundly – to the degree that he wrote The Doorbell Rang largely in reaction to The FBI Nobody Knows and the direction that Hoover had taken the FBI. Stout had not before used a Wolfe book to air his own political views so extensively, and it didn't happen again until 1975's A Family Affair.
Mrs. Rachel Bruner inherited a large real estate investment business from her husband, and has run it successfully for some time. She has read The FBI Nobody Knows and thinks it should get a wider distribution than it has so far. Mrs. Bruner has attracted the Bureau's attention by buying 10,000 copies of the book[5] and sending them to persons of influence, including cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, various state legislators, heads of corporations and banks, and so on.
Mrs. Bruner believes that, in retaliation, the FBI is following her and her family, that it has tapped her phones, and that it has questioned some of her employees. She blames the Bureau's director, J. Edgar Hoover, and she wants Wolfe to stop him.
Wolfe accepts the job, over Archie's objections. Archie believes that the task is an impossible one and that taking it on will make a powerful enemy of the FBI. But Mrs. Bruner has offered a $100,000 retainer, and will pay both expenses and a fee to be determined by Wolfe, contingent on a successful outcome. Wolfe will not return the retainer. To do so would be to imply that he is afraid of what he terms a "bully."
Wolfe plans to get evidence of FBI malfeasance and use it to force the FBI to leave Mrs. Bruner alone. At first, Archie pursues various leads with little success, but then Doc Vollmer[6] conveys to Archie a message that calls him to a meeting in a hotel room, and that warns him to "be sure you're loose." Although suspicious of being set up by the FBI, Archie goes to the hotel room, where he finds Inspector Cramer and a carton of milk.
Cramer has news, but he doesn't want it known that he's passed it along to Wolfe – hence the secret meeting. The FBI knows by now that Wolfe has accepted Mrs. Bruner's job and it has asked the state government to revoke Wolfe's and Archie's licenses to do business as private investigators. In turn, the state has asked the Police Commissioner for whatever negative information he has on Wolfe, and the Commissioner has asked Cramer for a report. Cramer knows that Wolfe has already annoyed the FBI, but before he writes the report he wants the full picture. Archie surmises that Cramer brought the milk, Archie's beverage of choice, to show that he's not eager to cooperate with the FBI's plan to harass Wolfe.
Archie is at first undecided. Normally he would check with Wolfe before opening up to Cramer, but he can't – their phone's surely tapped. Archie's intelligence, guided by experience, tells him to empty the bag for Cramer, and he does so. Then Cramer completes his own agenda by giving Archie some unpublished information about the recent, unsolved murder of Morris Althaus, shot to death in his apartment.
Althaus was a free-lance magazine writer and it is known that he had been preparing an article on the FBI. However, neither a draft of an article nor background information was found in his apartment. (Not even the bullet that killed him was found, although evidence indicates that the bullet passed through his chest, hit the wall and fell to the floor.) Furthermore, an eyewitness saw men leaving the scene and got their car's license number, which Cramer says belongs to the FBI. Cramer's inference is that FBI agents entered Althaus' apartment for a search, that they were surprised to find him there, that Althaus threatened them with his own gun and that they shot him.
Cramer has tried to get the FBI's cooperation in his investigation, but its special agent in charge in New York, Richard Wragg, stonewalls him. With no evidence and no cooperation from the FBI, Cramer is both blocked and seriously angry.
Later, in conference with Wolfe, Archie conjectures that Cramer "… knew we had stung them somehow, and he had a murder he couldn't tag them for, and he decided to hand it to you." Archie and Wolfe agree that, even if they were able to establish that the FBI was responsible for Althaus' death, it wouldn't help them complete their job for Mrs. Bruner. The only leverage they would have would be to trade their silence about the murder for the FBI's agreement to stop harassing Mrs. Bruner. That's not Wolfe's style.
So Wolfe chooses to demonstrate instead that the FBI did not kill Althaus. But he still needs leverage, and he decides that the best way to obtain it is to entice the FBI into an illegal entry. Wolfe enlists the help of his old friend Lewis Hewitt, a millionaire orchid fancier with an estate on Long Island. Hewitt will host a dinner of the Ten for Aristology, a group of gourmets (one that also figures in "Poison à la Carte"). The publicity given the newspapers states that Wolfe and Archie will attend and that Fritz will prepare the dinner. Two actors who strongly resemble Wolfe and Archie in superficial physical respects go in their place, thereby giving any FBI agents who might be watching the brownstone the impression that it is unoccupied. In fact it is not: Wolfe and Archie remain hidden in the darkened house; also present are Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather, who were smuggled, along with the actors, into the house the day before.
Meantime, Archie, acting on his own, has located evidence pointing to the identity of Althaus' actual murderer. To secure the evidence, though, he has to leave it roughly where he found it. The situation preys on Archie's nerves: the timing of Wolfe's trap forces Archie to wait for a couple of days, and he worries that the murderer will decide to dispose of the evidence permanently.
Wolfe's plan to trap the FBI works as intended, and Wolfe catches two of its agents inside his house, with witnesses who can testify that they broke in. He allows the agents to leave, but only after appropriating their credentials, which FBI agents are permitted to display but not to relinquish. When Archie later describes this scene to Inspector Cramer, he sees a rare and broad smile crease the Inspector's face.
The credentials provide the leverage Wolfe needs to complete his job for Mrs Bruner. Wragg comes to Wolfe's office. Wolfe engages to leave the credentials in a safe deposit box and take no action against the FBI, if the harassment of Mrs. Bruner, her family and her employees stops. Wragg agrees. And as to the murder, Archie is at last able to tell Cramer that the FBI did not in fact kill Althaus, and where the evidence identifying Althaus' murderer can be found. Wragg then hands over the missing bullet, taken by the agents who searched the apartment, so that Cramer can close the case without having to put any of Wragg's men on the witness stand at a trial.
In the final scene, a new visitor arrives at the front door. Though he is not mentioned by name, Archie refers to him as "the big fish," suggesting that J. Edgar Hoover has come in person to retrieve the agents' credentials. Wolfe refuses to let him in, leaving him to keep ringing the doorbell.
In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. The Doorbell Rang contains these three:
Researching his book Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors (1988), journalist Herbert Mitgang discovered that Stout had been under FBI surveillance since the beginning of his writing career. Most of the heavily censored pages he was allowed to obtain from Stout's FBI dossier concerned The Doorbell Rang:
In April 1976, the Church Committee found that The Doorbell Rang is a reason Rex Stout's name was placed on the FBI's "not to contact list," which it cited as evidence of the FBI's political abuse of intelligence information.[8]
Executive producer Michael Jaffe adapted The Doorbell Rang for the series premiere of A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001–2002), a Jaffe/Braunstein Films coproduction with the A&E Network. The first of four Nero Wolfe episodes directed by executive producer and star Timothy Hutton, "The Doorbell Rang" made its debut April 22, 2001, on A&E.
Timothy Hutton is Archie Goodwin; Maury Chaykin is Nero Wolfe. Other members of the cast are Debra Monk (Mrs. Rachel Bruner), Francie Swift (Sarah Dacos), Colin Fox (Fritz Brenner), Saul Rubinek (Lon Cohen), Conrad Dunn (Saul Panzer), Fulvio Cecere (Fred Durkin), Trent McMullen (Orrie Cather), Bill Smitrovich (Inspector Cramer), R.D. Reid (Sergeant Purley Stebbins) and James Tolkan (Richard Wragg).
"The Doorbell Rang" was filmed in Toronto, with select Manhattan exteriors. Composer Michael Small wrote the jazzy score, including the title music and series theme, "Boss Boogie." The soundtrack also includes music by Ib Glindemann, Alan Moorhouse, Bill Novick and Paul Lenart, and Giuseppe Verdi.[16]
In North America, A Nero Wolfe Mystery is available on Region 1 DVD from A&E Home Video (ISBN 076708893X). "The Doorbell Rang" is one of the Nero Wolfe episodes released on Region 4 DVD in Australia in 2008, under license by FremantleMedia Enterprises.[17] In 2009 the film was released on Region 2 DVD in the Netherlands, by Just Entertainment.[18] All of these DVD releases present "The Doorbell Rang" in 4:3 pan and scan rather than its 16:9 aspect ratio for widescreen viewing.
In 1977, Thayer David filmed Nero Wolfe, a Paramount Television production based on the novel The Doorbell Rang. Written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, the film costarred Tom Mason (Archie Goodwin), Brooke Adams (Sarah Dacos), Biff McGuire (Inspector Cramer), John Randolph (Lon Cohen), Anne Baxter (Mrs. Bruner), David Hurst (Fritz Brenner), John O'Leary (Theodore Horstmann) and Sarah Cunningham (Mrs. Althaus). Intended as the pilot for a TV series, the made-for-TV movie was shelved due to Thayer David's death in July 1978. Nero Wolfe was finally broadcast December 18–19, 1979, as an ABC TV late show.
A year later, Paramount produced Nero Wolfe, a weekly series that ran January 16–August 25, 1981, on NBC TV. The second episode, "Death on the Doorstep," was an original story by Stephen Downing that also incorporated elements of the novel The Doorbell Rang. William Conrad and Lee Horsley star as Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Other members of the cast include George Voskovec (Fritz Brenner), Robert Coote (Theodore Horstmann), George Wyner (Saul Panzer) and Allan Miller (Inspector Cramer). Directed by George McCowan, "Death on the Doorstep" aired January 23, 1981.
The Doorbell Rang 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: Il pesce più grosso first aired March 11, 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 Il pesce più grosso include Paola Borboni (Signora Bruner), Silvia Monelli (Signora Dacos), Enrico Luzi (Quayle), Lia Angeleri (Signorina Althaus), Bruno Smith (Jarvis), Simone Mattioli (Kirby) and Fernando Cajati (Wragg).