"A player surprised is half beaten."- Proverb.
In previous
postings dealing with that duet of gumshoes, the armchair bound Nero Wolfe and the
quick-witted Archie Goodwin, I explained that my enjoyment of this series
does not come from ingeniously contrived plots, which they seldom sport, but
from the characters and spending a few hours in their company. However, it's
always a treat, served as one of Fritz's opulent banquets, when Rex Stout put
some thought and effort into his intrigues – making Gambit (1962) a
noteworthy entry in the late-period corpus.
When Gambit
opens, we find Nero Wolfe tearing the pages from a copy of a 3rd edition of
Webster's dictionary, deeming it as "intolerably offensive," as Archie
Goodwin ushers a prospective client into the office. Sally Blount has $22.000
in cash on her and wants Wolfe to prove her father innocent of the murder of Paul Jerin,
a chess maven who was poisoned at the Gambit Club under peculiar circumstances.
Paul Jerin was taking on twelve opponents, at once, under "blindfold"
conditions, while alone in a room, separated from the other players, with only
messengers moving between them to whisper the moves.
The
twelve-man blindfold match was Matthew Blount's idea, who wanted to publicly
humiliate Jerin and concocted a scheme, however, when Jerin is taking ill
mid-match and dies in the hospital from arsenic poison – Blount is arrested as
his murderer. After all, it was Blount who was kind enough to supply Jerin with
his customary cup of hot chocolate, which appears to have been the container
for the poison, but Sally refuses to believe that her father's plans had
included murder and has very little faith in his attorney, Dan Kalmus, who's
apparently in love with her mother. Wolfe and Goodwin have their work cut out
for them!
I have to
admit that the who-and howdunit angles weren't particular difficult to solve
and most of their work consisted of prying loose a piece of information from
Blount and Kalmus, which merely confirms a suspicion Wolfe and his readers have
been harboring all along, but it's hard not to notice the effort Stout put into
constructing this plot. I appreciate that, especially from this writer, and that's
not something that can be said of all his books from this period. Even at gun
point, I would be unable to supply even a synopsis of The Final Deduction (1961) or
Please, Pass the Guilt (1973), and I don't think I have read them that
long before I began blogging.
But how
Wolfe wraps up this case does not only take a slice of the cake, but the whole
thing and you know he has the appetite for it! I also wanted to glare daggers
at the writing team who worked on the splendid A&E TV-series for not
considering this book! Wolfe's gambit tears a page (another sacrilege against
the printed word between the covers of this novel) from the playbook he used in
The Doorbell Rang (1965) with the adaptation being even better and the last
twenty-or-so minutes, in which Wolfe springs his trap, with one favorite scene
following another favorite scene, easily makes it one of my all time favorite episodes
from any detective series.
I also reviewed:
Where There's a Will (1940)
Too Many Women (1947)
And Four to Go (1958)
Gambit (1962)
I've read this twice and I do think it has one of his better plots. And the dictionary bit is bravura Wolfe.
ReplyDeleteThe dictionary bit is one of the most memorable scenes in the series and I can just picture Maury Chaykin, as Nero Wolfe, tearing away at a copy of Webster. It really should've been considered for the A&E series.
DeleteIt's been a while since I last read Gambit - although I remember (and whole-heartedly approve of) Wolfe's destruction of the Third International. Based on your review, I guess it's time I read it again. Wolfe and Archie, IMHO, are among the absolute best among American detectives.
ReplyDeleteFor me, Wolfe and Archie were the (GAD) successors of Holmes and Dr. Watson.
DeleteI haven't read this book yet and I already knew about the dictionary scenes. It's just one of those classic Wolfe moments.
ReplyDeleteHave read just one Rex Stout till date. The dictionary- tearing scene has me intrigued. Will look this one up.
ReplyDelete