Family Affair

Rex Stout

A man is murdered in Nero Wolfe's house. Wolfe is asleep on the floor below and Archie Goodwin is undressing in the room next door when the bomb explodes. The man carrying it needed to speak to Wolfe. He knew someone was trying to kill him. Unfortunately, "someone" succeeded before Wolfe could help.

Wolfe is outraged that someone would dare "tweak his nose" in his own home. Goodwin realizes it could have been him who opened the bomb. The police are delighted they have something to hang on Wolfe. The dead man's employer, family, and friends, want to know why. It is the 1970's during the time of Watergate and conspiracies. Wolfe and Goodwin are accused of suppressing evidence. Are they also involved in a consipiracy?

Wolfe is tight lipped to the police and to Goodwin. Yet Goodwin and Wolfe's three investigators are sent different directions tyring to get the information to solve the murder and two others that are connected. Since Goodwin also has his job and life on the line, he follows his own line of investigation as well.

This is the last Nero Wolfe novel published while Stout was alive. It has some surprising twists. I was not able to pull in one connection that is one of the major key clues. Even when it was explained at the end it still did not tie in for me. This is a good story despite my cluelessness. It is interesting watching Wolfe go to jail, stand mute, and have his hands tied.

Fer-de-Lance
The League of the Frightened Men
The Rubber Band
The Red Box
Too Many Cooks
Some Buried Caeser
Over My Dead Body
Where There's a Will
Black Orchids
Not Quite Dead Enough
The Silent Speaker
Too Many Women
And Be a Villain
The Second Confession
Trouble in Triplicate
In the Best Families
Three Doors to Death
Curtains for Three
Murder by the Book
Triple Jeopardy
Prisoner's Base
The Golden Spiders
Three Men Out
The Black Mountain
Before Midnight
Three Witnesses
Might As Well Be Dead
If Death Ever Slept
Three for the Chair
Champagne for One
And Four to Go
Plot It Yourself
Too Many Clients
Three at Wolfe's Door
The Final Deduction
Gambit
Homicide Trinity
The Mother Hunt
A Right to Die
Trio for Blunt Instruments
The Doorbell Rang
The Death of a Doxy
The Father Hunt
Death of a Dude
Please Pass the Guilt
A Family Affair
Death Times Three

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett