- Title: Man Alive
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Flashback Friday takes us back to a New York City brownstone and a mystery for Nero Wolfe. “Man Alive,” originally published in The American Magazine before later being included along two other shorter mysteries in Three Doors to Death, offers a case involving the murder of a dead man.
While skeptical about taking the case, brought to him by heir to a fashion empire Cynthia Nieder believing the uncle who committed suicide a year earlier by jumping into a geyser is still alive, Wolfe accepts employment only for things to get quite a bit more interesting when the man is found recently killed in her office leaving her as the prime suspect.
With only a handful of likely suspects, his client having motive and opportunity for the crime, and all the others alibiing each other, and a pair of other circumspect accidental deaths among the company’s founders, “Man Alive” offers an interesting set of circumstances for Nero Wolfe to puzzle over. However, when you have one dead man why not two, as Wolfe deduces the reason for the victim in faking his death, and in doing so, unmasks the true culprit.
Notable moments of the story include Inspector Cramer barging in and interrupting Wolfe’s breakfast, a faux pas the detective does not forgive, Archie making remarks about a half-dozen women at the fashion show he attends who could turn his head including their client, and the detective’s bit of last-minute chicanery in his study to force a confession when no true evidence was available. It’s a risky gamble, but, when he chooses to gamble, Wolfe rarely loses.