- Title: The Rubber Band
- wiki: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to a New York City brownstone. In only the third of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, author Rex Stout is in top form. It’s a complicated case Nero Wolfe accepts in The Rubber Band. First, it involves a female client (notably not his preference). Second, it’s not one situation for which she needs Wolfe’s help, it’s several. One involves a debt owed to Clara Fox and others by the Marquis of Clivers which she hopes Wolfe to be able to help successfully obtain. The second involves a theft of a large sum of money where all evidence points to her as the thief (including the money later being discovered in her car). And the third involves a pair of murders of the people Clara represents owed an equal share of the Marquis’ debt.
The mysteries Wolfe wades through, and keeping Clara Fox away from the police, necessitates hiding her in the brownstone for days (even during a search by the uncouth Lieutenant Rowcliff – making his first appearance in the series – who leaves emptyhanded other than the animosity incurred and never forgiven).
We get plenty of fun back-and-forth between Wolfe and Archie Goodwin including Archie’s take on Wolfe’s latest attempts at exercise (by playing darts within the office). The subject is later brought back in the mystery’s epilogue where Wolfe challenges Archie to a game of “javelins.”
Eventually Wolfe is able to peel his way through the mysteries, identifying the identity, motive, and method of murder (which also ties into the novel’s title), the reason for the theft to frame Clara Fox and how it plays into both of the murders, and provide some numeration to the debt owed by the British nobleman (who Wolfe also clears of murder). However, our villain isn’t brought to justice. Instead his attempt to kill Wolfe in the office leads to his own demise becoming the first, but not last, person to die within the brownstone.