Black Orchids by Rex Stout

Black Orchids by Rex Stout

I like the shorter Nero Wolfe mysteries even more than I do the full-length novels. They’re obviously more compact and that makes me feel like I can digest them more quickly and that deludes me into thinking I have a better chance to figure out who committed the crime—not that I came anywhere close to doing that in either of the two mysteries in this volume.

 

The heart of the first story is the black orchid of the title—someone has bred a perfectly black orchid and Nero Wolfe wants it. He is so obsessed that he actually leaves his home to go to the flower show and try to wrangle the flower from the owner. So Wolfe is on the scene when the murder happens and he is finally motivated to solve the crime when he figures out that his payment can be the orchids he so desires.

 

In the second, a woman is being libeled to the harm of her business and she wants Wolfe to put an end to it. Once again, Stout comes up with a great plot that would have been interesting even without the murder that always occurs somewhere in a Wolfe case. The clues were all there, but I didn’t come anywhere close to solving this one either—not that that dampened my enjoyment. It’s watching Wolfe work that makes this series so special.