Gambit by Rex Stout

Gambit by Rex Stout

Once again, Rex Stout has created an intriguing murder mystery where the murderer was so clever that there is literally no evidence for Nero Wolfe to discover that will expose the villain. And yet, that’s when Nero Wolfe is at his best. The crime occurs at a chess club and at the start of the story, the man Wolfe is hired to clear is already in jail—and not cooperating with Wolfe. But there is that chess tournament which gets Wolfe thinking along the line of chess strategies, leading both to his first important insight into the case and the title of the novel.

 

A ‘gambit’ is a chess strategy in which a pawn is sacrificed in order to get a more powerful piece, and Wolfe makes the deductive leap that it was not the dead man who was the intended victim, but the man accused of the crime. From then on, it’s a matter of looking for the proper suspect. I did not guess right, but neither did I go after the obvious red herring. As I think back on it now, I think I should have figured this one out. The clues were there, but I just didn’t do it.

 

This is a very fast read and a very interesting mystery.