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Before Midnight
(Nero Wolfe #25)
by
Cheaters never prosper, but Nero Wolfe encounters one who kills trying. At the Pour Amour perfume riddle contest, a million dollars goes to the contestant who can answer five questions. Someone doesn't like the heat of competition, so he murders the contest founder and steals the answers to the riddles. Now Wolfe has to sniff down a trail of clues that leads disturbingly c
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Paperback, 224 pages
Published
November 1st 1995
by Bantam
(first published October 27th 1955)
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Start your review of Before Midnight (Nero Wolfe #25)
A five hundred thousand dollar prize is being offered by "Pour Amor" perfume. All the reader has to do is find the five cosmetic-using women described in a series of five quatrains. But then the author of the five quatrains ends up dead, and a paper containing the solution is missing. Nero Wolfe is hired--not to solve the murder--but to find out what happened to the paper. And for once, he and Cramer can work together amicably.
A particularly good entry in this continuing series. ...more
A perfume company held a contest through its advertising agency with the main prize being half a million dollars - we are talking about mid-fifties when this was a serious chunk of cash. The number of contestants was reduced to five people who had to solve five riddles created by a young promising employee by the advertising agency who also had a copy of the answers. The latter was killed and the answers were missing from his body. Nero Wolfe is hired by the agency to find out who took the answe
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The twenty-fifth book in the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. This story takes place in 1955. An advertising agency has come up with a clever contest for Pour Amour perfume. A million dollar prize for the winner. A series of riddles about woman and cosmetics. The entrants have been whittled down to five finalists and have all been invited to New York. Then the clever ad man who came up with the idea and created the riddles winds up dead. His wallet, which contained the answers to the final riddle
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As usual, it's not the mystery that is so compelling as it is the witty banter between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin and, even funnier, are Goodwin's sarcastic thoughts read by us.
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I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it. It may be that a bevy of beautiful maidens in pure silk yellow very sheer gowns, barefooted, singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morning and scattering rose petals over me would do the trick, but I
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I think I may mourn when I'm done with this series. He just doesn't miss.
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A pretty good Nero Wolfe mystery. It’s the mid 50s, so they watch television. Bizarre.
When an arrogant marketing man is found murdered in his apartment and his wallet stolen, five colourful contestants for a half million dollar competition prize are the obvious suspects. The dead man wrote the questions, his wallet contained the answers, a fact which he had foolishly made them aware of.
Wolfe is hired by the three senior members of the marketing firm to find out who stole the answers and to solve their publicity problem but not, as he constantly points out to Crammer and the cops ...more
Wolfe is hired by the three senior members of the marketing firm to find out who stole the answers and to solve their publicity problem but not, as he constantly points out to Crammer and the cops ...more
Maybe it's because the listening to this audio book was so interrupted; it seemed like every time I'd get into the story someone would just have to talk to me, or the phone would ring. However, the case just didn't engage me. That's not so bad; Wolfe didn't care for it, either. Why he took it is beyond me, even with Archie's badgering. Who cares about a silly perfume contest, anyway? In my experience, these publicity stunts are often fixed from the get-go, in any case. But I digress, as I have b
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Oct 01, 2011
Maureen
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Recommended to Maureen by:
patty gates
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2011
my third series detective novel review of the night: this one, a nero wolfe mystery. wolfe is a fat gourmande who loves orchids and has his detecting legwork done by his assistant, archie goodwin, who also narrates the novel's action, and in some ways, wolfe and goodwin form two halves of one perfect detective. things i liked about this novel: how saucy archie was in his narration, the loyalty and the test of loyalty between wolfe and goodwin echoed in the plot, the plan for a big reveal at a di
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A perfume company is running a contest and the five finalists have been flown to New York for the final puzzles. But the person in charge of the questions and answers has been murdered and the list of answers he had is missing. Wolfe is hired, not to solve the murder, but to find out who took the answer sheet. Of course, he does solve the murder, but not until someone dies in his study, during an all-suspect meeting. I like the conversation Wolfe has with one of the contestants, a professor - ve
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Standard Stout crime drama, but perhaps a little less charming and more convoluted than most. Abandoning a promising set of characters at the half-way point was a shame, and replacing them with cookie-cutter corporate was very odd. Still, pleasant easy reading.
Last year I started filling in the gaps on some of my favorite authors, including Rex Stout, and bought a dozen or so to read in addition to the 40+ I read years ago. It's amazing and a tribute to Stout how entertaining the Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin stories remain several decades later.
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One of my favorite aspects of this series is the time period. I’ve always been a history enthusiast, not necessarily for dates and places, but for what every day life was like. This Wolfe/Archie adventure has Mad Men vibes; a Madison Avenue ad agency is running a massive contest for a perfume company. A series of riddles has been published, once weekly, each riddle is about “a woman recorded in nonfictional history in any of its forms, including biography, as having used cosmetics.” The first pr
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This is really a humdinger of a story. Unusually for Wolfe, it doesn't start with a murder investigation. Rather, it starts with the possible theft of the answers to a group of puzzles worth a possible half million dollars to a prize winner. Wolfe is left to figure out who may have stolen the answers and prevent the theft of the prize money. It's an odd setup, but quickly becomes quite serious. Archie has everything he can handle just trying to help keep Wolfe's schedule the way he likes it and
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This is my 2nd Nero Wolf book, and I am choosing in no particular order. I'd give this one 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars for the witty, clever writing. There is a lot of talking by the characters in this one, and it is fairly static. But Archie Goodwin remains a very entertaining, acerbic narrator, and I will keep reading this series. How did I miss it?
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COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK 249 (of 250)
"No Good" and "Lousy" are scribbled on the title page of this book I checked out of the library. I usually look at that as destruction of someone else's property. And all through the book there are notes like "This makes no sense" and "Nope, doesn't work" and "Nonsense" and even more graphic terms. I really wish I'd heeded that first page warning.
HOOK - 1 star: >>>"Not that our small talk that Tuesday evening in April had any imp ...more
BOOK 249 (of 250)
"No Good" and "Lousy" are scribbled on the title page of this book I checked out of the library. I usually look at that as destruction of someone else's property. And all through the book there are notes like "This makes no sense" and "Nope, doesn't work" and "Nonsense" and even more graphic terms. I really wish I'd heeded that first page warning.
HOOK - 1 star: >>>"Not that our small talk that Tuesday evening in April had any imp ...more
Everyone's talking about the Pour Amour perfume contest . . . and the million dollars in prize money that will be awarded to the lucky winners who can solve the cosmetics-related riddles put out by the company. The contest has been a roaring success. The five finalists are assembled in New York City, and the last five riddles have been distributed. Everything's going swimmingly . . . until the contest creator winds up dead, and the list of answers he had in his pocket is nowhere to be found. So
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This Nero Wolfe adventure is a mixed bag: the initial idea of Wolfe getting embroiled in a perfume contest is great, especially as there is a murder but he has to convince Cramer and others he is not interested in the murder aspect of the case (truly) - then, though, the story really screeches to a halt toward the middle during the "interviewing suspects" phase. Don't get me wrong, it's filled with quirky characters, but I suspect the dearth of Cramer time drags it down a bit, as clever as the e
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Of course it another "A" from me from my favorite mystery author and his inimitable creations Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. In this tale, a perfume company is offering a million dollar prize contest in which the contestants have to guess the identity of famous/infamous women described in verse. The questions get harder as the contest proceeds and there are now five individuals left in the competition. New questions will be given to them with a deadline to submit their answers. The creator of th
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Rex Stout's "Before Midnight" (first published in 1955) is the 25th book in his "Nero Wolfe" series. It's another excellent one: great writing and characterizations, and an interesting mystery. As an interesting aside, it struck me once again during this book how good Rex Stout's writing is. Every person has his own personality, and every event is wonderfully described. Heck, every sentence is wonderfully crafted. So, I'm happy to rate the book at an Excellent 5 stars out of 5.
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This is my 5th reading over many years of Rex Stout. I especially enjoy when Saul Panzer, Orie Cather, Fred Durkin arrive to resolve difficulties. Bill Gore didn't last. Thanks to my wife for hooking me up to Nero Wolfe some forty years ago.
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Probably my least fav. Nero Wolf book of all, so far. Indistinguishable & uninteresting characters, and such a complicated plot, i still don't really get how or why the crimes were committed.
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I'm still confused. Wolf lied to Archie but didn't and he told everyone that he didn't do something, but he did. Yeah, he exposed a murderer at the end, but that wasn't his job. What a story!
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Another outstanding NW mystery. The riddles and literary allusions were an extra bit of fun!
As always with Nero Wolfe stories, a great read I couldn’t put down until the end.
I always enjoy an adventure with the bombastic genius detective Nero Wolfe and his smart-alecky confidential secretary/legman Archie Goodwin. A foreword by Robert Crais illustrating the relationship between the two made it all the more enjoyable.
In Rex Stout’s novel “Before Midnight,” Wolfe is hired by an ad agency to find out who stole a wallet containing the answers of a perfume contest worth a million dollar-prize from the dead contest creator, and find a way that the murder and theft doesn’t ...more
In Rex Stout’s novel “Before Midnight,” Wolfe is hired by an ad agency to find out who stole a wallet containing the answers of a perfume contest worth a million dollar-prize from the dead contest creator, and find a way that the murder and theft doesn’t ...more
Ad agency LBA is running a contest for their client, Heery Products, makers of cosmetics. Contestants solve questions identifying women in history. The questions are written by Louis Dahlmann. The contest is down to the final five contestants, when Dahlmann is found dead shortly after mentioning to the contestants that he keeps a copy of the answers in his wallet - which is now missing.
LBA (consisting of Vernon Assa, Patrick O'Garro, and Oliver Buff ) and their attorney Rudolph Hanson, hire Wolf ...more
LBA (consisting of Vernon Assa, Patrick O'Garro, and Oliver Buff ) and their attorney Rudolph Hanson, hire Wolf ...more
I don't really know what to say about this book. The mystery was well done and kept me engaged through most of it, because I wanted to know who the culprit was. This was my first Rex Stout novel, so it was interesting to meet Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, although they strongly reminded me of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson; the only difference was that Nero Wolfe apparently never moves far from home and does all his detecting in his head and home.
Despite all this, the book left me a bit unsat ...more
Despite all this, the book left me a bit unsat ...more
Perhaps it is an historical appreciation for the times in which this novel was penned one needs to fully embrace Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. This orchid loving, mercurial, aficionado of food was quite a flat character in this tale, and frequently he was on radio silence while thinking about how to solve the murder of the founder of a perfume contest. Narrated by his assistant Archie whose penchant for giving the young ladies exactly what they need (hello inspiration for #MeToo movement!) must have b
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Rex Todhunter Stout (1886 – 1975) was an American crime writer, best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius from 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) to 1975 (A Family Affair).
The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of t ...more
The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of t ...more
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