It’s the late 1930s and the normally agoraphobic Wolfe has ventured out of his beloved New York City brownstone to upstate New York, where a feud with a fellow amateur orchid grower has provoked him to exhibit his prized albino hybrids at a county agricultural exhibition. He’s not looking for work, but when the scion of the local gentry is found dead in the pasture where a grand champion bull is penned, Wolfe finds himself trading his sleuthing skills for the opportunity to avoid an uncomfortable, dirty hotel room. Or, as Archie puts it, “this case you’ve dragged us into through your absolute frenzy to find an adequate chair to sit on.”
Some Buried Caesar (1939) is one of the earliest Wolfe novels but already all the essential elements are in place: Wolfe’s reluctance to leave home, his extreme dislike of riding in a car (see the quote below), the rat-a-tat-tat banter between him and Archie, his ability to solve mysteries well before anyone else, his reluctance to share the solution unless there’s something in it for him. Caesar is also notable for being the book in which Archie first meets Lily Rowan, the ultra-rich New York socialite who becomes his steady companion and partner in witty banter throughout the series.
The setting outside of New York City and the brownstone means Caesar can’t truly be considered an archetype of the series, but in every other element it is a more than worthy entry in the canon of Wolfe and Archie.
I presume you know, since I’ve told you, that my distrust and hatred of vehicles in motion is partly based on my plerophory that their apparent submission to control is illusory and that they may act at their pleasure, and sooner or later will, act on whim. Very well, this one has, and we are intact. Thank God the whim was not a deadlier one.”
— Nero Wolfe
I’m always drawn to Heather Gudenkauf’s novels, including This Is How I Lied (2020), because they have interesting premises and they are set in my part of Iowa, in towns that are somewhat disguised but recognizable to me. And I always come away disappointed with vaguely drawn characters, some ridiculous plot points, and a general sloppiness that I’m more inclined to blame on her editor than on her, to be honest. Whenever an author writes in one paragraph that her character had reached through a picket fence and undone the latch to enter a backyard, then inexplicably two paragraphs later writes the character as looking into the backyard through the fence from the outside, an editor has not earned their wings. And the first-person narration shifts from present to past tense within the same sentence, then back again. Pick a lane, people!
Oh, but that wouldn’t be much of a book, would it — let alone a mystery. And so our two young people meet again, this time at a very creepy old country house (honestly, is there any other kind in England?) that is rumored to house The Benevent Treasure (1954), brought to England when its aristocratic Italian owner fled Italy centuries ago. Candida is the black sheep of the Benevent family, through no fault of her own — her mother married a man the family did not approve of and cut all ties. Now all the Benevents are dead, except for two strange old sisters, Olivia and Cara, two strange old women who are the sisters of Candida’s long-dead grandmother. They reach out to young Candida to effect a reunion and she goes to visit, although she’s not sure what they want with her.
The client is a young woman whose mother died a few months ago in a hit-and-run car accident. After her mother’s death, Amy Denovo finds a box full of cash and a note from her mom that says, “This is from your father.” But she has no idea who her father is, and she suspects her mother was using an assumed name all these years so how can even the great Nero Wolfe and his trusty legman Archie Goodwin trace her into the past? Complicating matters, at least for Archie, is that Amy works as an editorial assistant for his paramour, Lily Rowan, but Amy insists that he not tell Lily that he and Wolfe are working for her, leading to some semi-comical misunderstanding about why Amy suddenly starts calling him Archie instead of Mr. Goodwin. It all gets sorted in the end, of course, and in a satisfactory fashion. Not many 1960s-era Wolfe novels favorites of mine, as Stout seemed determined to make up for decades of writing in a more prudish atmosphere when crafting plots that involve sex and other tawdry topics. Still, an afternoon spent with Archie Goodwin is never wasted.
In the course of retracing the man’s footsteps, Rutledge is forced to break the news to his wife, on whom this new load of grief weighs heavily atop the still-fresh loss of her young daughter. Could the two crimes be related? And where does the dead man’s possibly mentally unstable sister come into the picture? The Inspector travels hither and yon where northwest England and northeast Wales meet. All the while, he’s got the voice of long-dead Hamish providing a running commentary in his head, as he has ever since the wretched day during the war when the Scotsman died while serving under Rutledge in the Army. Rutledge knows Hamish isn’t really there, but it doesn’t make the ghostly voice any easier to bear …
For Irene, who narrates the story, her childhood friend Clare’s choice to pretend to be white raises complicated feelings within her. On the one hand, she herself has been known to occasionally present as white in situations where she would not be welcome as a black woman — certain restaurants or businesses, for example. On the other hand, she is proud to be black, and having married a black doctor and living a comfortable life in the Harlem Renaissance community in New York City, spends much of her time working to raise money to help disadvantaged fellow black Americans. She can’t help viewing Clare’s passing as a repudiation of the pride ‘Rene feels about being black.
Fast-forward to the 1930s. Paul, now a young adult, is still captivated by his father’s music box. He’s also captivated by Clara, a doctor’s daughter who longs to be teacher, an occupation closed to those of her religion. So she determines to convert to Christianity in order to fulfill her dreams. Paul does the same in order to be with the love of his life, and for a while all is well. Of course, we know that things don’t stay that way. As life in Germany gets increasingly more difficult and dangerous for Jews, the Blumenthals looks for ways to protect themselves from the coming storm. Each of them — Lotte, Uncle Max, Aunt Martha, and Paul and Clara — seek different paths to safety.
