Before Midnight

Been looking for this book for awhile. Good price, good description on the condition of book and timely shipping.

I haven't found a Nero Wolfe mystery that I didn't love. You are totally lost in the story unfolding...

I've wondered whether Michael Pritchard and Rex Stout ever met. He interprets Stout's work with such insight and feeling. In this book, Stout confronts another of the 1950s institutions: the advertising business and the "big contest" approach to promoting products. An advertising firm runs a million-dollar contest to promote perfume. The finalists have been asked to determine which perfume-using historical figure is depicted in some rhymes. The writer of the rhymes teases the finalists by flashing the answers, and is later found dead. It's historically interesting to note that, strictly speaking, Stout anticipated the quiz show scandals a few years after this story's time (1955). To learn more about this, get the wonderful DVD "Quiz Show," which deconstructs this era with great insight and empathy. But man, that Michael Pritchard. I have some Nero Wolfes read by others, but Pritchard got it right for sure.

If you're interested in an audio edition, the unabridged recording narrated by Michael Pritchard is good. I look forward to the day A & E adapts it for the TV series.The advertising firm Lippert, Buff, and Assa (LBA) lost the creativity that made them successful when Lippert died some years ago. Their best hope was a rising young star, Louis Dahlmann, who named a new perfume for Heery Products, Inc., one of their best clients: Pour Amour. He also came up "the biggest prize contest in history": each week for 20 weeks, a new 4-line verse appeared in newspapers and magazines, describing a woman in history known to have used cosmetics. He also wrote the verses to break the first tie (72 people) and now the 2nd and last tie (5 people, who were brought to New York to receive the verses from Dahlmann personally). Unfortunately, along with his creativity, Dahlmann had a wild streak; after handing out the verses, he brandished a paper from his wallet, saying it had the answers, and he mustn't accidentally give it to anyone. Within twelve hours, he was found shot dead in his apartment, the wallet and paper both gone.The next morning, the members of the firm arrive at Wolfe's office, and they don't care who killed Dahlmann. They want Wolfe to extract them from the wreckage this will make of the contest, by finding out what happened to the paper before midnight, April 20th (the last contestant's deadline), so they can scrap the existing questions and come up with new ones.But of course, as Inspector Cramer points out soon afterward, it'll be difficult to catch the thief without exposing the murderer.The idea of woman-hating Wolfe getting involved with a perfume contest is in itself worth reading. (Some of the verses are given, and the later ones are nice puzzles.) The five contestants are well-drawn characters, all quite different, some likeable, some not. The members of the firm verge on hysterical, calling Wolfe for progress reports at all hours of the day and issuing conflicting orders. And of course, the mystery: Dahlmann, a womanizer, possibly a threat to some or all of the senior partners, and (last but not least) the verses (if that's what was on the paper). All leading up to the climactic confrontation in Wolfe's office with all the suspects - which doesn't come off quite as usual.

Berfore Midnight is classic Rex Stout. Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe are called in by the operators of a national contest when the contestants use murder to achieve a winning edge. Stout at his best: Archie is witty and urbane and Wolfe his usual self. Highly recommend to fans of Rex Stout. Tightly written with a good mystery.