Over My Dead Body by Rex Stout

 

(pb;1940: seventh book in the forty-six book Nero Wolfe series)

 

From the Amazon site description

 

“Over My Dead Body. . . first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine. By the time it was published, the Wolfe/Goodwin books had become an established series but Wolfe's background had never been explored. Here Stout starts to do clarify Wolfe’s youth by bringing in in a number of characters, including some from Montenegro.

“Carla Lovchen and Neya Tormic, two young women from Montenegro, come to Wolfe's office asking for help. Miss Tormic has been accused of a theft of diamonds from the locker room where she works. She claims the accusation to be false and cannot afford to pay Wolfe’s fee, but she has a document that shows Wolfe adopted her when she was an infant. Although he has never seen her since, Wolfe agrees to undertake the investigation. As Archie is dispatched to investigate, murder is discovered. In the end Wolfe gets the main characters together in his office and, in the manner typical of the series, he will expose the murderer and the motive.”

 

Review

As mentioned in the above description, Over expands on what has been previously revealed about the titular character’s past. Not only that, there’s a strong pre-WWII outbreak/political intrigue aspect which darkly underscores certain character motivations, murders and elements present within Over’s series-continuing storyline. Its middle section, as is Stout’s wont, is a bit chatty, but it—like much of Over—is mostly entertaining, often humorous, erudite (Wolfe) and sarcastic (Goodwin), or (in a word) worthwhile. Another great entry in the Wolfe series, it’s followed by Where There’s a Will.