Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.) Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best

What could make Nero Wolfe so determined to solve a crime that he would be willing to work entirely without fee or client? What would it take to put him, for the first time, at a loss for words? What would make him so angry about a case that he would refuse to speak to the police, even if he has to spend fifty-one hours in jail as a result? Never before in the Nero Wolfe books has Rex Stout shown us the extremes to which the greatest detective in the world can be pushed, but never before has a bomb blown up in the old brownstone on West 35th Street, murdering someone right under Wolfe's nose. When in October 1974 Pierre Ducos, one of Wolfe's favorite waiters at Rusterman's, Wolfe's favorite restaurant, dies just down the hall from Archie's bedroom, Wolfe is understandably eager to find the perpetrator, but when that murder somehow becomes connected with tape recorders, Washington lawyers, and maybe even a conspiracy to obstruct justice, his fury becomes so intense that even Archie is puzzled. Not only is this a great chapter in the Nero Wolfe legend; A Family Affair is a splendid mystery novel that should capture many new fans and will delight (and amaze) the longstanding admirers of Wolfe and Archie

Twenty-five years ago, in one of Rex Stout’s most famous mystery novels, Too Many Cooks, Nero Wolfe was aided in the solution of a murder by a twenty- year-old Negro. Now, in A Right to Die, Stout’s latest full-length novel, this same Negro is a man of forty-five and a professor of anthropology. He comes to Nero and to Archie Goodwin with a pressing problem concerning his son and a young, beautiful, and wealthy white girl. Both the son and the girl are active in a civil-rights group. Their entanglements with each other and with the group lead to two murders, and Nero and Archie, in their search for the murderer, become fascinatingly involved in America’s most immediate domestic problem. They unearth a murder motive unique in mystery fiction, and encounter some of the most interesting people ever invented by the master of the modern mystery, Rex Stout

In Blood Will Tell: In which Archie mysteriously receives a tie in the mail and Nero finally receives a fee for solving the murder of the too curious Greenwich Village wife

The only man who has ever given Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin any real trouble is Rex Stout himself. In this, his latest full-length novel, Stout sets before his famous detecting pair a seemingly insoluble problem. Orrie Cather, one of Nero Wolfe’s occasional employees, is in jail, suspected of murdering a lovely young thing. The lovely young thing has been the well-kept possession of a certain wealthy and influential man who has reasons for not wishing his name dragged into the case. The wealthy man offers to share his wealth with Nero — providing Nero will keep his name from ever being connected with the murder. Nero, at the same time, must get Orrie out of jail. He could easily do this by using his client’s name. It seems impossible to do it otherwise. Problem: How does Nero get Orrie out of jail? How does he keep his client’s name out of the press? And how does he find the true murderer? He does it with the avid and skilled assistance of one Julie Jacquette, a swinging songstress from the Ten Little Indians. That, at least, is partly how he does it

So you think you know Nero Wolfe, do you. So you’re reasonably sure that only the most dire emergency will induce Nero to heave his home on West Thirty-fifth Street, and that no case since his early days could make him budge from Manhattan Island or miss a meal cooked by his own precious Fritz? Well, brace yourself! In this latest full-length Nero Wolfe adventure, Nero not only leaves house, cook, and orchid planes, but also flies nearly cross-continent to Montana to join Archie Goodwin on a lavish but very private dude ranch. Here he settles down to solve murder by rifle shot, resigned to the necessity of performing such unWolfean activities as tramping through underbrush, wading in an icy trout stream, eating canned soup, and attending a rowdy Saturday night hoedown in a cattle town. He also has to deal with a young unmarried mother, some uncooperative cowhands, a highly belligerent sheriff, an off-Broadway actress, and any number of chairs which don’t begin to fit his bulk. Yet, throughout, he remains the same inimitable Nero Wolfe. How does Rex Stout know enough about the Far West to write this novel? Every summer, for a large part of his life, he spent his time riding pack trains, fishing mile-high streams, and enjoying night after night around campfires, yarning with genuine cowpunchers. So there isn’t a misplaced piece of harness or an unauthentic Western Vista in this, one of the funniest, most engaging, and most out-of-doors of all Nero Wolfe adventures

THREE RECENTLY DISCOVERED NERO WOLFE CLASSICS Now, with the aid of the Stout estate and Stout’s official biographer, John McAleer, Bantam Books is proud to publish for the first time in book form this newly discovered collection of three Nero Wolfe novellas. ASSAULT ON A BROWNSTONE, the never-before-published version of a novella featuring Wolfe in his most shocking confrontation with the law when his Thirty-fifth Street brownstone is invaded by Treasury officials. FRAME-UP FOR MURDER, concerning a famous fashion designer and a neatly stitched plot that weaves a deadly pattern of death. And BITTER END, a suspenseful story containing one of the nastiest incidents ever to occur at Wolfe’s dinner table

In Rex Stout’s latest full-length mystery, the victim is a mental freak — a man capable of successfully playing a dozen simultaneous chess games against first-rate players while he himself is out of sight of any of the boards. It is while thus engaged that he is killed. A millionaire — his opponent in more realms than chess — is accused, and Nero Wolfe is given what appears to be the most hopeless case he and Archie Goodwin have ever tackled. You need know nothing about chess to follow this tale, but some understanding of beautiful mothers and daughters will help. We believe that Gambit will surely be counted among the two or three finest full-length mysteries produced by Rex Stout, and, hence, one of the great works in the whole genre

A crime story about counterfeiting with no continuing characters, set in New York City. Serialized in The All-Story, August — December 1913

Step by step, all of the threads of Bill Sidney’s life lead inexorably to his bewildering rendezvous with strange doom — as he is drawn, helplessly, toward the murder of the one woman he can never get out of his blood!

In both And Be a Villain and The Second Confession, Nero Wolfe had sharp but long-distance encounters with a certain powerful mystery man of crime named Zeck. That Zeck was a blackmailer was obvious. That he was perhaps the most potent and utterly ruthless of all underworld characters seemed more than possible. These episodes hinted that in some future book Zeck would play a leading role — and now he does, in this new full-length novel. It all begins when a woman whose homeliness is exceeded only by her wealth brings to Nero the problem of discovering where her handsome husband has been getting the money she refused him. Next, Nero answers his phone and Zeck, on the other end, says, “Lay off this case.” Nero once told Archie that it he ever had to come to grips with Zeck, he would disappear first so as not to endanger Archie, his orchid plants, or his house in lower Manhattan, and Nero is a man of his word. Where Nero went, what happened in his absence, how he came back, and the manner of his coming are as fine a combination of outright drama and downright hilarity as was ever put together in a novel of crime. One of the corollary mysteries of this book is: how the devil is even Rex Stout ever going to top it?

Kill Now, Pay Later: In which Nero Wolfe vindicates his favorite bootblack — for no fee — and Archie Goodwin protects the bootblack’s daughter

Murder Is Corny: In which the farmer’s daughter involves Archie Goodwin in a murder charge and Nero finds himself again at work for no fee

XMAS MARKS THE PLOT Twelve Christmas mysteries — gift wrapped in entertainment and suspense — ready to take home for the holidays in this delightful collection selected from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, British detective extraordinaire, solves a country killing in which delivering a Christmas card was simply murder. Rex Stout sends a crotchety patrolman out to investigate a yuletide jewel theft on Manhattan’s mean streets. John D. MacDonald leaves us a secretary’s corpse on Christmas Street along with a cop’s clever ruse to catch her killer. And Santa Claus himself hitches up a sleighload of chills in stories by George Baxt, Malcolm McClintick, James Powell, and many more... for it’s ho, ho, homicide in the season to guess whodunit. MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS

A new Nero Wolfe mystery at last — after a gap of four years — and it will be a delight to all Stout fans. The story is set in the summer of 1969, during that memorable period when the Mets were battling for the pennant and bomb scares abounded in Fun City. The mystery involves the explosion of a bomb in the office of a potential candidate for the presidency of a large corporation; the bomb kills another man, however, and no one can figure out whether the actual victim was the intended victim or not, and of course no one knows who set the bomb in the first place. The unraveling of the mystery, during which Archie encounters his first Women’s Liberationist, is full of suspense, humor, orchids, etymology, and good food in the best Stout tradition

Have yourself a crooked little Christmas with The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories — many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for — suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural — can be found in these pages. FEATURING: — Unscrupulous Santas — Crimes of Christmases Past and Present — Festive felonies — Deadly puddings — Misdemeanors under the mistletoe — Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe

This is, in the considered opinion of his publishers, the finest detective story ever written by Rex Stout and therefore one of the very best ever written by anyone. As a new peak for the old master, it provides an occasion to celebrate an outstanding career, as well as a new challenge to the wits of his fans. A very rich woman comes to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, claiming that she is being harassed by the FBI. She reports that agents are following her and members of her family, her wires are being tapped, and her privacy is being otherwise invaded. She demands that Wolfe help her to find relief and offers him the largest retainer he has ever seen. Wolfe, with some hesitation, takes the case and quickly encounters a murder about which members of the FBI may know more than is apparent. He also soon finds himself in a direct encounter with FBI agents under highly questionable circumstances. Never before has Rex Stout written a book more perfectly plotted or one with a denouement so skillfully arrived at

She was twenty-two years old, a Smith graduate, charming, intelligent, appealing. When she buttonholed Archie Goodwin, she had a very simple request. She hadn’t the faintest idea who her father was, had never seen him or heard of him, and wanted In learn who and where he was. She also, it turned out, had something in excess of a quarter of a million dollars mysteriously received from that father, but she didn’t really consider that part of the mystery at all. Archie, of course, took the problem to Nero and Nero took the problem on after he discovered that the girl’s mother had apparently been murdered and that the possible antecedents of the girl stretched back toward certain men of great power and influence, and into realms as diverse as international banking, national television, and public relations. To solve it, Nero and Archie have to be at the top of their form, and they are. This is the first new Nero Wolfe novel in nearly two years — an unusual interval for the productive Rex Stout, who celebrated his eightieth birthday in December 1966

Chances are you are already a Nero Wolfe fan before you hold this new volume in your hands. We need not repeat to connoisseurs of the civilized — although not unbloody — chronicles of crime that the sedentary orchid-fancier and his leg-man Archie are the veritable Beluga in the field of mayhem and murder stories. For many years the redoubtable twosome has been involved with dark deeds of many kinds, but in The Final Deduction they for the first time tangle with the deepest-hued of all — kidnaping combined with the murder which so often accompanies it. The problem — and the fee — are worthy of Nero’s genius and Archie’s footwork. The facts are not concealed, and we invite you to see if you can arrive at “the final deduction” by the time it is revealed on the last pages of this top-drawer exercise in entertainment and detection

When Colonel Phillips begins his final game of golf, his greatest problem in life is that he has begun to slice the ball. Playing with his lawyer and nephews, Phillips fights his way back into the game and is on the verge of victory when he keels over. He clutches his chest, mumbles a few words, and is dead in minutes. The doctor has no doubt: The colonel was poisoned. Finding the culprit falls to the president of the golf club, amateur detective Canby Rankin, who will do whatever it takes to find the killer on the links. Written nearly a century ago, “The Last Drive” is now available for the first time in book form. Clever, charming, and absolutely baffling, it is the tale that inspired the first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, and along with the other stories in this volume represents the early efforts of a modern genius

What is it about Nero Wolfe, the food-loving and orchid-fancying misogynist, that draws the most attractive, wealthy, and desperate females to his office? Could it possibly be his leg-man, Archie Goodwin? Archie, at least, is in for another reward in this latest of Nero’s cases, and readers who have followed Archie’s hairbreadth escapes from entrapment in the past will be left wondering at the end of this one. But not about who is guilty of the murders that follow Lucy Valdon’s first visit to West 35th Street. It’s a matter of maternity that brings her, and the trail that is blazed by a few handmade horsehair buttons has the rare effect of leading Nero out of his habitat and forcing him to set up shop outside. There, after grueling hardships, he accomplishes his purpose with his usual aplomb and to the entire satisfaction of the reader

There has been no new full-length Nero Wolfe mystery novel in six years, a wartime shortage which we are delighted to remedy. The brilliant deductive methods of the fabulous fat man, beloved by so many thousands of readers, are put to another stiff test. It is a pleasure to report that Archie is back from the wars as Wolfe’s leg man (Nero himself has been a consultant for the War Department). A murder has been committed, so daring and with such vital national implications that the whole country is shaken. The newspapers are having a field day; the corridors in Washington are buzzing with gossip. The murder took place at the Waldorf, just before the annual dinner of the National Industrial Association, as the guests sipped cocktails in the adjoining room. The murdered man was none other than Cheney Boone, the Director of the Bureau of Price Regulation, who was scheduled to be the principal speaker before this group of the country’s leading business men. industrialists, and manufacturers. Why has he been silenced — and by whom? Again Rex Stout proves that he is still the old maestro in the field of the murder story lightened with wit and written with intelligence and skill. The Viking Press, which has not published a mystery for years, is proud to re-enter the field with this odds-on favorite

Ниро Вулф, страстный коллекционер орхидей, большой гурман, любитель пива и великий сыщик, практически никогда не выходит из дому. Все преступления он распутывает на основе тех фактов, которые собирает Арчи Гудвин, его обаятельный, ироничный помощник с отличной памятью. В книгу вошли три повести, в которых Вулф принимается за расследование, чтобы доказать невиновность чистильщика обуви, снять обвинения с Арчи, которого подставила его знакомая, а заодно в очередной раз сказать полиции, что она идет по неверному следу

Ниро Вулф, страстный коллекционер орхидей, большой гурман, любитель пива и великий сыщик, практически никогда не выходит из дому. Все преступления он распутывает на основе тех фактов, которые собирает Арчи Гудвин, его обаятельный, ироничный помощник с отличной памятью. В книгу вошли три повести, в которых Вулф принимается за расследование, чтобы доказать невиновность чистильщика обуви, снять обвинения с Арчи, которого подставила его знакомая, а заодно в очередной раз сказать полиции, что она идет по неверному следу

Ниро Вулф, страстный коллекционер орхидей, большой гурман, любитель пива и великий сыщик, практически никогда не выходит из дому. Все преступления он распутывает на основе тех фактов, которые собирает Арчи Гудвин, его обаятельный, ироничный помощник с отличной памятью. В книгу вошли три повести, в которых Вулф принимается за расследование, чтобы доказать невиновность чистильщика обуви, снять обвинения с Арчи, которого подставила его знакомая, а заодно в очередной раз сказать полиции, что она идет по неверному следу

Серия «Все звезды» открывается романами Рекса Стаута. Книги Рекса Стаута удачно сочетают в себе английские детективные традиции и присущий американскому детективу динамизм. Главные герои его романов — эксцентричный Ниро Вульф и его помощник, ироничный, задиристый Арчи Гудвин — во всем дополняют друг друга. Аналитический ум Вульфа в сочетании с энергией и умением принимать самостоятельные решения Гудвина позволяют им в конце концов достичь цели

Ниро Вулф, страстный коллекционер орхидей, большой гурман, любитель пива и великий сыщик, практически никогда не выходит из дому. Все преступления он распутывает на основе тех фактов, которые собирает Арчи Гудвин, его обаятельный, ироничный помощник с отличной памятью. На ежегодный благотворительный прием у миллионерши приглашены несколько девушек, родивших детей вне брака, и такое же количество молодых людей, и среди них Арчи Гудвин. В перерыве между танцами одна из девушек, выпив шампанского, умирает. При этом многие знают, что она постоянно носит с собой пузырек с ядом. Полиция и все гости считают это самоубийством, и только Гудвин настаивает на том, что девушку убили. Вулф берется за дело, чтобы доказать правоту Арчи…

«Великая легенда» — исторический роман о Троянской войне, написанный со свойственным создателю Ниро Вулфа остроумием

Рекс Стаут (1886—1975) — американский писатель и публицист, родом из квакерской семьи. В возрасте 18 лет ушел во флот и уже тогда начал писать психологические романы, подражая У. Фолкнеру и Ф. С. Фицджеральду. Самым замечательным событием своей юности считал службу на яхте президента США Т. Рузвельта. Позже он работал в гостиничном бизнесе и прошел путь от простого служащего до управляющего отелем. Стаут занимался также общественной деятельностью: одно время он возглавлял Американский клуб детектива. Мировую известность принесли ему 46 детективных романов, в которых главными героями выступает традиционная пара — частные сыщики Ниро Вульф и Арчи Гудвин, подобно Шерлоку Холмсу и доктору Ватсону, Эркюлю Пуаро и капитану Гастингсу. Обожающий орхидеи и изысканную кухню, Ниро Вульф и его остроумный, находчивый и бесстрашный ассистент Арчи Гудвин решают поставленные перед ними головоломки с помощью блестящего аналитического ума, знания жизни, а также огромной трудоспособности и порядочности, никогда или почти никогда не прибегая к физическому насилию. В рассказе «Визит Санта Клауса» расследование ведет участковый инспектор Арт Хиппль

В настоящий сборник вошли три романа ("Сочиняйте сами", "Последнее средство", "Окончательное решение") и две повести ("Вместо улики", "Всех, кроме пса в полицию"), в которых английский писатель Рекс Стаут в качестве главного героя выводит частного детектива Ниро Вульфа и его помощника Арчи Гудвина, от имени которого ведется повествование