Short Story Wednesday: "Immune to Murder" by Rex Stout

 

Today I am continuing my reread of Rex Stout's novellas. The Nero Wolfe / Archie Goodwin series was published between 1934 and 1975. First I will give a brief overview of the series...

Nero Wolfe is an armchair detective, preferring to do all his detecting from home. He is a genius, a lover of orchids and fine food, who supports himself (and his household) as a private detective. Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, is both his assistant and a private investigator, and he does most of the legwork. They live in a New York brownstone and share the house with Theodore, a plant expert who cares for Wolfe's orchids, and Fritz, Wolfe's cook.

 

"Immune to Murder" is a 66-page novella, one of three stories in Three for the Chair, published in 1957.

When I reread one of these novella collections, I always read my favorite story first. "Immune to Murder" is a favorite because it takes Wolfe and Archie out of the brownstone to a remote rural setting, and it involves food, which is a common theme of the series.

Wolfe has been invited to cook for a visiting ambassador at a retreat set in the Adirondack Mountains. The visiting dignitary wanted to fish for American brook trout and he wanted it cooked straight from the brook by Nero Wolfe. 

On the morning following Wolfe and Archie's arrival at the lodge, the other guests go out to fish for bass for three hours. Archie has been given permission to go fishing along the same route they used, after they return, and he does this. (There is a lot of fishing lingo in this story.) Unfortunately, along the way he discovers the dead body of one of the guests. He goes back to report this to Wolfe first, then lets the rest of the group know. And of course, Wolfe ends up solving the crime, reluctantly.

"Immune to Murder" was first published in the November 1955 issue of The American Magazine.

It was also adapted for A&E’s Nero Wolfe Mystery TV series starring Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Theory & Practice to The Paris Diversion

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Theory & Practice  by Michelle de Kretser. This book won the Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, and championing diversity and cultural change. Theory & Practice is described as autofiction; thus it is a blend between autobiography and fiction. When I was looking into this subgenre of fiction, I was both confused and interested in all the descriptions and various interpretations. 

1st degree:

My first link will be to Outline by Rachel Cusk, which is also described as autofiction. I have that book on my shelves, unread. So I hope to give it a try soon.

The main character in Outline is a novelist who goes to Athens, Greece to teach a writing course during the summer. She has ten conversations with people she meets on the way to Athens and during her stay there.

2nd degree:

The second link is to The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi. This book takes place mainly on the fictional Greek island, Thiminos. A woman is found dead at the bottom of a cliff; the local police call it an accident. Then a stranger comes to Thiminos from Athens, with the intention of solving her murder.

This is another book I have on my bookshelves. The Greek Detective series gets good reviews and I should read it soon.

3rd degree:

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler starts in Athens and ends up in Turkey.  Arthur Simpson, thief and con man, is hired to drive a car to Turkey. He does not know that he is smuggling illegal weapons in the car, and he is caught by border guards. The authorities force him to deliver the weapons to the people who hired him, in order to uncover their nefarious plans. 

The book was adapted to screen as Topkapi. Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for the role of Arthur. Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley also starred.

4th degree:

The James Bond spy thriller From Russia with Love (1957, Ian Fleming) is set in Instanbul, Turkey. The Russians plot to rid themselves of James Bond by faking the defection of a female cipher clerk. Bond is sent to Istanbul to help the defector escape. They take the Orient Express from Istanbul to Paris, where the story ends. Also made into a very successful film, starring Sean Connery.

5th degree:

A good portion of the last book took place on a train and it ended in Paris. That takes me to The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot, a French author, screenwriter and film director. This novel was first published in French in 1962. The night train from Marseilles arrives in Paris. In the sleeping car, the body of a young woman is found dead. This is a police procedural and the investigation takes place in Paris.

6th degree:

My last link is to a book that also takes place in Paris. The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone is an espionage thriller which begins with a terror attack on Paris. It is the second book featuring Kate Moore and her husband Dexter. The first book was The Expats. This is a very fast-paced thriller (at times) but the story is told very well.

This is another Six Degrees where I rediscovered some books on my own shelves that I have not read yet. 

My Six Degrees took me from Athens, Greece to Turkey and then ended up in Paris, France. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on August 2, 2025, and the starting book will be the 2025 Women’s Prize winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

  

Death by Accident: Bill Crider

The Sheriff Dan Rhodes series by Bill Crider is set in a small town in Blacklin County, a fictional county in Texas. It is a cozy series; Sheriff Rhodes solves crime mostly with his intuition and avoids computers where possible. He and his second wife are in their fifties. He loves Dr. Pepper in glass bottles and junk food for lunch, which his wife disapproves of. Death by Accident was published in 1998.

Two men die mysteriously in or near Clearview, Texas – one explodes, and the other is found drowned in a swimming pool. Sheriff Dan Rhodes cannot prove that those occurrences are not accidents, but he can feel it in his bones. He quietly investigates this theory, talking to people who knew those who died. Not long after these deaths, a third man is killed in a hit and run. A hit and run is a crime, but the death could have been an accident. Nevertheless, three unexplained deaths in such a short time convinces Rhodes that he is on the right track.

Often these books have a subplot going on. In Death by Accident, there are issues related to the competition between two historical societies in Clearview – the Clearview Sons and Daughters of Texas and the Clearview Historical Society. The Sons and Daughters group maintains the site where the swimming pool-related death took place. The other group wants to physically remove a historic building from that site. Sheriff Rhodes doesn't really think that anyone in those two groups is plotting murder, but there is a lot of mayhem and subterfuge going on. Because Rhodes has only a small staff, all of this keeps him busy. Along the way in this story Rhodes adds a new dog to the family and acquires an Edsel that needs to be refurbished.

I only have 16 books to go to finish this series. The last book in the series was published in 2019, so I imagine that Rhodes has to start using computers sometime along the way. We'll see. But I continue to enjoy police procedurals and other mysteries that were written at a time when technology was not so prevalent. And Dan Rhodes is one of my favorite fictional sheriffs.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   St. Martin's Press, 1998
Length:      277 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Sheriff Dan Rhodes, #9
Setting:      Texas
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Dust jacket painting by Alan Dingman.

Short Story Wednesday: "One Morning They'll Hang Him" by Margery Allingham

 

I have long been a fan of Margery Allingham's novels. I read most of the books in the Albert Campion series when I was much younger, and once I started blogging in 2012, I began rereading them in order (mostly) starting with Death of a Ghost. 

Today I am sharing my thoughts on one of her short stories.

"One Morning They'll Hang Him"

This is an Albert Campion short story. Chief Inspector Kenny is visiting Mr. Campion in his home, asking for his help in solving a murder. He is very sure he has the murderer in custody but he does not have a crucial piece of evidence in order to take the case to trial.

Campion asks for more information about the case. Kenny describes the victim, an elderly rich woman who lives in a big house on Barraclough road with her companion / housekeeper. Her only living relative is her nephew, who visited her often in his childhood. He returned from the war with mental problems following an injury when a bridge blew up with him on it. He has returned to London with his wife of  six weeks and has a job. They need a place to live, and the nephew and his aunt have an argument when he asks her if they can live in a couple of her rooms upstairs. The couple were having dinner at the aunt's house when they argued, and they left shortly afterwards. The nephew is accused of returning to the house and shooting her with his gun; he was seen in the neighborhood shortly after she was shot.

The problem with Inspector Kenny's case is that he cannot find the gun and that is a necessary part of the evidence. The police have searched all areas where it could have been left behind or hidden. Inspector Kenny wants Campion to find the gun.

I will admit that this is not my favorite type of mystery short story, because the focus is on the puzzle. But I enjoyed it very much, and it was the combination of Margery Allingham's writing and Campion's character that made it work well for me.

"One Morning They'll Hang Him" was originally published in the August 1950 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but I encountered the story when I started reading the short story anthology Mysterious Pleasures, A Celebration of the Crime Writers' Association 50th Anniversary, published in 2003. I have many more stories to read in that anthology. 

See this article at Martin Edwards website for a description of how he assembled that anthology. It also lists the other stories and authors included in the book.

Books Read in May 2025

 

I read seven very good books in May. Six crime fiction books, including one spy fiction thriller, plus one science fiction novella. Looking back, I was surprised to see that five of the authors were new to me. 

Science Fiction

Exit Strategy (2018) by Martha Wells

This is the fourth entry in the Murderbot Diaries series. The main character, Murderbot, is partly robotic and partly human. This novella concludes a story arc concerning Murderbot and Dr. Mensah and her scientific research team. It would spoil too much to tell much about this story, so I will just say that I have enjoyed the first four books and intend to continue reading the series. I found each book a fun read because Murderbot is such a good narrator. This was the perfect time to read this book because the new Murderbot TV series premiered in May. See my review of the first book in the series, All Systems Red.

Crime Fiction

The Charm School (1988) by Nelson DeMille

This is the first book I have read by Nelson DeMille. It is a spy fiction novel set in the USSR, first published in 1988, not long before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The copy I read, a trade paper reissue published in 2017, includes a very good introduction by the author. The most interesting thing about this novel for me was seeing a portrayal of political and diplomatic relations between Russia and the US at that time. The setting is primarily in Moscow. The Charm School is a secret facility that was training Russian operatives to infiltrate the US and live there as US citizens. If you like spy fiction, I would recommend trying this, even though it is 750 pages long. I enjoyed reading it very much.

Common or Garden Crime (1945) by Sheila Pim

This is a cozy mystery published in 1945 and set in 1943 in Ireland. Gardening is a central theme in the story.  I like the characters and the village setting, and the story was told with subtle humor. See my review.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (2011) by Sara Gran

This was another very different mystery novel with a strange private detective. I read this book because it was compared to The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz, and there are similarities; for example, a detective who is driven and doesn't fit in with others. Claire DeWitt describes herself as the best detective in the world, and she is very expensive. She returns to New Orleans, where she was mentored by a rich female detective for several years, to attempt to find a man who disappeared at the same time as Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Everyone assumes he is dead, but his nephew wants to find out for sure. There are flashbacks to Claire's earlier years in New Orleans; a multitude of quotes from a French detective, Jacques Silette; and several strange dream sequences. I liked the setting of New Orleans, a couple of years after Katrina, showing how much the area was affected. I borrowed the book from my husband and he has the other two in the series, so I will read more of them.

Thursday Night Widows (2005) by Claudia Piñeiro

I was introduced to this book by author and blogger Margot Kinberg. This book by Argentinean novelist Claudia Piñeiro is set in a secluded elite community thirty miles outside of Buenos Aires, where only the wealthy are able to live. The crime that occurs is revealed in a limited way at the beginning of the book, then the story starts again from when the main characters buy into the neighborhood. The story is told from multiple viewpoints. One notable feature is that several chapters are told in 1st person plural, which combines the voices of multiple women who live in the community. That works well to convey certain information, but can be confusing, especially the first few times it is encountered. The relationships within the community begin to fall apart when the changing economy in the early 2000s affects people's jobs and income. This novel is focused on what leads up to the crime and not on who did it. Thursday Night Widows is an excellent book and I will be looking for more books by this author.

A Meditation on Murder (2024) by Susan Juby

This is the second book in the Helen Thorpe mystery series, following Mindful of Murder. The author is Canadian and the setting is British Columbia. The main character is a former Buddhist nun, currently working as a butler. Helen isn't really a sleuth, but more or less solves the crimes accidentally, and helps people out along the way. In this book she is working for a very rich couple who loan her out to an impossibly cranky rich man who needs help with his daughter, who has used her money to get involved with a group of social media influencers. Helen starts out knowing about as little about influencers and social media as I do. This is not a thriller by any stretch of the imagination, but tension is provided by the cutthroat behavior of the influencers and two murders of people associated with the influencers.

My favorite part of the book is the mindfulness theme. Helen is a very appealing character, who is (almost) never ruffled by anything. I was introduced to the series by Bill Selnes at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan.

Star of the North (2018) by D.B. John

This is a thriller that mostly takes place in North Korea. The story revolves around three characters: a Korean American woman whose sister went missing when she was spending her gap year in South Korea; a highly placed official in North Korea who goes to the US for a diplomatic mission; and an older peasant woman who is living and barely surviving in a North Korean penal colony. See my review.

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken at the Santa Barbara I Madonnari Street Painting Festival, which takes place every Memorial Day weekend. I plan to share more photos from the event in a future post. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

 

Common or Garden Crime: Sheila Pim

 

This is the perfect book for me. A beautiful skull on the cover, the theme related to gardening, published in 1945 and set in 1943 in Ireland. It is a very cozy mystery and I enjoyed it very much. I like the characters and the village setting, and the story was told with subtle humor.

On the cover of Rue Morgue Press edition that I have, the book is described as "An Irish village gardening mystery set during World War II."  A lot of the action in the book centers around a flower show that all the characters are involved with in some way. The setting is a village called Clonmeen, situated on the outskirts of Dublin. 

There is, of course, a murder... and the protagonist, Lucy Bex, is instrumental in finding the solution to the crime, but the mystery plot does not have as much prominence as in most mysteries. That did not bother me but it could be considered a negative for some.

The setting in Ireland during the war was very interesting, since Ireland was neutral during World War II. I liked especially that the author was writing the story based on her own experiences at the time. In this book the war is referred to as the Emergency and many items were restricted. Lucy's nephew was an officer in the British military and comes home to stay with Lucy when he is on leave. 

I mention that this is the first book in a series. Sheila Pim's four mystery novels are referred to as of the Irish Gardening Mystery series both on Fantastic Fiction and Goodreads, but it appears that each book really works as a standalone and the cast of characters is different in each. They mainly share the Irish setting and the theme of gardening.

I rediscovered this book (and others in the series) when I saw a post at Moira's Clothes in Books blog. I had seen reviews years before but it had slipped my mind. Moira's post sent me immediately to investigate how to get copies of the books. I bought the first three books in the Irish Gardening Mystery series before I even read the first one. (That might have been because of the skulls on the covers.) 

Other reviews for this book: 

• At Furrowed Middlebrow
• At Clothes in Books
• At Dead Yesterday
• At Happiness is a Book

Below is the cover of the first hardcover edition of Common or Garden Crime. It is lovely, and also features a skull.