I am continuing my reread of Rex Stout's novellas. "Die Like a Dog" is a 66-page novella in the Nero Wolfe series. It is one of three stories in Three Witnesses, published in 1957.
I have featured some of my favorite novellas by Stout in previous posts in the last year. However, this story might be my absolute favorite of Nero Wolfe stories in shorter format.
It is unusual because it has a dog as a prominent character. Archie walks in the rain to a man's apartment to return a raincoat that the man had left at Wolfe's brownstone. What had happened is that the man had an argument with Wolfe, stormed out of Wolfe's office, and grabbed Archie's raincoat instead of his own. Archie wants his raincoat back.
When Archie gets to the apartment building, he sees a crowd around the building and some police cars in front of the building. He also sees Sgt. Purley Stebbins walking into the building. Stebbins is in the homicide department, working under Captain Cramer. Both Stebbins and Cramer are suspicious whenever Archie shows up near a murder. Archie knows that if Stebbins sees him, he will assume that Nero Wolfe is somehow mixed up in whatever crime has taken place, so he turns around and leaves. There is a dog outside the building, wandering around, looking lost. The dog follows Archie back to Nero Wolfe's brownstone, where Archie lives with Wolfe, Fritz the cook, and Theodore the horticulture expert. Archie takes the dog into the house, planning to call the ASPCA to come and get him. However, it turns out that there was dead body in the building and the police want to use the dog as a sort of witness.
In the rest of the story, Captain Cramer and Nero Wolfe spar about how involved Wolfe is in the case, and whether Wolfe has to turn the dog over to the police. Wolfe and Fritz have developed a definite affection for the dog.
Archie does some legwork investigating leads for Wolfe, even though the dog and Archie's missing raincoat is truly their only connection to the murder. It is a fun story, especially for a fan of the Nero Wolfe series.
As usual, Archie Goodwin narrates the story. This story has a very good depiction of Archie's relationship with Wolfe.
The other two novellas in Three Witnesses are "When a Man Murders..." and "The Next Witness."
12 comments:
I'm really happy to see you've featured a Rex Stout story today, Tracy. He was one of the few authors who mastered both the novel format and the short story format - not easy to do! And, well, it's a Nero Wolfe story. It's hard to go wrong.
Recently I read A Christmas Party by Rex Stout. It's a novella and I enjoyed it alot and I would say that for anyone new to Nero and Archie A Christmas story really brings you up to speed.
Kathy, I forgot about "A Christmas Party". That one is really good. That might be my favorite novella by Stout. (And there is another one, "Cordially Invited to Meet Death," that is longer, around 100 pages, that I really love too.)
There is a book (And Four to Go) that includes "A Christmas Party," an Easter story, and a Fourth of July story, plus another one that I cannot remember.
Margot, I agree, I can read any of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories over and over.
Yeah I like the dog aspect of the story, lol. I hope the dog is a good witness and can be kept by Wolfe in the end. :-)
I've added Rex Stout to my potentials for my second Classics Club list.
I've yet not to enjoy a Stout story I've read...I liked the US cable tv series, and the Italian telefilms series (with some changes almost inevitable to the arrangement of the primary figures) which I used to see on MHz Worldview when it was still a US broadcast network. If you haven't seen the latter, at least, I think you might find them interesting.
Susan, The dog is helpful and he does stay with Wolfe (but is never seen again in the series). Still, one of my favorite novellas by Stout.
Kelly, if a Rex Stout book makes it to your 2nd Classics Club list, I hope you like it. But in any case, at least you will get a taste of Rex Stout's writing.
Todd, we enjoyed the Nero Wolfe TV series with Timothy Hutton. We have a DVD set and have watched most episodes twice.
We also watched some of the episodes of the older series with William Conrad and Lee Horsley. Lee Horsley is my favorite Archie. We also have a DVD set of the Italian series and watched two episodes so far. We need to finish up those two series.
I should give the Conrad/Horsley series another look...haven't seen it since it was first on, and not much then.
Todd, I liked the series when it came out (and that would have been before the period when we did not have a television for many years). It doesn't hold up in comparison to the Timothy Hutton series, but still a lot of fun for a serious Nero Wolfe fan like myself. And Lee Horsley will always be my favorite Archie, although I have not seen him in anything else that I remember.
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