Another Nero Wolfe novella, this time from the February 1956 British edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

I picked this one because it came top of Bob Schneider’s ranking of the Wolfe novellas, and I, with a sweeping appreciation of Stout’s work but no great coverage, was keen to see the old master at his peak or something close to it. So when I tell you up front that I don’t think this is a particularly good detective story, and that I hope Stout did more convincing and compelling work elsewhere, you’re very welcome to put this opinion down to my callowness regarding his oeuvre.

Returning a coat to a prospective client who left Wolfe’s New York brownstone in a hurry and made away with his jacket instead, Archie Goodwin is not in the most charitable of moods:

I do sometimes treat myself to a walk in the rain…That rainy Wednesday, however, there was a special inducement: I wanted his raincoat to be good and wet when I delivered it. So with it on my back and my old brown felt on my head, I left the house and set out for Arbor Street, some two miles south in the Village.

Halfway there the rain stopped and my blood had pumped me warm, so I took the coat off, folded it wet side in, hung it on my arm, and proceeded.

Upon reaching the man’s address, however, Archie discovers more than he expected: a police presence outside and Sergeant Purley Stebbins in attendance, virtually guaranteeing that a homicide has taken place. And so Archie, seeing discretion as the better part of valour, continues on his way…only to find that a dog which was being held by the policeman outside the scene of the crime has followed him. And so what else to do except get a rise out of his obstreperous employer by taking the dog into Wolfe’s lair? Except, well, Wolfe isn’t quite a perturbed as Archie expects, and rather takes to this new canine companion.

The table talk in the dining room was mostly one-sided and mostly about dogs. Wolfe kept it on a high level — no maudlin sentiment. He maintained that the basenji was the oldest breed on earth, having originated in Central Africa around 5000 B.C., whereas there was no trace of the Afghan hound earlier than around 4000 B.C. To me all it proved was that he had read a book.

There is, though, the small matter of that murder. As it happens, it appears it was the dog’s owner who was strangled in the hall of the apartment building Archie had been going to call on, and so Archie and Wolfe end up dragged into things anyway — but of course — and, well, this is where things start to go downhill.

It seems to me, in my somewhat limited reading of Stout, that his interplay is often witty — helped by Archie’s willingness to say anything to anyone — and the Wolfe menage expertly realised (c.f. chef and factotum Fritz Brenner looking askance at any woman who seeks admission into the Great Detective’s presence: “There is always in his mind the possibility, however remote, that she will bewitch Wolfe into a mania for a mate.”). But his investigations, and his minor characters, are often rote and tedious, painting as pale a picture as possible so that Wolfe can, often without declaration to the reader, spring a canny surprise in the final summary. Which would be fine once in a while, but…have I just picked poorly in my Stouts to date, or is this a common feature of this work?

And here you really feel it, as the dog is utilised as a ‘witness’ to its master’s murder and we endure a series of interviews that are telling for how much they repeat the same information. And, alas, the core mystery of the piece — cherchez la femme — is reduced to a level of redundancy rarely encountered before in mystery fiction on the basis that there is only one female character in the entire thing…so might she be the one we’re looking for? Additionally, the terminal deduction relies on a convoluted piece of clothes-swapping that I honestly couldn’t follow and got bored simply trying…not least because, yet again, we’re given no way of knowing certain events unfolded and so simply have to take Wolfe’s word for it. Another explanation would fit these circumstances just as well, I feel, but we’re not here for the plotting…which is fine, until the plotting lets itself down to this extent.

What’s good here is what’s good in Stout’s work overall — see the sudden terseness in Wolfe’s attitude when Inspector Cramer dares interrupt his closing summation just as he’s beginning, and the charming argot of this place and time sent me running for a dictionary on two occasions in particular (“replevin” and “finif” — man, I love learning things in this way) — but this only goes to highlight for me how little this stands out as an example of what Stout can do so well: he does it everywhere, so why wouldn’t it be good? Maybe I’m simply never going to be a fan, because my typical preoccupation with plot will always be left faintly wanting with Wolfe.

It’s a shame, too, that as far as I can ascertain Bootsy, the dog of the title — Wolfe’s refusal to accept that name is another wonderful piece of characterisation, I won’t deny — never featured again in the Wolfe canon. He ends up adopted by Archie and presumably winning over the heart of the Great Curmudgeon…but my researches suggest that we never actually refer to him again in print. I’m going to tell myself that he lived a long and happy life, always out for walks with Saul Panzer whenever Archie was around, and think no more about it.

I come away from this brief dip into Stout with the same misgivings as I had before, and feeling somewhat justified at having not read too much by him in the two decades I’ve been making classic era detective fiction my hobby. As a diversion, Archie and Wolfe provide much merriment, and as a comfortable time to rattle through some tropes and hurl around some pleasingly sharp dialogue they’ll do, but I don’t know if I’m ever going to love them in the way others seem to, but then, who knows? Maybe there’s a twist ending just around the corner…