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5.0 out of 5 stars
Mix a 12-game blindfold simul, hot chocolate, and arsenic, May 4 2002
This book was my introduction to Nero Wolfe, so I, like his new client Sally Blount, first encountered him not in his office, but in the front room, feeding Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged (3rd edition) to the fire for the crime of threatening the integrity of the English language. Archie says that's nothing - Wolfe once burned a cookbook for a bad suggestion - and it's material only because Wolfe's mental processes are muddled, what with the open fire and his anger.Sally brought $22,000 in cash to engage Wolfe to investigate the murder of Paul Jerin, who was poisoned while playing 12 simultaneous blindfold chess games at the Gambit club. Sally's father, Matthew, wanted Jerin's nose rubbed in the dirt after Jerin creamed him (Jerin's giving odds of a rook in their last game made it even worse), and not only arranged the blindfold match, but provided the hot chocolate that appears to have been the vehicle for the arsenic, so now Matthew's in jail. Sally doesn't trust her father's lawyer, Dan Kalmus, to handle a criminal case in which the husband of Anna Blount is on trial for his life, but she couldn't persuade him or her father to face facts and hire Wolfe, so she's come to do it herself. After hearing everything that Matthew is known to have done with regard to carrying chocolate and clean cups that evening, Wolfe states that either Blount's "an unexampled jackass, or he is innocent." Sally wins points for being very frank with Wolfe, plus saying that he's a wizard, and bringing a big wad of cash, so Wolfe takes the case. Unfortunately, the case really *needs* a wizard: they soon discover that only a handful of people had an opportunity to poison Jerin's hot chocolate, and of that handful, only Blount even knew Jerin, let alone might have had a motive. So Wolfe takes the position that Jerin's death was itself a gambit: the early sacrifice of a piece (Jerin) to gain an advantage (the removal of Matthew Blount), and that it's not Jerin's murder, but the planned judicial murder of Blount that he needs to investigate. Apart from the lovely opening scene, this book is distinguished by what Archie considers to be one of the best charades Wolfe has ever staged (Archie pretends to have been fired, so Wolfe and Saul have a field day play-acting as he watches through the waterfall peephole). It's also the only case I remember in which Archie reached the answer before Wolfe did (granted, because he got the crucial piece of evidence first).
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