Trouble at the Brownstone
-
- ¥50
-
- ¥50
発行者による作品情報
Archie Goodwin goes undercover on the waterfront in a new mystery by the author who "does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy" (Booklist).
Nero Award–Winning Author
Archie Goodwin is not overly fond of Theodore Horstmann, who takes care of the orchids on the rooftop of Nero Wolfe's West Thirty-Fifth Street brownstone. But as loyal assistant to the legendary private detective, Archie will put his animosity aside when the surly orchid-keeper stumbles through the front door beaten within an inch of his life.
While the gardener lies in a coma, Nero sends Archie to poke around his apartment near the river. The place is neatly kept, if not quite as elegant as the brownstone, but across the street on Tenth Avenue Archie quickly discovers the longshoremen's watering hole in whose back room Horstmann has been playing a lot of bridge lately. The smoky tavern is packed with tough dockworkers and recent European immigrants, and Archie does his best to blend in, filling the victim's empty seat in his running card game, as he attempts to learn what sort of shady business might have led to attempted murder. But when one of his new bridge partners is killed, Archie finds himself caught up in something much bigger than a bar fight . . .
Trouble at the Brownstone serves up postwar New York City atmosphere in a fast-paced mystery featuring Nero Wolfe, "one of the two or three most beloved detectives in fiction" (Publishers Weekly).
"Mr. Goldsborough has all of the late writer's stylistic mannerisms down pat." —The New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1951, Goldsborough's middling 16th Nero Wolfe mystery (after 2020's Archie Goes Home) opens on a dramatic note with the arrival of a bloodied Theodore Horstmann, Wolfe's orchid nurse, at Wolfe's Manhattan brownstone. Before Horstmann loses consciousness, he gasps, "There were... two of them..." After he's taken to the hospital, Wolfe asks his legman, Archie Goodwin, to investigate, starting at the apartment building Horstmann recently moved into. Posing as Horstmann's cousin, ostensibly searching for his missing relative, Archie moves into the comatose victim's rooms, only to find his neighbors uncommunicative and hostile. The few who do respond have trouble speaking English, leading to suspicions that they're displaced persons, possibly in the country illegally. The stakes rise when a man Horstmann played bridge with is shot and dumped in the Hudson; oddly, Archie dismisses the possibility of suicide solely because the fatal weapon wasn't found in the dead man's hand. The mystery fails to engage, despite being linked to post-WWII historical events, and Archie isn't conveyed as convincingly as in previous books. Goldsborough seems to be just going through the motions in this one.
