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Murder by the Book is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout published in 1951 by the Viking Press, and collected in the omnibus volume Royal Flush (1965). Plot summary Inspector Cramer takes the unprecedented step of approaching Nero Wolfe for his help on a stalled murder investigation. Leonard Dykes, a clerk for a law partnership, was found dead in the East River. The police found in Dykes' apartment a list of men's names and Cramer wishes to have Wolfe's opinion on it. But other than suggesting Dykes may have been trying to invent an alias, Wolfe can't help. A month later Wolfe, is approached by the father of Joan Wellman, a reader for a fiction publisher, who was killed in a hit-and-run incident, late at night in Van Cortlandt Park. After reading a recent letter that Joan had written to her parents, Wolfe realises that the name ‘Baird Archer’, an author whose novel Joan was reading for her employer, had also appeared on the list found in Leonard Dykes’ apartment. Wolfe orders Archie Goodwin to explore the link between Archer's novel and the two murder victims. To that end, Archie arrives at the office of Rachel Abrams, a stenographer, mere minutes after she has been thrown out of a window to her death. In the moments before the police arrive Archie confirms that Baird Archer was one of her clients. Wolfe decides to begin the investigation with Dykes, and Archie arranges a meeting with the female employees of Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs, the law partnership Dykes worked for. During the meeting, tempers flare and in a resulting argument the former senior partner of the firm, Conroy O’Malley, is mentioned. O’Malley was disbarred for bribing a jury foreman to fix a case, and while Dykes was blamed for exposing him to the Bar Association it becomes clear that all four of the partners have motives to betray him. Soon after, the four lawyers—James Corrigan, Emmet Phelps, Louis Kustin and Frederick Briggs—approach Wolfe, keen to avoid further scandal. The men agree to send Wolfe all correspondence relating to Dykes, including a resignation letter he submitted. When they receive the letter, Wolfe and Archie discover an odd notation, apparently in Corrigan's handwriting, which corresponds a verse in the Book of Psalms. The same verse - “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help” - was used for the title of Baird Archer's novel, which confirms to Wolfe that Archer was a pen name of Dykes and his novel a Roman à clef based on O'Malley's downfall. Archie is dispatched to Los Angeles to persuade Dykes's sister Peggy to help them trap her brother's murderer. Archie writes a letter to the law firm purportedly from Peggy asking for advice over the legal rights of her brother's novel, and hires a local private detective to pose as a literary agent. Soon after, James Corrigan unsuccessfully tries to acquire the manuscript, resorting to violence and attempted theft in order to do so. Archie begins to tail Corrigan, but soon after his return to New York Wolfe receives a rambling phone call, apparently from James Corrigan, which is abruptly ended with the sound of a gunshot. The police discover that Corrigan has apparently committed suicide, and the next day Wolfe receives a suicide note written by Corrigan confessing to having exposed O’Malley and committed all three murders to keep his secret. Although the authorities are willing to rule Corrigan the murderer and his death a suicide, Wolfe has a breakthrough and summons the major witnesses to his office. There, he reveals that the supposed suicide note was flawed in one crucial respect; it claimed that Corrigan was aware of the contents of Dykes’ novel, when in fact Corrigan's actions in Los Angeles clearly demonstrated that he had never seen the manuscript before. In fact, Corrigan was murdered by Conroy O’Malley, who had staged his death as a suicide. O’Malley had discovered that Corrigan had betrayed him via Dykes's manuscript and had committed the other murders both to frame Corrigan and cover up his actions. After holes in his alibi are discovered, O’Malley is charged and convicted of murder. Reviews and commentary Anthony Boucher, The New York Times Book Review (October 28, 1951) — For some years now Nero Wolfe has flourished best in novelettes ... The shorter exploits, annually collected in volumes of three, have been models of the middle-length detective story; but some of us have still yearned nostalgically for the days of such Wolfe novels as Too Many Cooks and The League of Frightened Men. It's a pleasure at last to report that in Murder by the Book Rex Stout restores Nero Wolfe to his proper place in the long detective novel. A man has been murdered presumably because of a novel which he wrote and which has completely disappeared; there is apparently as total an absence of clues as ever confronted a fictional detective. And the story is not so much one of detection, as of the ingenious efforts of Wolfe and the incomparable Archie Goodwin to find some conceivable starting point from which detection can be carried on. It's an odd and interesting approach; the solution is at once plausible and surprising (if not quite deductively watertight). Wolfe and Archie are both in top form and Stout has rarely done a better novelistic job of putting flesh on assorted minor characters. Stuart M. Kaminsky — I am a huge Stout fan. I've got a collection of the Wolfe novels and re-read them. I just finished reading Murder by the Book, definitely one of my favorites in the series. Check Stout's scenes of Archie in Los Angeles. They rank right up there with Chandler, and the characters — major and minor — are vivid and memorable, not to mention the great give-and-take between Wolfe and Archie. Nancy Pearl, Book Lust — When Stout is on top of his game, which is most of the time, his diabolically clever plotting and his storytelling ability exceed that of any other mystery writer you can name, including Agatha Christie, who invented her own eccentric genius detective Hercule Poirot. Although in the years since Stout's death I find myself going back and rereading his entire oeuvre every year or two, I return with particular pleasure to these five novels: The Doorbell Rang; Plot It Yourself; Murder by the Book; Champagne for One; and Gambit. Saturday Review of Literature (November 10, 1951) — Missing novel MS is lethal to NY quartet and disrupts high-toned law office, but orchidaphilic Nero Wolfe pins blue ribbon on felon. Usual scrupulous attention to, and skilled management of, detail; honest, lively, interest-holding performance. Terry Teachout, About Last Night, "Forty years with Nero Wolfe" (January 12, 2009) — Rex Stout's witty, fast-moving prose hasn't dated a day, while Wolfe himself is one of the enduringly great eccentrics of popular fiction. I've spent the past four decades reading and re-reading Stout's novels for pleasure, and they have yet to lose their savor ... It is to revel i.... Discover the Rex Stout Stuart M Kaminsky popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Rex Stout Stuart M Kaminsky books.