Jagten på en far (1968)

I recently picked this up in an ebook sale, and while I have read it before it happens to be one I did not own in paperback so I've probably only read it once, many years ago. It's a fine later (1968) entry in the series. The client is a young woman whose mother died a few months ago in a hit-and-run car accident. After her mother's death, Amy Denovo finds a box full of cash and a note from her mom that says, "This is from your father." But she has no idea who her father is, and she suspects her mother was using an assumed name all these years so how can even the great Nero Wolfe and his trusty legman Archie Goodwin trace her into the past? Complicating matters, at least for Archie, is that Amy works as an editorial assistant for his paramour, Lily Rowan, but Amy insists that he not tell Lily that he and Wolfe are working for her, leading to some semi-comical misunderstanding about why Amy suddenly starts calling him Archie instead of Mr. Goodwin. It all gets sorted in the end, of course, and in a satisfactory fashion. Nineteen sixties Wolfe novels aren't my favorite, as Stout seemed determined to make up for lost time when crafting plots that involve sex and other tawdry topics. Still, an afternoon spent with Archie Goodwin is never wasted. ( )

A good entry in the Nero Wolfe series but not exceptional... 3.5* for this audiobook edition, 3* for the book ( )

Casual non-murder, mostly. Different pace. ( )

one of the more interesting books in the series. Amy De Novo is a young woman raised entirely by her mother (rarer then than now.) It develops that her mother literally began her life 'de novo" taking that name when she had Amy. Amy wants to find her father. ( )

This Nero Wolfe mystery begins with Lily Rowan's assistant, Amy Denovo, asking for Archie's help in finding her father. Her mother has passed away from a hit-and-run incident without ever breathing a hint to Amy of her real father, so, with money collected from checks supposedly sent by the father, Amy hires Wolfe - only the case is complicated when it looks like the hit-and-run might have been more sinister.

Although enjoyable, there are some minor quibbles with the plot in this one (it feels as if the motive for the hit-and-run was not sufficiently explored), but Wolfe novels, I maintain, are to be read for the characters, not the mysteries.

That said, I am frustrated with the Rex Stout Library edition, which offers brief pages toward the end with extra things (advertisements for Nero Wolfe movies, comic strips, letters from Stout's editors). In this case, the afterword promises a letter from Stout's editor and "the master's reply"... except there is no reply. Simply the original letter from the editor to Stout (wherein he asks the same questions I had about the plot). It would be annoying enough, except something similar happened in a previous one I read.

All in all, though, another great Wolfe book! ( )