History Literature / MurderByTheBook

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* ComplexityAddiction: The murderer, arguably, when you consider that [[spoiler:O'Malley could have just let Dykes keep trying to publish his novel and then made it look like Corrigan killed himself out of fear of Dykes revelations, or framed Corrigan for killing Dykes and killed him then without going after Joan and Rachel]].

* VillainousBreakdown: The killer at the end. [[spoiler:O'Malley is pretty cocky initially after Wolfe's accusations -- but then his ''surviving'' former law partners refuse to represent him, and John Wellman, the father of one of his innocent victims, walks over and demands that he look him in the eye and shake his hand. His cockiness rapidly disappears.]]

* SpoiledByTheFormat: [[spoiler:Corrigan's death and suicide note come up before Wolfe has given any form of summation, several chapters before the end of the book. Regular readers will likely suspect that the situation has been faked and Corrigan isn't guilty.]]

* ComplexityAddiction: The murderer, arguably, when you consider that [[spoiler:O'Malley could have just let Dykes keep trying to publish his novel and then made it look like Corrigan killed himslef out of fear of Dykes revelations, or framed Corrigan for killing Dykes and killed him then without going after Joan and Rachel]].
* CrazyPrepared: PlayedForLaughs. Archer writes all of the women's names on slips of paper, saying he’ll take the one he draws out on a date. The name he draws out is that of Sue Dondero, who has clearly caught his eye most, before putting the slips in his pocket. When accused of rigging the drawing, Archie takes slips of paper with everyone's names on them out of his pocket, but he mentions that he may show Sue the an additional set of paper slips in his other pocket.

* ComplexityAddiction: The murderer, arguably, when you consider that [[spoiler:O'Malley could have just let Dykes keep trying to publish his novel and then made it look like Corrigan killed himslef out of fear of Dykes revelations, or framed Corrigan for killing Dykes and killed him then without login after Joan and Rachel]].

* VillainousBreakdown: The killer at the end. [[spoiler:O'Malley is pretty cocky initially after Wolfe's accusations -- but then his ''surviving'' former law partners refuse to represent him, and John Wellman, the father of one of his victims, walks over and demands that he look him in the eye and shake his hand]].

* SerialKillingsSpecificTarget: Played with; the murder victims were all individuals who had a connection with Baird Archer's unpublished novel, leading everyone to suspect that someone is murdering them all because of what they read in the book. [[spoiler: However, it actually overlaps with this and DeceasedFallGuyGambit; the murderer is in fact killing these people not because he wants to keep the manuscript and its contents secret, but because he wants to kill the person who ''actually'' wants to keep the manuscript and its contents secret, and frame him.]]

* AboveGoodAndEvil: The killer, as part of the MotiveRant delivered to Wolfe [[spoiler:as part of Jim Corrigan's suicide note]], at one point delivers a rather sneering Nietzschean monologue about how, since he was able to overcome his moral qualms about murder in order to kill three people for his own purposes and found it increasingly easy, clearly he's beyond petty judgements about right and wrong or good and evil. Ultimately subverted, however: [[spoiler:Corrigan didn't write this note and was in fact one of Conroy O'Malley's victims, but it's heavily suggested that O'Malley was drawing from his own experiences. Furthermore, while O'Malley is still rather cocky and sneering after Wolfe confronts him, his smugness rapidly dissolves when John Wellman stands before him and asks that O'Malley, innocent or not, look him in the eye and shake his hand. O'Malley is unable to do either.]]

* AmoralAttorney: Zigzagged. A lot of the intrigue of the case involves a law firm. The former senior partner, O’Malley has just been disbarred after he was caught bribing a juror. [[spoiler:And one of the others, Corrigan, was the one who ratted him out to take his job, for which O’Malley kills him.]] The other partners of the firm are portrayed aren’t necessarily portrayed as bad men but are pretty stiff and obstructive with Wolfe.

* BestServedCold:[[spoiler:O’Malley was willing to wait months to kill Corrigan while murdering three other people just to eliminate complications that might put him in danger.]].
* ComplexityAddiction: The murderer, arguably, when you consider that [[spoiler:O'Malley could have just let Dykes publish his novel and then faked Corrigan’s suicide, or framed Corrigan for killing Dykes and killed him then]].
* CrazyPrepared: Archer writes all of the women's names on slips of paper, saying he’ll take the one he draws out on a date. The name he draws out is that of Sue Dondero, who has clearly caught his eye most, before putting the slips in his pocket. When accused of rigging the drawing, Archie takes slips of paper with everyone's names on them out of his pocket, but he mentions that he may show Sue the an additional set of paper slips in his other pocket.

* IShallTauntYou: A particularly sadistic version is speculated upon by Wolfe, although it isn’t confirmed if he’s right or not. [[spoiler:Wolfe theorizes that before killing Corrigan and making it look like a suicide, O’Malley tied him up and then read the fake suicide note to give Corrigan time to process that he was going to die for his betrayal, that he’d gotten three other people killed, and that his name would be disgraced.]]

* PapaWolf: Wellman is determined to see his daughter avenged, and picks the right way of going about it.

* SheepInSheepsClothing: Joan Wellman gets a glowing description as a chaste, friendly, and hard-working girl from her father when he hires them to investigate her murder and Archie admits that his investigation only turned up glowing and positive information reinforcing that impression.
* SpoiledByTheFormat: [[spoiler:Corrigan's death and suicide note come up before Wolfe has given any form of summation. Regular readers will likely suspect that the situation has been faked and Corrigan isn't guilty.]]

The fourteenth Nero Wolfe novel, written in 1951.

--> '''Archie:''' It must be faced that I have doused all hope of connoted revelry.

Inspector Cramer visits Nero Wolfe to make sense of a list of names found in the pocket of murder victim Leonard Dykes. Wolfe is unable to make any sense from it, but then a month later one of those names comes up again during another case, when Wolfe is hired by a mid-western businessman named John Wellman to investigate the hit-and-run death of his daughter Joan, a reader for a publishing company who had read and rejected a novel written by a “Baird Archer” one of the names on the list.
Archie’s investigation leads him to a typist who wrote Archer’s novel, Rachel Abrams, but she is murdered as well. The investigation focuses on the law firm Dykes worked at, with it becoming apparent that Dykes had decided to [[WriteWhoYouKnow write a book about his law firm]] and that something in it got him and two other people (soon to be three) killed.

* AboveGoodAndEvil: The killer, as part of the MotiveRant delivered to Wolfe [[spoiler: as part of Corrigan's suicide note]], at one point delivers a rather sneering Nietzschean monologue about how, since he was able to overcome his moral qualms about murder in order to kill three people for his own purposes and found it increasingly easy, clearly he's beyond petty judgements about right and wrong or good and evil. Ultimately subverted, however: [[spoiler: Corrigan didn't write this note and was in fact one of O'Malley's victims, but it's heavily suggested that O'Malley was drawing from his own experiences. Furthermore, while O'Malley is still rather cocky and sneering after Wolfe confronts him, his smugness rapidly dissolves when the father of one of his victims stands before him and demands that O'Malley, innocent or not, look him in the eye and shake his hand; O'Malley is unable to do either.]]
* AmbitionIsEvil: Played with. [[spoiler:Corrigan almost certainly sold out O’Malley just so he could become senior partner but what O’Malley did ‘’was’’ pretty sleazy]].
* AmoralAttorney: Zigzagged. A lot of the intrigue of the case involves a law firm. The former senior partner, O’Malley has just been disbarred after he was caught bribing a juror. [[spoiler:And one of the others, Corrigan, was the one who ratted him out to take his job, for which O’Malley kills him]]. The other partners of the firm are portrayed aren’t necessarily portrayed as bad men but do pretty stiff and obstructive with Wolfe.
* TheBabyOfTheBunch: Done with a minor character : Archie observes one of the firm stenographers, Claire Burkhart, looks to only be in high school and she does sound a bit shallow when commenting about the murders.
* BestServedCold:[[spoiler:O’Malley was willing to wait months to kill Corrigan while murdering three other people just to eliminate complications that might put him in danger]].
* ComplexityAddiction: The murder arguably when you consider that [[spoiler:He could have just let Dykes publish his novel and then faked Corrigan’s suicide, or framed Corrigan for killing Dykes and killed them then without login after Rachel Abrams or Jean Wellman]].
* CrazyPrepared: Archer writes all of the women names on slips of paper, saying he’ll take the one he draws out on a date. The name he draws out is that of Sue, the prettiest of the women before putting the slips in his pockets. When accused of riggings the drawing by having all of the names be hers Archie takes slips of paper with everyones names on them out of his pocket, but its revealed that there is an additional set of paper slips in his other pocket, implying he did rig the drawing but made sure to have two sets of slips with names.
* DeceasedFallGuyGambit: An interesting version in that [[spoiler:The first three murders are partially committed for the purpose of framing the fourth victim for their mruders, to provide a reason for his fake suicide]].
* GeniusBruiser: While he’s never actually in a fight, Emmet Phelps, the firms expert on precedents and researcher is describes as a broad shouldered man who looks like he should be wearing the uniform of a military officer.
* GrandRomanticGesture: Both done for the case and Archie’s personal pleasure. He presents orchids to the firms female employees and invites them for dinner at Wolfe’s in order to get them talking, but at the end of the night he offers to send them additional orhicds every month and makes a show of drawing one of their names form a hat to take on a date (although its implied he rigs it).
* HeKnowsTooMuch: [[spoiler:Dykes, Joan and Rachel were all killed because they had knowledge about how Corrigan had gotten O’Malley disbarred and if Corrigan turned up murdered, they might be able to use that against O’Malley]].
* IShallTauntYou: A particularly sadistic version is speculated upon by Wolfe, although it isn’t confirmed if he’s right or not. [[spoiler:Wolfe theorizes that before killing Corrigan and making it look like a suicide, O’Malley tied him up and then read the fake suicide note to give Corrigan time that he was going to die for his betrayal, that he’d gotten three other people killed and that his name would be disgraced]].
* TheMillstone: Fred Briggs was nearly eighty before he made a partner at the firm and Archie describers him as seeming useless and stupid.

* MoodWhiplash: Done deliberately. When Archie invites over the the women from the law firm there’s several pages of FoodPorn and telling jokes. Then Archie gets around to the murder and brings in the parents of two murder victims to appeal to them for information. —> ‘’’Archie:’’’ i must be faced that I have doused all hope of connoted revelry.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: The killer, after Wolfe delivers TheSummation, is initially rather aloof and contemptuous and, as discussed under AboveGoodAndEvil, is implied to have developed some rather Nietzschean ideas about morality as a result of their actions. Then John Wellman, father of one of the victims, asks to look him in the eye and shake his hand. The killer's smugness and aloofness to the idea of conventional morality quickly dissolves into guilt:
* OddFriendship: During the investigation, Archie gets along well with Dykes sister (whose a lot older than him and married) during the case. Gets in some possible romantic tones when he comments that maybe in twenty years he’ll be old enough that the age difference won’t matter and her husband might be dead and then maybe he’ll look her up again.
* OhCrap: During Wolfe’s summation, Louis Kustin seems rtf realize the direction he’s going and asks to speak with him in private before he continues:
--> '''Wolfe:''' So you’re beginning to see something, now that I’ve cleared away some of the rubbish? And you’d like to point at it. I’ll do the pointing, Mr. Kustin.

* PenName: The list of names (including Baird Archer) were names that Dykes was considering as pen name.
* SexySecretary: Many of the firms secretary’s and stenographers (particularly Eleanor Gruber and Sue Dondero) get quite a bit of EatingTheEyeCandy description from Archie.

* SheepInSheepsClothing: Joan Wellman gets a glowing description as a chaste, friendly and hard-working girl from her father when he hires them to investigate her murder and Archie admits that his investigation only turned up glowing and positive information reinforcing that impression.
* SpoiledByTheFormat: [[spoiler:Corrigans; death and suicide note are only about 1/5th of the way into the book, so it’s not too big of a surprise that he isn’t guilty]].
* TheStoic: Kustin, the firms main trial lawyer, is described as a sleepy-eyed man with a bored voice, [[NotSoStoic at least until he gets really stirred up at Wolfe and Archie]].
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: A variant. [[spoiler:Wolfe finds it suspicious how O’Malley quickly brought up to Archer and Wolfe how he’d supposedly been in Atlanta for a while, during the times the murders took place]].
* VillainousBreakdown: The killer at the end. [[spoiler: O'Malley is pretty cocky initially after Wolfe's accusations -- but then his ''surviving'' former law partners refuse to represent him, and and John Wellman -- the father of one of his victims -- walks over and demands that he look him in the eye and shake his hand.]]

* SheCleansUpNicely: Archie describes Blance as a “three shades of blonde sourpuss” at their first meeting but later says she looks nice with a little makeup and a good dress on the dance floor.

* GeniusBruiser: While he’s never actually in a gigh, Emmet Phelps, the firms expert on precedents and researcher is describes as a broad shouldered man who looks like he should be wearing the uniform of a military officer.

—> '''Wolfe:''' So you’re beginning to see something, now that I’ve cleared away some of the rubbish? And you’d like to point at it. I’ll do the pointing, Mr. Kustin.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: A variant. [[spoiler:Wolfe finds it suspicious how O’Malley quickly brought up to Archer and Wolfe how he’d supposedly been in Atlanta for a while, during the times the murders took place.

* OhCrap: During Wolfe’s summation, Louis Kustin seems rtf realize the direction he’s going and asks to speak with him in private before he continues. —> ‘’’Wolfe:’’’ So you’re beginning to see something, now that I’ve cleared away some of the rubbish? And you’d like to point at it. I’ll do the pointing, Mr. Kustin.

* SheepInSheepsClothing: Joan Wellman gets a glowing description as a chaste, friendly and hard-working girl form her father when he hires them to investigate her murder and Archie admits that his investigation only turned up glowing and positive information reinforcing that impression.

* VillainousBreakdown: The killer at the end [[spoiler:After his -surviving- former law partners refuse to represent him and John Wellman walks over and looks in his face]].