Rex Stout's twenty-seventh Nero Wolfe novel, published in 1964.
Paul Whipple, the black waiter whom Wolfe gained the trust of twenty-six years earlier, is now a grown anthropologist with his own son Dunbar. But Dunbar has become engaged to the rich white heiress Susan Brooke, and Paul wants to prevent the marriage. Though unwilling to interfere, Wolfe feels he owes a debt to Paul, and agrees to take the case. But while Archie is in Racine, where he learns of a violent incident in Susan's past, Wolfe calls him back home: Susan has been bludgeoned in her apartment. Dunbar Whipple becomes the police's prime suspect in the case, setting Wolfe to work once again on a homicide case. Through investigation of the Rights of Citizens Committee, where Susan volunteered for work on civil rights; her bigoted parents; and the white man whom her parents claim was her real fiance, Wolfe learns not only how much the relations between black and white had to do with her life, but with her death.
Tropes in this work: (Tropes relating to the series as a whole, or to the characters in general can be found on Nero Wolfe and its subpages.)
- Character Development: In Too Many Cooks, Archie displays some notably racist attitudes. In this book, he finds himself so disgusted by the killer's enthusiastically bigoted Motive Rant that he is moved to leave the room.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Paul Whipple objects to his son Dunbar becoming engaged to Susan Brooke on the grounds that rich white heiresses don't get engaged to black men.
- Sue Donym: Not nearly as bad as the trope indicates, but Marjorie Ault's alias "Maud Jordan" contains the Ma- and Jor- from her first name, and the -au- diphthong from her surname. Wolfe figures out her true identity by pondering the frequency of the diphthong in the names of those involved in the case.
