Rex Stout's twenty-second Nero Wolfe novel, published in 1959.
A joint committee from the Book Publishers of America (BPA) and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists (NAAD) hires Wolfe to stop a scheme of plagiarism that has been run successfully four times, but in reverse: instead of the plagiarist stealing a known work, the plagiarists are claiming that the known work has been stolen from them. In each case, a manuscript corroborating the claim has been found, and the author and publisher have been forced to pay. Wolfe quickly realizes that one person wrote all the fraudulent manuscripts, as the syntax and paragraphing match, but that person was not one of the plagiarists. When the committee agrees to offer plagiarist Simon Jacobs money to identify the author, Jacobs is killed before Archie can make the offer. Wolfe's admitted botch of the investigation - failing to keep watch on Jacobs - is multiplied when two of the other plagiarists are slain. Meanwhile, the sole survivor, Alice Porter, is repeating the scheme, and Wolfe must keep her alive while working on her in order to keep the mastermind from slaughter - and to enjoy the taste of beer and meat once again.
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.)
- Blackmail Backfire: Downplayed. Plot it Yourself is one of the few books in the series where a blackmailer survives (due to making sure that her victim knew that valuable evidence would be released in the event of her death), but she is arrested.
- Chekhov's Gun: When determining the author of the plagiarized manuscripts, Archie notes that he and Wolfe read works by the plagiarists, but not the plagiarized books themselves. If they had, they would have matched the writing style of one to the manuscripts, and the scheme would have unraveled much sooner, likely with no blood shed.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Twice.
- After the third murder, Wolfe vows to drink no beer and eat no meat until he catches the killer. Multiple times, Fritz is certain Wolfe is not serious about this vow, but he restricts his diet until just before the final confrontation, justifying it by saying he will need to be at full mental and bodily strength.
- Additionally, this is how Wolfe is able to trap the defiant Alice Porter into revealing the killer: when threatened with a lawsuit from Amy Wynn, Porter is unconcerned, but when Wolfe points out that Reuben Imhoff might sue, she suddenly becomes worried. This tips off Wolfe that Wynn is the architect of the plagiarism scheme, and the murderer.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Mortimer Oshin suggests the payoff to Simon Jacobs which leads to the deaths of Jacobs and two of the other plagiarists.
- Worthy Opponent: Wolfe views the murderer as one.You made one {mistake}. Only one of any consequences. You shouldn’t have allowed the committee to hire me. I don’t know how you could have managed it, but I don’t know how you could have managed any of your miracles, and you don’t either. If it had occurred to you, you would have done it somehow.
