A 1946 Nero Wolfe novel by Rex Stout, the ninth in the series.
When Cheney Boone, Director of the Bureau of Price Regulations (BPR), is murdered just before his scheduled speech to the National Industrial Association (NIA), Nero Wolfe seeks out the business conglomerate as a client. The NIA has already been Convicted by Public Opinion, and Wolfe is confident their willingness to avoid continued negative publicity will provide a much-needed cushion to his bank account. But after Wolfe manipulates the NIA into retaining him, he discovers something deeper than antagonism between the two organizations. Faced with concealed evidence, a hostile police force, and a woman who is — in Wolfe's own words — "not a fool," Wolfe and Archie will need to be at their most guile in order to find what is needed to convict a bold killer.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery adapted the novel in their second season, their final episode depicting a full-length book instead of a novella.
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.)
- Acrofatic: Inspector Ash has Wolfe arrested and tries to physically intimidate information out of him, clearly thinking that because he's fat he'll be a pushover. In the resulting scuffle that ensues, he gets his Ash (ahem) handed to him.
- Almighty Janitor: Phoebe Gunther was merely Cheney Boone's confidential secretary but was considered to be the second in command of the BPR in all but name, and gives Wolfe a run for his money in trying to find out what she knows.
- Blackmail Backfire: An interesting variation. Phoebe Gunther has evidence that Alger Kates is the murderer and has using this knowledge to force him to return treasured items which he stole to cover his tracks to the victim's widow. Unfortunately, while her motives are more benevolent than most blackmailers, she nevertheless has still made the same mistake that many a blackmailer of a murderer has done in a murder mystery...
- Convicted by Public Opinion: Because Boone was murdered at an event they organized, and because there is a bitter public rancor between the BPR and the NIA, the public clearly takes the position that the NIA was involved in Boone's death somehow. This turns out to be a key part of the mystery; the missing cylinders were hidden precisely so that they would do as much public damage as possible before the person who hid them decided to reveal them in the interests of justice.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Most if not all of the NIA members to appear have at least the potential air of corruption (and arrogance) about them but the only one confirmed to be stooping to criminal behavior is Don O'Neill.
- Dead Man Writing: The missing cylinder contains a message from Boone to Phoebe Gunther detailing his discovery that Don O'Neill has been bribing Alger Kates for BPR information — the reason Kates killed him.
- Face of a Thug: Solomon Dexter is described as looking like a cross between a statesman and a lumberjack.
- Fatal Flaw: Phoebe Gunther is a smart woman, and is able to give both Wolfe and especially Archie a run for their money. But while she's clever, she's not quite as clever as she thinks, and to add to that she's cocky, overconfident and a little bit smug about it. It comes back to bite her: she pushes the killer too far in revealing what she knows and doesn't appreciate the fact that he's already been willing to kill once, leading to her own murder. Plus, it's all but outright stated that Wolfe wasn't as fooled by her scheme as she thought, but simply went along with it out of respect for her and her goals.
- Four Is Death: Cheney Boone is killed with four blows to the head. So is Phoebe Gunther.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason Phoebe Gunther is killed, having tipped off the murderer by brazenly taking items from Boone's body and sending them to his widow.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Wolfe and Cramer spend most of the investigation focused on a missing Stenophone cylinder hidden somewhere by Phoebe Gunther. After the search takes men from New York to Washington, the cylinder is found behind some books on a shelf in Wolfe's own office. Though for what it's worth, the ending all but implies that Wolfe knew they were there all along, but strung out the search out of sympathy with the goals of the person who hid it there.
- Honor Before Reason: Archie is agog at Wolfe returning the NIA's retainer so as to ensure his neutrality to Boone's widow. The NIA offering a $100,000 reward to whoever catches the murderer was also a factor, but Archie doesn't realize that until later.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: As soon as the cylinder reveals Alger Kates' duplicity, he confesses to each of his crimes. Wolfe contrasts this with Don O'Neill, who keeps trying to escape punishment for bribing Kates:"He is at least more of a philosopher than you are. Bad as he is, he has the grace to accept the inevitable with a show of decorum. You, on the contrary, try to wiggle."
- The Mole: Henry Warder, the vice president of Don O'Neill's firm who tipped the BPR off to his bribery out of moral concerns.
- Nervous Wreck: NIA press secretary Hattie Harding has not been having an easy time trying to spin the fallout of the murder in their favor, and it shows.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Bureau of Price Regulation and the National Industrial Alliance are pretty obviously stand ins for the Office of Price Administration and the National Association of Manufacturers.
- Noodle Incident: This is the first Nero Wolfe novel written after World War 2 ended, after a six-year hiatus. It pretty casually drops that Archie went into G-2 Intelligence and achieved the rank of Major, and Wolfe did something even higher level for the US government, and apart from that mention, no more is said about it.
- One Degree of Separation: The dead man's widow turns out to be the cousin of Wolfe's wartime associate General Carpenter. She checks with her cousin about Wolfe, and she's told "Don't believe anything he says but do everything he tells you."
- Pet the Dog: At the end, when Cramer gifts Wolfe an orchid in thanks for saving his career, Wolfe reacts with genuine appreciation for both the gesture and the flower's beauty, despite Archie noting that it's a commonplace variant that he has hundreds of in his flower room.
- Pipe Pain: Phoebe Gunther is offed with four blows from an iron pipe.
- Police Are Useless: Played with. Inspector Cramer himself is competent, but his superiors definitely aren't; Cramer, like Wolfe, clearly realises that the missing dictaphone cylinder is the key to solving the murder and focuses primarily on trying to find it, but his superiors are fretting about the public outrage over the crime and view that as a frivolous obsession and so suspend him. And Cramer's replacement, Inspector Ash, turns out to be an authoritarian thug who's one big brilliant idea is to get Wolfe into police headquarters and try to physically bully information out of him.
- Rank Up: Solomon Dexter, Boone's deputy, takes over the BPR after Boone's death. NIA man Winterhoff suggests this as a possible motive.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Wolfe's refusal when a go-between calling himself "John Smith" tries to bribe him into pinning the murders on a chosen patsy. Downplayed in that Wolfe doesn't say that his ethics forbid such a plan, but points out the reasons that it wouldn't work and ultimately calls the interlocutor an idiot.
- Series Continuity Error: Archie gives Inspector Cramer's initials early on as "LTC," despite Wolfe mentioning his first name to be Fergus in Where There's a Will.
- Serious Business: The feud between the NIA and the BPR, which frequently goes beyond political, ideological and economic disagreements into intense and spiteful personal antipathy. One frequently gets the feeling that various members of either organisation would not only willingly bash in the heads of those from the other, but that several of them would cheerfully and willingly become murder victims themselves if in doing so they could cause just the slightest bit of damage to the rival organisation.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Henry Warder only appears in the last chapters of the novel, and his existence was barely even alluded to before that, but it was his revealing Alger Kates' treachery to Cheney Boone that caused Boone to both make the recording which cracks the case and confront Kates in the ballroom before his speech (leading to his own murder).
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Nina Boone, the victim's niece, and Ed Erskine, son of the NIA president, once had a romance, but it ended badly and she accused him of using her.
- Suicidal Overconfidence: For all of her more admirable qualities, Phoebe Gunther saw Alger Kates as unthreatening to her, despite knowing he killed Boone. Kates is incredulous about this even after Wolfe has exposed him.
- Title Drop: By Archie, after he and Wolfe first hear the contents of the missing cylinder."Our literature needs some revision," [Wolfe] declared. "For example, 'dead men tell no tales.' Mr. Boone is dead. Mr. Boone is silent. But he speaks.""Yep." I grinned at him. "The silent speaker."
- Turn in Your Badge: Cramer is briefly suspended by the NYPD after focusing his investigation entirely on the missing cylinder (the correct line of inquiry). After Wolfe hands Cramer the murderer, complete with confession and evidence, Cramer gets his desk back.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Subverted; at the end, Inspector Cramer clearly owes Wolfe a favor as Wolfe has saved his career by proving that his decision to look for the missing cylinder was the correct one but, when they first meet after this, bluntly and seemingly ungraciously warns Wolfe that nothing between them has changed and that Wolfe shouldn't try to pull any clever tricks or expect any lenient treatment from him. Cramer then leaves... and returns moments later, sheepishly presenting Wolfe with a gift of an orchid in thanks.
- Worthy Opponent:
- Zigzagged. Wolfe suspected the killer from early on, but after the arrest, he calls him "a foolish and inadequate man but not intellectually to be despised. One item of his program might even be called brilliant."
- Phoebe Gunther views Wolfe (unjustly) as a tool of her enemies the NIA And seems to hold a somewhat low opinion of his genius, working to thwart him in a manner which could be considered obstructive and humiliating. Wolfe doesn’t terribly mind though, expressing deep respect for her and actually working to honor her objective.
- Wrench Whack: Cheney Boone is beaten to death with a monkey wrench.
