Rex Stout's eighth collection of Nero Wolfe novellas, published in 1956.
In "The Next Witness," Wolfe has been unable to shake a courtroom subpoena for the trial of Leonard Ashe, accused of strangling Marie Willis. Ashe had asked Willis, a telephone operator for Bagby Answers Inc., to spy on his wife, former actress Robina Keane, and Willis refused to cooperate. However, during Clyde Bagby's testimony, Wolfe pulls Archie out of the courtroom and travels to Bagby Answers, realizing the prosecution's case is flawed. Now in contempt of court, Wolfe investigates the phone operators and discovers there is far more than a single murder behind the case. After a trip to Katonah and a night hiding out in Saul Panzer's apartment, Wolfe finally takes the stand and tricks D.A. Mandelbaum into allowing him to place his solution before the jury.
"When a Man Murders" sees Paul Aubry and his wife Caroline requesting Wolfe's assistance: Caroline's first husband Sidney Karnow had been presumed dead in the Korean War, but survived and has returned to New York, voiding Caroline and Paul's marriage. Paul wants Wolfe to find a way to get Karnow to agree to take a massive sum of money in exchange for a divorce. When Archie visits Karnow's hotel room, he finds Karnow deceased from a bullet to the head. The police investigation leads to Paul's being taken into custody, but Wolfe's acceptance of him as a client means that he is taking Paul's case. Despite an investigation of uncooperative in-laws and two suspects blaming each other, it takes an errand from Saul to uncover an unknown witness who will reveal the killer and motive.
Lastly, when Archie goes to return a raincoat to a rejected client, he instead finds the homicide department at the scene, and returns home with the raincoat and a dog that followed him home. Wolfe quickly takes a liking to the dog, somewhat to Archie's frustration, but Cramer arrives with information about the case: the dog belonged to Philip Kampf, who has been strangled to death, and the manner of his demise draws a circle around the tenants of the Arbor Street apartment as suspects. Archie uncovers Jewel Jones, associated with more than one resident of the apartment, while Wolfe relies on the dog's behavior to reveal a mistake that will identify the murderer.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery adapted both "The Next Witness" and "Die Like a Dog" early in its second season.
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.)
- Absent Animal Companion: At the end of "Die Like a Dog" Archie strongly implies that they kept the dog ("To relieve the minds of any of you who have the notion, which I understand is widespread, that it makes a dog neurotic to change its name, I might add that he responds to Jet now as if his mother had started calling him that before he had his eyes open"). Jet (or Bootsy or by any other name) is never mentioned again in any subsequent Nero Wolfe story.
- Asshole Victim: We never actually meet him, but Sidney Karnow appears to have been a rather strange, neurotic man with a fondness for playing mind-games with people.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Fiddled with. Jet barks at Richard Meegan, but Loftus, the police's dog expert, points out there are lots of people that dogs don't like. That said, Meegan is indeed Kampf's murderer.
- Gentlemen Rankers: Before the events of ''When a Man Murders," Sidney Karnow enlisted in the Army to fight in the Korean War after inheriting two million dollars.
- Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Wolfe is able to confirm his solution to Marie Willis' murderer by breaking down Helen Weltz. Notably, Weltz did not assist with the murder, but with the blackmailing operation that was central to the killer's motive.
- Lost Will and Testament: Three years before the events of "When a Man Murders," Sidney Karnow wrote a new will disinheriting his aunt and cousins in favor of his wife. A few months later, Sidney was Left for Dead in The Korean War, and his lawyer Jim Beebe offered to suppress the will if Sidney's cousin Ann would marry him.
- Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Jet is a dog, no more, no less. He behaves like a dog would, following Archie home because he was following the scent of his owner's coat.
- Unconventional Courtroom Tactics: On a rare occasion that Wolfe can't wriggle out of testifying at a murder trial to which he is tangentially connected, when sitting in the courtroom waiting to be called to the stand Wolfe realizes from the testimony of another witness that there's a frame-up afoot, and is so disgusted by a nearby woman's perfume that he storms out of court to find the real culprit. This means that the trial is thrown into chaos and that there's a warrant put out for his arrest for contempt of court, essentially meaning that he causes courtroom antics when he's not even there. And then, when he's figured out who actually did it, he plays some fancy footwork with the defendant in order to goad the prosecutor into asking a question which will enable him to reveal the truth on the stand, thus voiding the contempt charge by making it redundant.
