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Heartwarming / Nero Wolfe

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Fer-de-lance
  • Archie recounts a past case where he got badly beaten by a bunch of thugs, woke up in the hospital, and called Wolfe, threatening to quit. To his astonishment, Wolfe actually came to the hospital (read: actually left the house, something he never does) to pick him up. Archie remembers that at that time he was so shocked that he immediately forgot about quitting.

Too Many Cooks

  • Wolfe making sure the African-American chefs who prepared his meals for a society of Supreme Chefs receive personal credit and praise for it, partially as gratitude for their help on the case. The Masters themselves are vocally appreciative and effusive with their praise of the skills on display as the meal goes on, and demand to shake hands with the chefs.
    • The meal and the circumstances themselves, too. The dean and host of the Masters is an elderly man not likely to live to the next meeting in five years, and he wells up while giving his address to the Masters, who are also sniffly in the crowd. And then he brings out a meal that brings a very vocal group of highly critical eaters to reverential silence, apart from the occasional technical question or comment.

Over My Dead Body

  • Wolfe's final interaction with his long lost adopted daughter.

The Silent Speaker

  • At the end of the book, Inspector Cramer gifts Wolfe an orchid as thanks for saving his job. Wolfe is clearly appreciative and touched, despite Archie noting that it's a common variety that Wolfe already has several superior specimens of.
  • There's also Archie's reaction to Nero's "Satisfactory, Archie," which indicates how much he cares about the detective:
    ''Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish."

In the Best Families

  • Fritz's joy after Wolfe and Archie return to the brownstone and how he works to prepare such a fine welcome back dinner. Archie compares it to a father welcoming home his lost children.

Prisoner's Base

  • When Archie visits Sarah Jaffee , after leaving, he makes sure to deliberately take away her husband's old coat and hat draped over a chair, something Sarah had mentioned have been a painful reminder of him for years (he died in World War II, and had casually left the coat there the last time she saw him) but one that she doesn't have the heart to take away herself.
  • Archie's interactions with potential client Priscilla Eads are kind of cute.
  • Wolfe revealing who his client is to the authorities, and why:
    I didn’t have a client this morning, or even an hour ago, but now I have. Mr. Rowcliff’s ferocious spasms, countenanced by you gentlemen, have made the challenge ineluctable. When Mr. Goodwin said that I was not concerned in this matter and that he was acting solely in his own personal interest, he was telling the truth. As you may know, he is not indifferent to those attributes of young women that constitute the chief reliance of our race in our gallant struggle against the menace of the insects. He is especially vulnerable to young women who possess not only those more obvious charms but also have a knack of stimulating his love of chivalry and adventure and his preoccupation with the picturesque and the passionate. Priscilla Eads was such a woman. She spent some time with Mr. Goodwin yesterday; he locked her in a bedroom of my house. Within three hours of her eviction by him at my behest, she was brutally murdered. I will not say that the effect on him amounted to derangement, but it was considerable. He bounded out of my house like a man obsessed, after telling me that he was going single-handed after a murderer, and after arming himself. It was pathetic, but it was also humane, romantic, and thoroughly admirable, and your callous and churlish treatment of him leaves me with no alternative. I am at his service. He is my client.

The Golden Spiders

  • At the end of the book, Wolfe burns the notebook containing the lists of illegal immigrants who were targeted by a blackmail operation rather than submit it into evidence, so that the people listed within can make new lives for themselves free from being hassled either by the authorities or by unscrupulous criminals.

Before Midnight

  • Philip Younger and Carol Wheelock in are just as determined to win the grand prize as the other contest finalists, but both mention planning to spend a lot of the prize money for the benefit of their families (in Younger's case, partially out of gratitude for them having lodged him for so long after he lost his money in The Great Depression).

Champagne for One

  • Celia Grantham's reaction to finding out that her love interest fathered an illegitimate child in Champagne to One isn't scandalized anger or jealousy, but happiness due to that proof of fertility being a sign that they can indeed have a family if they get married.

Novella Collections

Not Quite Dead Enough
  • Wolfe giving condolences to Colonel Ryder for the death of his son in WWII and tying to make him feel like the young man's death had meaning. This is perhaps the only time in the series Wofle has to give such condolences to a man he's been closely working with for more than a short period, and he handles it rather well.

Three Men Out

  • In "The Zero Clue," after spending pretty much the whole story insulting Leo Heller, a professional rival of his and the Victim of the Week, Wolfe makes sure to retract this in front of everyone involved in the case, and state that Heller has earned his admiration, after he solves the case thanks to Heller's Dying Clue.

Three Witnesses

Three for the Chair

Too Many Clients

  • After lots of speculation about why the victim's body was covered by a tarp, the reason behind it turns out to be a simple one no one thought of: Mr. Perez (who found the body and moved it because he was afraid of the police) covered the body out of Due to the Dead respect to keep any animals from getting at it.
  • Archie's sense of respect, politeness, and sympathy toward Mr. and Mrs. Perez for most of the book. When he finds evidence suggesting their daughter (the second victim) was a blackmailer after they'd earlier argued if she even knew enough to blackmail anyone, he doesn't rub it in and tells Mrs. Perez there are multiple interpretations of the evidence. Later, he apologizes to them for not being able to attend their daughter's funeral and sounds sincere.

See also the heartwarming moments from the TV adaptations.


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