Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone – 3 Good Reasons: ‘Murder is No Joke’

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone – 3 Good Reasons: ‘Murder is No Joke’

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I haven’t written about Nero Wolfe in a year and-a-half? Flummery! Most NOT satisfactory. So…

Welcome to another installment of 3 Good Reasons. With a goal of eventually tackling every tale of the Corpus, I’ll give three reasons why the particular story at hand is the best Nero Wolfe of them all. Since I’m writing over seventy ‘Best Story’ essays, the point isn’t actually to pick one – just to point out some of what is good in every adventure featuring Wolfe and Archie. And I’ll toss in one reason it’s not the best story. Now – These essays will contain SPOILERS. You have been warned!

The Story

Today’s story is “Murder is No Joke” from And Four To Go. It’s the fourth and final story, and a bit of a ‘debutante at the wrong ball.’ Each of the first three has a holiday theme

Flora Gallant is worried about the influence which the mysterious Bianca Voss has over her brother Alec; an internationally acclaimed fashion designer. A call to Bianca, from Wolfe’s office, goes awry when Voss is apparently murdered while on the other end of the line. Inspector Cramer finds it awfully convenient, and Wolfe sets out to identify the miscreant who

3 GOOD REASONS

ONE – Watson. John H. Watson

Archie calls the office, saying something may have happened to Miss Voss. He waits and is asked his name when a man comes back on the line. “Watson. John H. Watson.”

This is sheer chutzpah. There’s no more famous ‘assistant to the detective’ in all the mystery genre, than good ol’ Dr. Watson. Imagine dropping Hecule Poirot, or Perry Mason, as his name. Of course, Carl Drew is flustered, having just discovered Bianca Voss dead in her office. But this sheer Archie impudence.

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Peter Pan by JM Barrie

Peter Pan by JM Barrie

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Hitherto he had thought it was some fiend fighting him, but darker suspicions assailed him now.
‘Pan, who and what art thou?’ he cried huskily.
‘I’m youth, I’m joy,’ Peter answered at a venture, ‘I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.’
This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form.
‘To ‘t again,’ he cried despairingly.

from CHAPTER XV ‘HOOK OR ME THIS TIME’

Leaving work yesterday, a friend expressed surprise when he saw my copy of JM Barrie’s 1911 novel, Peter Pan, in my hand. “You’re reading Peter Pan, the kids’ book?” he asked. To which I answered, “Yes. But it’s not a kids’ book, because it’s about a sociopathic twelve-year-old.” An exaggeration, perhaps, but not much of one.

I think most people, if they think of Peter Pan at all, it’s either because of the 1953 Disney movie or the long-running stage productions with first Sandy Duncan and later Cathy Rigby. For them he’s merely the boy who never grows up and spends his time fighting the Captain Hook and his crew of blackguards. Now, those are important elements of the book, but they barely hint at the depths contained between its covers. It is a much weirder, darker book than the Disney version.

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Forgotten Authors: Hal K. Wells

Forgotten Authors: Hal K. Wells

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Hal K.Wells

Harold  Kerton Wells, who wrote as Hal K. Wells, was born on September 2, 1899 in Little Hocking, Ohio and grew up there and in the nearby town of Belpre, both along the Ohio River border with West Virginia.

He enlisted in the Ohio National Guard of May 18, 1917 and served in the infantry and field artillery during World War I, eventually being discharged on July 27, 1918 with a certificate of disability. He returned to Ohio and settled in Athens, about 35 miles away from where he grew up, and took a job working as a clerk for a dry goods store.

By 1930, he had left Ohio to move to Los Angeles and was publishing articles in Motion Picture Magazine, beginning in 1927. He also wrote the film A Moony Mariner, which was made in 1927 starring Billy Dooley, Vera Steadman, and Billy Engle. The film is the story of a sailor who is sent to the moon, but instead his rocket lands in a nearby Turkish bath, which he takes to be the moon.

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Dark Muse News: Heart of Vengeance & Other Tales of Azatlán by Gregory Mele

Dark Muse News: Heart of Vengeance & Other Tales of Azatlán by Gregory Mele

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Heart of Vengeance & Other Tales of Azatlán by Gregory Mele
(Obsidian & Bronze Ltd, August 2026, 280 pages). Cover Art by Mark Smylie.

Mele’s Meso-American Mysteries, Melee & Mayhem Awaits

Gregory Mele brings swordplay, sorcery, and the dark gods of a lost Meso-American world vividly to life in his Heart of Vengeance & Other Tales of Azatlán (Obsidian & Bronze Ltd.); it is a thrilling collection of occult mysteries, brutal battles, and weird adventures where the dead rarely stay dead. Dark Muse News jumped on it when it became public in August 2026 (available in several places; check out the author’s website).

It has 14 stories, 4 original and 10 published previously in various magazines.  Their connection? All share characters, deities, and the land of Tehanuwak (map below).

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From Robert E. Howard to Ray Bradbury: The Literary Influence of The Bible and The Odyssey

From Robert E. Howard to Ray Bradbury: The Literary Influence of The Bible and The Odyssey

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The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald (Vintage Classics, 1990)

College lit classes introduced me to two works that had a profound influence on my own development as a writer.

The first was the King James version of The Bible. My family was Catholic and I’d read the Catholic Bible in my teen years. We didn’t read the whole Bible for my college class but read samples from King James, which is considered — by Catholics — to be a Protestant Bible. (It doesn’t include books that are part of the Catholic Bible, such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 & 2 Maccabees, and portions of Esther and Daniel.)

My college class did not read The Bible for religious reasons. We read it as literature, and the King James version is magnificent literature. I wasn’t even religious anymore myself but I loved the language.

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 9: The Score

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 9: The Score

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The Score by Richard Stark (Pocket Books, 1964), reprinted as Killtown by Berkley Books in 1973

What is it?

Volume 5 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels. This volume arguably features the greatest single heist Parker ever gets involved with. He and an unusually large team of accomplices robs an entire town, all in one night.

It’s also the first time in the series s a heist is not just a side story but the main point of the entire book, from the planning and the execution to the complication and the aftermath. We see a bit of that with the armored car robbery in The Man with the Getaway Face, but that’s the plot of only the first half of that book, and it’s nothing quite like the scale on display here.

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What I’ve Been Reading: October, 2026

What I’ve Been Reading: October, 2026

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I listen to a dozen audiobooks a month, easy. Often, a re-listen. I fall asleep with an audiobook timer set, every night. Having bought my bungalow in June, I try to spend a little time reading on the front porch, most days. Now that Fall weather has (FINALLY) settled in here in Columbus, I’m trying to be more intentional about it. Plus, the spare bedroom is actually the reading room.

So, I’ve gotten in some reading the past month.

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN – CHUCK DIXON

I’ve blogged about Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian a couple times. I only began reading that one during COVID, and I now have five of the Marvel Omnibuses, as well as Roy Thomas’ terrific three-volume memoirs about the first 100 issues.

And just a year or two ago, I expanded my reading to include the black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan, also helmed by Thomas. Originally I preferred CtB. But the art style, and the depth of the stories, have really made me a SSoC fan. I read the first several Marvel volumes, which were by Thomas. But I’m currently reading Volume X, with Chuck Dixon doing the writing. Gary Kwapisz seems to have done most of the artwork (inked by Ernie Chan) and I’ve adapted to his style pretty quickly.

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Neverwhens: S.E. Lindberg’s Grave’s Daughters — an Imbalance of Familial Humors may Destroy a World

Neverwhens: S.E. Lindberg’s Grave’s Daughters — an Imbalance of Familial Humors may Destroy a World

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Grave’s Daughters by S.E. Lindberg (Ignis Publishing, June 24, 2026). Cover by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme

There is many kinds of world-building. Some create worlds so adjacent to our own, they simply are shadows — a slight change of name, a slight change of history. Others use an Earthly template — Bronze Age, Classical, Medieval, Early Modern, Victorian — and then layer their own elements of magic and science atop; while others yet create wholly distinct, carefully articulated “other worlds” that are the characters of the story themselves.

This is not what S.E. Lindberg writes about.

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Into the Weird: Weird Tales, June 1923 (Volume 1, Number 4), Part 1

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, June 1923 (Volume 1, Number 4), Part 1

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Weird Tales, June 1923, front and back covers
The fourth issue of Weird Tales, dated June 1923, keeps the same format as the issue previous — starting with the large bedsheet size, about 9 inches by 12. The trade dress of the cover is the same, with the same logo. The design of the cover, with a splash of red in which one story is advertised in black writing, is the same. Unfortunately, the actual cover art, by regular Weird Tales artist William Heitman, isn’t very good.

There’s a lady, there’s an ape, and the latter seems to have surprised the former in her room. The majority of Weird Tales readers were likely able to place the image at once as a scene from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders In the Rue Morgue,” which is reprinted this issue. The problem is that it’s not a particularly evocative image, and the poses of the characters seem odd at first glance and make less sense the more you look at them.

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #69 Now Available

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #69 Now Available

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Miguel Santos’ Banner Art for #69. A tip of the hat to a classic!

Happy news, S&S fans! Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #69 is out and it is one of our most ambitious issues yet.

We’ve got four stories and three poems, three audio works, the next two pages of Miguel Santos’ comic Ancestors and more art than you can shake a broadsword at!

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