A Right to Die

Nero Wolfe #40

by Rex Stout

When a bright young heiress with a flair for romance and one too many enemies is found brutally murdered, Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, find themselves embroiled in a case that is not as black and white as it first appears.



Susan Brooke has everything going for her. Men would have killed themselves to marry her, and, in fact, one did.



Susan came to New York to find love and fulfillment, and ended up dead on a tenement floor. The police say her black fiance did it, but Wolfe has other ideas. Before he's done, he'll prove that good intentions and bad deeds often go hand in hand and that the highest ideals can sometimes have the deadliest consequences.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Detective, Crime, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller, Ebooks

182 pages, Hardcover

First published October 22, 1964

About the author

Rex Todhunter Stout (1886–1975) was an American crime writer, best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius from 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) to 1975 (A Family Affair).

The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the very best of the Nero Wolfe mysteries--and controversial for a mainstream detective novel written in 1964.

A white civil rights crusader has her head bashed in with a billy club--souvenir from a Southern demonstration--and her black fiancee is arrested and charged with the murder.

This novel is well plotted and continually absorbing, but I give it only four stars because Stout's diction and perspective--in spite of all his good intentions--sounds a bit racist forty years later.

[Charles van Buren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fine Nero Wolfe mystery

This is a good mystery with several red herrings and interesting twists. However it is as much about American race relations circa 1963-1964 as it is about the mystery. There are things here to annoy klansmen, neo-nazis and others of that ilk. It will also annoy some touchy-feely liberals, the woke and others on the left who are overly sensitive to words and perceived racism. Neither Rex Stout nor Nero Wolfe were racists.

DECEMBER 30, 2023
I just received notification that this review does not meet Amazon community standards and will not be posted as is.

Addendum 2/4/24: Amazon reinstated this review after I posted it with the last line deleted. They have now removed it again.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best fiction books I have read that concerns the Civil Rights Movement and was actually written during the 1960s.

What made this book noteworthy, in my opinion, is Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin's straightforward attitude toward race. They admit that, as white people they can't understand fully what life is like for black people, just as the black people they are working for and with can't fully understand what life is like for them. But they do their best to treat everyone they encounter with equal dignity and seriousness. As Archie puts it at one point, "...when I consider myself superior to anyone, as I frequently do, I need a better reason than his skin" (p. 56).

I'd be interested to know how this book was received when it was released because it strikes me as something that could have ruffled some readers' feathers. Wolfe and Archie are both of the opinion that interracial marriage is fine, for instance. They are both working for a black man. There are black characters who are nice, who are annoying, who are helpful, who are dodgy, who are trustworthy, who are proud, who are ugly, who are beautiful -- as complex and varied as any cast of white characters in his other books. Stout is clearly saying that differences of appearance, habit, style, manners, or upbringing are all external things and don't matter. What matter are a person's values, morals, and attitudes.

The mystery here is one of Stout's best, I think. This is going high on my list of favorite Nero Wolfe books.

[Bryan Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the exceptional Rex Stout novels. It was written in 1964 during what, to me, is the height of the civil rights movement in the United States. I, personally, was -6 years old. The theme of the book is deeply involved in that movement when a middle age black man appeared on Nero's doorstep. Nero had once been assisted by that man when he was young and Nero felt he had an obligation to assist him. Unfortunately the simple but unsavory request soon turns into a murder mystery with the mans son as the accused murderer.

Readers of a modern sensibility may be offended by some of the words used to describe the black characters in the book. However, I believe, that Stout handled the verbiage carefully and followed the acceptable standards of respect for that time. The "n-word" is used several times, but only by characters with depraved sensibilities, and Stout is at pains to make it clear that sensible people, including Nero and Archie, never use that word.

The mystery is complex and subtle. This was my second read through and I still didn't figure it out on my own. Despite my failure, all the clues for the final revelation are given to the reader. Archie didn't figure it out either until the last moment too, so I didn't feel to bad about missing the clues.

It is not a light hearted Nero Wolfe story so I wouldn't take this one to the beach for light reading but it is a very excellent story and I highly recommend it to anyone.

[Pamela Shropshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Way back in the series, in Too Many Cooks, book #5 to be exact, published in 1938, we met a young man named Paul Whipple who was a waiter at the West Virginia resort where Wolfe is meeting with a group of gourmets. A murder takes place and Wolfe is certain that at least one of the employees had to have seen the murderer. All of the waiters and cook’s assistants are black and Wolfe convinces Mr. Whipple to admit he saw the murderer, also a black man.

Back to the present - publication date is 1964. Archie answers the door to a middle-aged black man named Mr. Whipple who says he needs to consult with Wolfe. When Wolfe sits at his desk, Mr. Whipple says, ‘I’m going to make a speech,” and does so:

The agreements of human society embrace not only protection against murder, but thousands of other things, and it is certainly true that in America the whites have excluded the blacks from some of the benefits of those agreements. It is said that the exclusion has sometimes even extended to murder – that in parts of this country a white man may kill a black one, if not with impunity, at least with a good chance of escaping the penalty which the agreement imposes. That’s deplorable, and I don’t blame black men for resenting it. . . But if you shield him because he is your color there is a great deal to say. You are rendering your race a serious disservice. You are helping to perpetuate and aggravate the very exclusions which you justly resent. . .

This is, of course, the very speech Wolfe had made 26 years (publication dates) ago, and the visitor is, of course, Paul Whipple. It’s worth noting that while Mr. Whipple has aged normally, neither Wolfe nor Archie have, although Archie has matured and become very much more sophisticated.

Mr. Whipple’s son is engaged to a wealthy young white woman named Susan Brooke (remember that the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was released in 1967). Susan is a civil rights activist and does volunteer work for a civil rights organization, one that Wolfe has supported and made donations to.. In spite of her admirable work, Mr. Whipple and his wife are opposed to the marriage. He wants to hire Wolfe to investigate Susan; he believes that because she wants to marry a black man “she has a screw loose” and there has to be “something wrong with her.” Wolfe doesn’t like it, but feels he owes an obligation to Mr. Whipple, so he reluctantly agrees. But there is nothing unsavory in Susan’s past; the only blip at all is the fact that years ago, a young man killed himself after Susan refused to marry him.

But this all becomes moot because Susan is found dead, murdered, in the apartment she sometimes shared with the younger Whipple - Dunbar Whipple. It was Dunbar who found the body and he admits he was so shocked that he didn’t call the police for at least 30 minutes. Dunbar is the only suspect and he is soon arrested for murder. Because of his long-standing obligation to the elder Whipple, Wolfe undertakes to discover the killer.

This is a really good one and I enjoyed it a lot. Keep in mind, however, that terms that were acceptable in 1964 (such as “colored” and “Negro”) are definitely not acceptable today. Nevertheless, both Wolfe and Archie exhibit progressive attitudes for their time: Archie comments “when I consider myself superior to anyone, as I frequently do, I need a better reason than his skin,” and Wolfe pays Dunbar’s attorney the compliment(?) of “being as crusty with him as he would have been with a paleface.” 😂

4.5 stars.

[QOH · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to read Nero Wolfe mysteries for the time travel. One paragraph and BAM! It's NYC in 1940s or thereabouts. Yes, please. My reading is always informed by the TV series (and they are narrated, in my head, by Timothy Hutton), and it was my good luck that after I was hooked, a friend gifted me with his entire Rex Stout collection.

But Stout didn't stop writing in the 40s (and I love the WWII stories). He did move on with the times, which led to that weird swinging-sixties aspect of the later TV show and...yeah, I kind of lost interest.

So I've avoided the "newer" books--basically, anything after 1960. They just seemed pained, strained, and out of touch to me (Stout would have been in his late seventies and eighties), but I'd run out of older stories, and so...

A RIGHT TO DIE was initially published in 1964. I would ordinarily not be writing a review for a Nero Wolfe novel, not anything more than a paragraph saying it was fun and exactly what I needed to read on a rainy afternoon with a sinus infection.

I'd started the novel grudgingly, knowing it dealt with race and expecting it to be as awkward as driving the Florida backwoods with my grandparents and hearing an all-too liberal sprinkling of the n-word.

Color me...very wrong. This one is worth it. Sure, reading it from the remove of 50 years is sometimes painful. But it's another adventure in time travel, sometimes painful, but also funny and insightful. (And narrated in my head by Timothy Hutton.)

The plot of the novel: a young black man, part of a civil rights organization, is accused of murdering his fiancee/lover. Nero Wolfe is initially engaged by the man's father (to whom he owes a debt, and this is a big deal to Wolfe), to find out "what is wrong" with the young white woman, because the father wants to put an end to the romance (and the father assumes something is wrong with her for wanting to marry his son). Then she's murdered, and Wolfe is determined to find out who is responsible.

Both races are skewered for bias in the novel, and naturally Wolfe gets the best lines. When Paul Whipple (the father) is opining that his wife could never have a true intimacy with her prospective white daughter in law, Wolfe says, "No...Nor for a colored woman either if it's her son's wife."

Before the younger man is charged with murder, he's explaining the n-word and racial bias to Wolfe. And it's a really good speech:

"Most of them here wouldn't say that word, nigger, but they've got that word in them. Everybody. It's in them buried somewhere, but it's not dead. Some of them don't know they've got it and they wouldn't believe it, but it's there."

Bear in mind, this is a book published four years before the assassination of MLK, published a year before the Voting Rights Act.

Which is not to say it's all speechifying.

Later, when Archie relays what a less sympathetic character (a woman; the least sympathetic characters in most Wolfe stories are women) to Wolfe "quote nigger unquote," Wolfe says, "I have told you never to use that word in my hearing."

Archie: "I was merely quoting. It isn't--"

Wolfe: "Shut up. I mean the word 'unquote' and you know it."

***

Which is also to say, it's still very much Nero Wolfe. His personality didn't change at all with the times.

[Vicki Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is ususual, in that the client is a character from a previous book, Too Many Cooks. The client, Paul Whipple, was a Negro busboy in the previous book who gave Wolfe information which allowed him to solve that case. Now he asks Wolfe to find out what's wrong with his son's white girlfriend (since there must be something). Not long after, she's killed and the son is arrested. Much less use of the n-word in this one than in the previous one, but it's still jarring, as is the use of "Negro" and "colored." I guess we're just not used to those labels now.

[cool breeze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries are all set in the present day of their writing and have often provided observations on changing contemporary life and events during the decades over which they were written, 1934 – 1975. There has been notably less of this in the 5 books from the 1960 election up to this 1964 one. While changing sexual mores have been noted, there has been little or no reference to the space race, the civil rights movement, the Berlin Wall, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, President Kennedy, and/or his assassination.

That changes dramatically with this book and current events take center stage. They sometimes risk overpowering the story. The issue is civil rights. Most of the new characters are black and they are all involved in the civil rights movement. This is Stout’s most political novel to date and he is clearly sympathetic towards it. However, Stout is now 77. His attitudes and language date from several generations earlier and sometimes come across as patronizing. He meticulously describes the individual skin tone of the black characters, from “dark honey” to “strong coffee with one teaspoon of cream” to “coal”. There are some stereotypes and “colored”, “negro”, “shine” and the n-word are used frequently. Nero Wolfe is his usual crusty self and many of the blacks think he is behaving that way towards them because of racism.

The mystery itself at first seems subpar. I don’t recall an obvious suspect (who is not the accused) ever being identified this early in a book in the series. Of course, that means it must be someone else, right? Excluding the most obvious, a viable alternative is also identified early in the story. I don’t want to leave anything close to a spoiler, so let’s just say that the only thing predictable about this plot is the motive, which is, of course, anti-black racism.

There are only a few other current events mentioned. Wolfe is on an anti-automation kick. Rockefeller and Goldwater are mentioned in passing. JFK is referenced explicitly twice, as Archie keeps forgetting that Idlewild airport has been posthumously renamed Kennedy International. He may also be referenced obliquely in the line, “Since he was deliberately planning to go into the roughest game on earth, politics, nothing was beyond or beneath him, even clubbing a lovely dame, if he had a good enough reason” (Marilyn Monroe was found dead in 1962).

Overall, I think this rated close to 4 stars as a murder mystery. The heavy-handed political messaging got in the way often enough that I would deduct something because of it, but not enough that it wouldn’t still round back to 4 stars.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Hoarder surprise challenge-May- flower on cover

I needed to take a break from the other audiobook I was listening to at work so I picked this one as these stories are fairly quick & easy listens. 
I like Nero & Archie.
The cases are good puzzles as I tend not to guess it before the end. This time, a black man has hired Wolfe to investigate his son's white fiancee which makes race a topic in the narrative. Don't worry, before long there is a dead body & a murder for Nero to solve.

I'd recommend the Nero Wolfe series to those who are fans of Sherlock Holmes. Similar to Sherlock; Nero is a cantankerous, obnoxious, know-it-all character who is made more appealing through his relationship with his side-kick Archie. I enjoy the scenes with their interactions.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

2020 review of audiobook edition, narrated by Michael Pritchard:
The beginning of this entry in the Nero Wolfe series brought to my attention something that I had not really considered much before (unrelated to the plot). This book was published 30 years after the first book in the series & in all that time, none of the inhabitants on the brownstone on 35th Street have really aged (none of the regular or semi-regular characters have). Archie is still going out dancing and flirting with the women he meets as he did in the early books. What brought this to my notice was that the client in this book was Paul Whipple, someone who had, as a very young man, helped Wolfe in "Too Many Cooks" (book 5 of the series). Now he is a middle-aged man with a son in his 20s engaged to be married.

Now, if Paul Whipple is somewhere between 45 and 50, Archie should be 60 and Wolfe even older. One would think that Stout would have struggled with this dilemma but in true Nero Wolfe style, he dismisses it as beneath notice. By nary a word is this breach in logic even hinted at. And he pulls it off!

As for the plot of this book - I vacillated between 3.5 and 4 stars. I thought that the mystery was 3.5* but the social commentary about the Civil Rights movement and race relations during the early 1960s made it worth the extra half star. Wolfe truly does not care what color a man's skin is - just what his character and intellect are. Ironically, several of the black suspects feel that he is treating them badly because of their race, not realizing that he acts that way with everyone!

[Jerry Kimbro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any Nero Wolfe mystery is a guilty pleasure to read. But this one is especially well written and a real puzzler of a mystery. Written during the Civl Rights era of the 1960s it is still strangely topical today as it addresses the struggle of African Americans for justice in a white man's world.

Rex Stout is good enough of a writer to convincingly portray his dectective Nero Wolfe as being free from the prejudices of his time. In his pursuit of justice, Wolfe doesn't put up with flummery from ANYONE- not the police, not pontificating Civil rights leaders, not racists of any skin color; despite the odds against finding a racist murderer before an innocent black youth is unfairly convicted of the crime. Wolfe's right hand man, detective Archie Goodwin is deliciously sarcastic and insightful about prejudice, race relations and crime in the 1960s, ansd some of his comments still ring true today.

The best quote in the book is worth remembering. A black Civil Rights leader and advocate who has hired Wolfe states" If we want to be thought of as Good citizens- we MUST become good citizens!" WOULD that cooler heads like this one prevailed over all the hate and racist banter and blather connected with the explosive Tryvon Martin-Lawrence murder tragedy eating up the current headlines. If Nero Wolfe were only real - no doubt HE could rstore sanity to that particular sad affair.

If you love Nero Wolfe- this story is a must read. If you have never read a Nero Wolfe mystery- this one is an excellent one to start with.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

My interest in Rex Stout books is always the characters over the mystery, although this mystery was sufficient. Today's reader will notice that America has changed markedly in the 45 years since this story was written; the n-word appears often, interracial relationships were daring and not without danger, and the idea of a black mayor of New York was startling (the idea of a black US President was not even considered). Long time fans will find it interesting to see how Stout takes his characters from the Depression Era 1930's to the turbulent early 1960's (as Archie struggles to remember that it is Kennedy International not Idlewild airport).

No matter what year it is outside the brownstone the repartee between Wolfe and Archie is always wonderful (to me), the mysteries are sufficiently challenging to keep the reader guessing (usually) along with Archie right up to the minute Wolfe reveals all. Those new to the series would probably want to read at least one or two of the earliest novels but it is not necessary to read these in strict order to enjoy them.

[Ginney Etherton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I needed a quick pick-me-up to escape from reading-drudgery to which I'd committed, and a Nero Wolf case was just the ticket. I got the unabridged audio version for the added bonus of hearing Archie Goodwin's wonderful sarcastic voice (in the form of actor Michael Prichard). The period depicted, early '60s, was an excellent portrayal of the racism in the USA, and Rex Stout took some courageous steps with this story.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nero and Archie meet the civil rights movement. As always, a great tale; I stand in awe of Rex Stout's ability to take me into that world. The fascinating thing about this book is how jarring to modern sensibilities the progressive and enlightened attitudes toward race of 1964 now are. It's depressing that race is still a problem at all.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

In A Right to Die, a decent story about the murder of a civil rights crusader, Rex Stout has botched his ordinarily masterful management of the Brownstone by allowing Archie and Wolfe to stray into the minefield of liberal white guilt. The fact that the two are treading unfamiliar and dangerous ground is obvious as soon as they begin the journey. Nearly every line spoken either by or about black people in this book is uniformly scripted by what were already (in 1963) well-entrenched codes of political correctness centering upon the default nobility of blacks and the indubitable guilt of whites.

I don’t know what got into Stout in the early ‘60’s, but having just read this book and also its successor The Doorbell Rang, it’s obvious that some precursor strain of the Great Society had afflicted his mind around 1963. Of course, many of Rex Stout’s fellow white intellectuals were at that time joining the revolution to overthrow everything normal in Western society, but one can at least be excused for cherishing the hope that a genius and all-around good guy like Stout would not participate in the orgy. The fact that he felt compelled to genuflect to the monstrous lie of the civil rights farce shows that even the most brilliant thinkers are not necessarily safe from the tide of revolution.

Because of Stout’s clumsy grandstanding, A Right to Die is a decidedly mixed bag. In The Doorbell Rang, an entertaining adventure wherein Wolfe takes on the FBI and attracts the meddling attention of J. Edgar Hoover, we are also subject to a poorly integrated diatribe against government intrusions against civil liberties. I’m as opposed to such activities as the next man, but the lecturing element was neither needed nor enjoyable in a mystery novel. Wolfe is simply unconvincing as a political crusader; indeed his most enduring quality is as a man who defies all forms of progress, even such minute forms as the movement from one chair to another. At least in Doorbell, Stout kept my attention well fastened to the wit and action of my favorite pair of Manhattan crime-fighters. But in A Right to Die, Stout’s politics are far too evident upon his sleeve, and they do not belong in the mouth of Nero Wolfe. It would be bad enough if the novel were merely moralizing; what is far worse is that it is also inexcusably false in its presentation of black/white relations, of its own era or of any other.

I will give just a couple of examples of Stout’s sad failure to pull off the job of making Wolfe and Archie into MLK-style racial utopians, though I could supply twenty. In Chapter One, we meet the client of the novel, a black man whose name is Whipple. After revealing the fact that his son is engaged to marry a white girl named Susan Brooke, and that both young people are members of a civil rights outfit, Whipple makes his request: he wants Wolfe to find some dirt on the fiancée so as to prevent Whipple Junior from saddling himself with the difficulties of an interracial family. So far, so sound. But Wolfe begs to differ with Whipple’s quibble, and tells him so. Wolfe’s objection shows that he has taken leave of his senses in agreeing to pursue such a weird case:

“[My] comment is about marriage. It’s possible that Miss Brooke is more realistic than you are. She may be intelligent enough to know that no matter whom she marries there will be the devil to pay. The difficulties, snags, embarrassments, and complications…are in any case inevitable. If she marries a man of her own color and class, the grounds for them will be paltry, ignoble, degrading and tiresome. If she marries a Negro the grounds will be weighty, worthy, consequential and diverting.”

How painfully dishonest all of this is. And how unintentionally racist! A white liberal is never more racist than at those moments when he is striving to establish his bona fides as a post-racial guru. It is one thing to be subjected to this sort of nonsense from Keith Olbermann or Rick Perry in 2011; but it’s simply unbearable from the world’s smartest obese detective in 1963. Let me underline the unintentional racism of Wolfe’s remark. While issuing a blanket condemnation of all forms of marriage (a funny enough angle for the likes of the happy bachelor Wolfe), he proceeds to say that if a woman must expose herself to the infamies of marriage, she might at least score political points while doing so. And what could be more progressive in the marriage game than to marry a Negro!? The good thing about this speech is that it perfectly typifies the mentality of white liberals who embrace faddish intermarriage; the problem with it is its unspeakable hypocrisy and the patronizing view it presents of blacks, as if whites marrying blacks were a way of elevating the latter while improving the whole society.

One of the stupidest and least persuasive parts of the book is the tedious discussion we get from Archie about his lust for one of the black murder suspects, Beth Tiger. Although Stout devotes several long passages to Beth’s beauty in the book, it would be too embarrassing for both you and me to go over all of them here. Instead I will give you the dumbest, funniest, and most accidentally racist part (and thus most reflective of fake white pomposity), where Archie first catches sight of the Black Venus at one of Wolfe’s grilling sessions:

“Tiger was one of those specimens who cannot be properly introduced by details. I’ll mention that her skin was about the color of an old solid-gold bowl Wolfe has in his room which he won’t allow Fritz to clean, that if she had been Cleopatra instead of what’s-her-name I wouldn’t have missed that movie, and that I had a problem with my eyes all evening, since with a group there I am supposed to watch expressions.”

Translation: Tiger was so beautiful that she has caused Archie to compromise his investigative objectivity and to forsake his crush on Elizabeth Taylor, considered the most beautiful woman in the world at that time, but who evidently couldn’t hold a candle to this golden specimen. Fans of the Wolfe stories know Archie better than this. Archie certainly does appreciate female beauty and he does not spare us the details when making these reports. But his admiration is never slavish or obsequious, and none of the white girls he takes a shine to would ever be able to distract him from his work. What makes Beth Tiger an exception to Archie’s policy of steadfastly dividing dames from detective work? Answer: she’s a black beauty. Clearly, Archie is no racist.

The civil rights element in this book does no service, and much harm, to our enjoyment of the plot. I have now read a handful of the Wolfe and Archie books, and I am a confirmed fan. When restricting himself to the world of orchids, gourmet cookery, and deductive reasoning, Stout does well. Indeed, no fictional hero can make me feel so welcome in his domicile as can Nero Wolfe in his brownstone on 35th Street. It is that milieu that Wolfe fans recall long after the names and criminal details of the stories have faded, and for my money it is often more fun to enter the brownstone than to visit 221b Baker Street. Stout had a powerful imagination and a magnificent gift for storytelling. But in A Right to Die, he allowed the charming bubble of his ordinarily ideology-free world to be punctured by the stupid and rotten zeitgeist of the ‘60’s civil rights movement, a horribly chosen maneuver which Stout usually avoided wisely and happily.

[EuroHackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wolfe's client, Paul Whipple, is a blast from the past - last seen as a key witness is #5 Too Many Cooks, he has come to Wolfe on behalf of his son, Dunbar. Dunbar is deep in the civil rights struggle and has fallen in love with a rich white woman, Susan Brooke, who is volunteering for the same organization, the ROCC. Daddy Whipple doesn't like the idea of the interracial marriage and wants Wolfe to look into Susan's background and make sure she's not trying to Make A Pronouncement with this decision to marry across race. Archie duly meets with Miss Brooke and scours her background, finding nothing wanting, only to be called back to New York because Susan has been found dead - and Dunbar made the discovery.

The case shifts now to Dunbar's defense, as he has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Wolfe doesn't believe Dunbar would kill his future fiancee, but he discovers plenty of people in their lives who also disapprove of an interracial marriage - including Susan's own family. Only when a second person ends up dead does the answer finally become clear, and it's a race against time before a third person is in the killer's crosshairs.

This is about what you'd expect for Nero Wolfe Takes on Civil Rights. He infamously has no regard for women at all, so the question is but a theoretical one to him, but he has a rather unique point of view, as he is not a white American or of the class for whom this is such a thorny issue. He more or less stays out of the racial aspect, but it gets predictably ugly when the murderer shows their true colors.

I should like the idea of the final clue being a linguistic one, but honestly it felt like such a reach after 150 pages of tail-chasing that it falls a little flat for me. I'd consider this a pretty middle of the road offering for a series perhaps already past its prime. Worthy of reading, but maybe not one to specifically seek out.

[Matthew Harrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, an enjoyable mystery and an interesting look at Wolfe and Goodwin's encounter with the current events of the 1960s Civil Rights movement. (How effectively Stout handled this has been addressed in other reviews.) My main struggle with the novel had to do with the assault on the suspension of disbelief required when reading the Nero Wolfe series. The novels are always set in the present day and span a period of forty years. The characters' ages seem to be fixed throughout the series. Ordinarily, I can deal with that. However, here Stout has brought back a character and events from nearly thirty years prior to this book, making acceptance of an ageless Nero Wolfe and Archie difficult. (That is, I am supposed to accept that they are reminded of an event twenty-odd years in the past, but Wolfe doesn't seem to be in his 70s or 80s, nor Archie in his 50s or 60s.)

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this audiobook. Written in 1964 many would find the subject matter outdated. But, in 1964 a White/Black romance was very controversial. I listened to this keeping the times in context. A Black professor who had listened to an impassioned speech by Nero Wolfe decades in the past comes to Wolfe with a personal problem. His son is intending to marry a White girl. He wants Wolfe to investigate the girl and her background. Ordinarily Wolfe would refuse such a case, but he feels indebted to the man for help he given Wolfe all those years ago. But when the girl is murdered and the professor's son is implicated the case becomes more intriguing. Wolfe and Archie, his right hand man, look into the people involved in the young woman's life. As usual, Wolfe uses his intellect to solve the case. I always enjoy Nero Wolfe novels.

[Amy the book-bat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had trouble getting into this one. The audio version I had was a digital recording of the cassette version, so there were a lot of long pauses between tapes. I didn't care for the narrator either. As for the story, it really had potential to be great. A black man wanted to marry a white woman in the 1960's. There was a lot of civil rights stuff, but none of it was really written about in depth. It was hard to care about the characters because they weren't developed very well. And the repeated use of the "N-word" drove me crazy. It was definitely overused in a work of this short length.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the Civil Rights Nero Wolfe, often awkward, trying hard to be productive without being mealy-mouthed and doing better than average at it. It was interesting to read it shortly after James Baldwin's "Another County," which is set in the same city at the same time and, in a very loose sense, "deals with some of the same issues." Needless to say they are very different books.

[Gu Kun · Rating 1 out of 5]

Been there. Seen it - done that - better. DNF.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. I like this Nero Wolfe.
But time has not been kind... or maybe it has. The book was written decades ago, when segregation and behaving in outrageous manners based on someone’s darker skin tone was still the norm. It’s awful to listen, yet if we remembered that all this racism happened not that long ago - when there are still people that are now in their 80s that had until their thirties to use the “colored” entrances, bathrooms, drinking fountains.... so many more stories to tell from that era, and so much to improve.
An interesting atmosphere in the story, and that left a deeply uncomfortable feeling for that era

[Ken Mattes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 40th story in the Rex Stout series.
The murder revolves around the loss of a civil rights volunteer and Rex Stout and Archie hope to even an old score.

[পাঠক · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read three horrible Wolfe stories before and this was my first novel, and it wasnt much better. The decidedly American, informal narration of Archie Goodwin amuses in the beginning but the novelty wears off quickly. Especially when the story doesn’t seem to move forward or sideways or another direction. The adjectives and sentences naming and praising the level of Wolfe's genius, or Saul Panzer's tailing skills for that matter, and the descriptions of the extent of his repute when Archie is outdoors interviewing people is at worst nauseating, at best exhausting. This whole technique of solving a mystery sitting at home with the information Archie reports to him in verabatim, (with that eidetic memory of his, because this is a very common ability that people have) might have worked better condensed into a story, with all the irrelevant babbling edited out, but we know how the actual stories actually are, they are babble without any detection or any point or any meaning or any worth. Thats what all these books seem to be: just plain babble.

In this one, the solving of the mystery required no special skills other than remembering information and cross-checking them. The other babble like the usual almost-Freudian competition over who gets the red leather chair, which is about half the book, and Wolfe’s rites and routine which is the other half, was aimed at distraction, and all Goodwin's running around at diversion from the murderer until it had to be finally revealed at a point when Stout must have ‘remembered’ that it was a detective book after all.

But the pro civil rights stance in the height of the movement was refreshing, so was the depiction of the prejudice. Some people might think it was exaggerated but I have seen enough of the world to know its truth. And it happens to be the third consecutive book I read with the word nigger or negro thrown in, with the most genourous helpings of it too, but it was also the most pleasant because the author's integrity in depiction of the prejudice ..and his stance of condemnation of it was readily recognizable.

[Lachlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in the early 60's this book deals with some of the issues of the civil rights movement, centring on the accusation of murder of an anglo-american by an african-american. Some of the language is striking when read today (though not as striking as "Too Many Cooks" - which this book is connected to) but was the language of the time so it makes a nice piece of history.

The characters are the same, and story is no radical departure from any other Wolfe book. What I appreciate in Stout was that he wrote well and in his own style. Nowadays he would have been expected to write longer and longer stories, which would force a change (like the dross Asimov pumped out) but 2-300 pages was his limit, and what he wrote worked well in this length.

[Oscar Despard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a superb mystery novel. It is the first time I have read a book by the author, and thus the first time I encountered Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Wolfe was a wonderful detective; irascible, with a small hint of comedy, he was interesting enough to read about on his own, even without the gripping storyline, while Goodwin was an great companion for him. The plot was completely absorbing, and I enjoyed the book from beginning to end. The different characters were individually intriguing, and the solution to the crime convincing. Along with being a terrific, page-turning novel, the book is set at an interesting historical time, which adds yet more intrigue to the book. Overall, the book was excellent, and Nero Wolfe is a character of which I shall certainly read more.

[Jdetrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating addition to the canon for two reasons...first of all, it's one of the rare cases that harkens back to one of the earlier books. Second, it deals with issues of civil rights, which is somewhat impressive since it was written in the early 60s, before it was certain which way the country would come down on the issue. While there are some questionable phrases and terminology, I think, at the end of the day, the book comes down to our villains being racist, while our heroes are not, and that's the important takeaway.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wolfe gets pulled into a murder investigation in payment of a debt incurred over 20 years ago. This one embroils him in a Civil Rights organization and a biracial marriage. Because of the setting, there are some strong racial terms in this one.

[Jon Norimann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Right to Die is another solid work in Rex Stouts Nero Wolfe series. There are some race aspects in the book that may seem a bit dated by 2018 but nothing outrageous. Wolfe is at his most brilliant but least eccentric in this book. Those who read some Wolfe books before know what they get.

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5
This was definitely not one of the top-tier Wolfe stories and it was missing most of the wit and charm of the best in the series but it was a solid mystery and an intriguing story.