Death of an Art Collector: A Nero Wolfe Mystery

by Robert Goldsborough

Overview

An art hoarder’s suspicious death paints a nasty picture for Nero Wolfe.

No matter how fabulously he’s being courted, infamously dour “art hog” Arthur Wordell isn’t keen on favoring the new Guggenheim Museum with his extensive collection. Even at the urging of his beloved daughter, Nadia. Then, the night after the museum’s fête, Arthur takes a twenty-story plunge from the window of his Times Square office. Nadia thinks it’s no mere coincidence.
 
Eccentric, yes. Suicidal, no. Private investigator Nero Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, agree. Especially after eyeballing Arthur’s enemies and sycophants, including his ex-wife, a covetous curator, a troika of obsequious advisors, and an outré Greenwich Village artist anxious to see her work out of storage and on the walls of the “Guggie.”
 
For Wolfe, there’s a problem: Arthur didn’t leave a will. Without a beneficiary not a soul in Arthur’s circle is set to benefit from his death. Nor do they show any customary indication of guilt. If anybody can solve a seemingly unsolvable masterpiece of murder, it’s Wolfe. Unfortunately, this time, New York’s artful investigator is, admittedly, stumped.
 
Continuing the acclaimed series—which also includes The Battered Badge, Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, Murder in the Ball Park, Archie in the Crosshairs, and Murder, Stage Left—Nero Award–winning author Robert Goldsborough “does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy” (Booklist).
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504057547
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Publication date:	05/14/2019
Series:	The Nero Wolfe Mysteries , #14
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	418,642
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Robert Goldsborough (b. 1937) is an American author best known for continuing Rex Stout’s famous Nero Wolfe series. Born in Chicago, he attended Northwestern University and upon graduation went to work for the Associated Press, beginning a lifelong career in journalism that would include long periods at the Chicago Tribune and Advertising Age.
While at the Tribune, Goldsborough began writing mysteries in the voice of Rex Stout, the creator of iconic sleuths Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Goldsborough’s first novel starring Wolfe, Murder in E Minor (1986), was met with acclaim from both critics and devoted fans, winning a Nero Award from the Wolfe Pack. Nine more Wolfe mysteries followed, including Death on Deadline (1987) and Fade to Black (1990). The Battered Badge (2018) is his most recent novel.

Editorial Reviews

03/18/2019

Set in the late 1950s, Goldsborough’s disappointing 14th Nero Wolfe mystery (after 2018’s The Battered Badge) finds Wolfe’s assistant, Archie Goodwin, attending a fundraising dinner at the Waldorf Astoria to benefit the nearly completed Guggenheim Museum. Archie sits at a table that includes affluent art collector Arthur Wordell, who’s expected to donate most of his collection to the new museum. Two weeks after the event, Wordell falls to his death from the 20th floor of his Manhattan office building. Since the dead man was in the habit of sitting on his window ledge to take in the view, the police believe that the fall was accidental, but Wordell’s daughter is certain that her father was pushed. Archie helps round up the suspects, many of whom shared his table at the fund-raiser, including the curator of Wordell’s collection. As usual, the scenes where Wolfe interrogates the suspects are effective, but the climax, in which he reveals the killer’s identity, falls flat. Nonetheless, Goldsborough convincingly simulates the prose and characterizations of Wolfe’s creator, Rex Stout (1886–1975). Fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Erik Simon, Martha Kaplan Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

2019-03-18
Everyone in Manhattan's art world, from Frank Lloyd Wright on down, seems to be pressing Nero Wolfe to determine whether a wealthy collector fell or was pushed out of his office window.

A dinner to preview the 1959 opening of the Guggenheim Museum for its upper-crust patrons introduces Archie Goodwin, who's accompanying his philanthropist girlfriend, Lily Rowan, to the soon-to-be-deceased Arthur Wordell, the father of Lily's friend Nadia, and most of the intimates who seem fated to rub him the wrong way: biographer Faith Richmond, Art & Artists publisher Emory Sterling, curator at large Henry Banks, fine arts professor Boyd Tatum, abstract expressionist painter Zondra Zagreb, and Roger Mason, mopey curator of the Wordell collection. The only suspect missing from the group is Alexis Evans Farrell Wordell, the long-estranged wife who's evidently hoping her refusal to divorce the collector will put her first in line if he dies intestate, as he obligingly does by tumbling 20 stories from the nondescript midtown office window in which he's wont to perch to the parking lot below. Nadia, who's convinced her father's death was neither accident nor suicide, importunes Wolfe (The Battered Badge, 2018, etc.) to investigate. So does Alexis, who makes no secret of the fact that she thinks Nadia is responsible. And so does Wright, famed architect of the Guggenheim, who thinks Wolfe owes it to the city to take the case without a fee. Remarkably, Wright's visit to Wolfe's brownstone is no more remarkable than any of the other visits he gets from suspects, some at their insistence, some at his. No clues emerge from their conversations; no one in particular is implicated; and everyone sounds so much like everyone else that you may forget who's sitting in the red leather chair this time. When it's time for the big reveal, Wolfe summons all interested parties, tosses out some vague remarks that could implicate anyone, and enjoys the dubious satisfaction of seeing the killer snap like a week-old breadstick. As if.

If it weren't for the proper names and historical references, fans would never know they were reading a continuation of one of the 20th century's great detective franchises.

Kirkus Reviews