And Be a Villain
Encyclopedia
And Be a Villain is a Nero Wolfe
detective novel by Rex Stout
, first published by the Viking Press
in 1948. The story was collected in the omnibus volumes Full House (Viking 1961) and Triple Zeck (Viking 1974).
And Be a Villain is the first of three Nero Wolfe books that involve crime syndicate leader Arnold Zeck and his widespread operations. The others in the Zeck Trilogy are The Second Confession
and In the Best Families
. In each book, Zeck — Wolfe's Moriarty
— telephones Wolfe to warn him off an investigation that Zeck believes will interfere with his crime syndicate. Each time, Wolfe refuses to cooperate, and anticipates that there will be consequences.
The title is from Act I, Scene V, line 114 of William Shakespeare
's Hamlet
, in which the prince says of his murderous uncle Claudius, "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." Remarking on the change from Stout's title to More Deaths Than One for the British edition, Rev. Fredrick G. Gotwald wrote, "It seems strange that the name was changed in a country from which the original came."
Madeline Fraser is a radio talk show host in the style of 1940s talk show hosts: not a buffoon who rants and blusters, but a sophisticated, trained broadcaster who knows how to connect with an audience of eight million listeners. Her show gets unexpected and unwanted publicity when one of her guests is poisoned in the middle of a broadcast. But what the press finds really juicy is that the poison was administered in her principal sponsor's soft drink.
That particular show featured two guests: Cyril Orchard, who published a weekly horse race tip sheet called Track Almanac, and F. O. Savarese, an assistant professor of mathematics at Columbia. Orchard was there to talk with Miss Fraser and her sidekick, Bill Meadows, about betting on horse races. Savarese was invited to talk about the probabilities of winning those bets.
One of the regular commercial features on the show is the ritual of drinking Hi-Spot, a soft drink. It's an event, starting with the sound of Meadows pushing back his chair and walking to the refrigerator to get the bottles, and continuing with opening the bottles and pouring Hi-Spot into glasses. Everyone at the broadcast table – Fraser, Meadows, Orchard and Savarese – gets a glass and marvels for the microphone at the taste of Hi-Spot, The Drink You Dream Of.
But Mr. Orchard has no sooner taken a swallow from his glass than, in Archie's words, he "makes terrible noises right into the microphone, and keels over, and pretty soon he's dead, and he got the poison right there on the broadcast, in the product of one of your sponsors."
Faced with being cleaned out financially by the necessity of paying his income taxes, Wolfe sends Archie on a sales call. Archie meets with some of the program's principals: Miss Fraser, Mr. Meadows, Deborah Koppel (Fraser's business manager), and Tully Strong (secretary of the show's Sponsors' Council). Archie points out that the best way to turn the negative publicity positive is to hire Nero Wolfe to investigate. Because he needs the money, Wolfe offers to take the case on a contingent basis: expenses only, with a fee payable if Wolfe gets both the murderer and credible evidence. Fraser and the several sponsors like the idea, and they hire Wolfe on that basis.
The police have focused their investigation on eight people who had the best opportunity during the broadcast to get the poison into Orchard: Fraser, Meadows, Koppel, Strong, Savarese, Nathan Straub (a member of an advertising agency that represents three of the Fraser sponsors), Elinor Vance (a script writer for the show) and Nancylee Shepherd. Miss Shepherd is a teenager who idolizes Miss Fraser and has organized a successful Fraser fan club – she is allowed to take part in the show by taking care of minor tasks such as carrying glasses to the table.
Wolfe concentrates on those eight, and calls a meeting at his office, attended by all but Savarese and Miss Shepherd. Wolfe learns that the idea of doing a show on horse race betting had been under consideration for some time, that the question had finally been put to the audience as a survey, and the response had been enthusiastic and positive. One of the listeners who responded was Savarese, who asked for an invitation to participate as a second guest and to act as an expert on what Tully Strong calls the law of averages.
Subsequently, Savarese shows up for an interview with Wolfe, but Wolfe does not yet have anything specific to pursue: he is, as he puts it, "… wandering around, poking at things." One of the things that Wolfe is poking at is Michigan. The poison in Orchard's glass was cyanide, and Miss Fraser's husband (who was Deborah Koppel's brother; Fraser and Koppel are sisters-in-law) committed suicide in Michigan some years before by taking cyanide.
Wolfe hasn't yet spoken with Miss Shepherd, and Lon Cohen helps out by informing Archie that she is in hiding with her mother in Atlantic City. Wolfe sends Saul to get them, but for once Saul is flummoxed: he takes a good approach, but Mrs. Shepherd is too wary for him. Wolfe then sends Archie to bring the Shepherds.
Mindful that even Saul stubbed his toe on this errand, Archie makes elaborate preparations. He composes a telegram, purporting to be from Mr. Shepherd, to tell Mrs. Shepherd and Nancylee to come immediately to Nero Wolfe's house. Then Archie takes a train to Atlantic City, arriving the next morning, at about the time that Saul is sending them the telegram.
The trick works: Archie follows Mrs. Shepherd and Nancylee to the brownstone, where they choose to submit to Wolfe's questioning. At first Wolfe lulls Nancylee with innocuous questions, but then he slowly approaches the topic of how the broadcasts are managed, particularly the Hi-Spot bottles and glasses. He finally catches the girl in a discrepancy: Elinor Vance has said that she puts eight bottles of Hi-Spot in the studio refrigerator to cool off for the broadcast, but Nancylee says it's seven.
Wolfe pounces on the discrepancy. Nancylee resists, but Wolfe forces her hand by threatening to convince the police to arrest Miss Fraser. Nancylee gives Wolfe what he's after: Elinor Vance has lied about how the Hi-Spot bottles are managed. Miss Vance always brings an extra bottle to the studio, and it always has a length of transparent tape encircling its neck.
Sending Nancylee and her mother back to Atlantic City, Wolfe gathers the main suspects and confronts them with the information he wrung from Nancylee. At first they try to humbug him, claiming that Miss Fraser prefers her Hi-Spot much colder than most people, and the tape is on the bottle to show which one goes to Miss Fraser. After Wolfe shows them the holes in that story, he gets the confession: the awful truth is that despite all the Hi-Spot hoopla on every show, the soft drink gives Miss Fraser indigestion. The tape is on the bottle to identify it as containing iced coffee, not Hi-Spot, so that Miss Fraser is able to pretend to drink the beverage in view of the studio audience. It complicates matters that the poison was in the bottle with the tape – so the intended victim wasn't Mr. Orchard at all, but Miss Fraser.
Now Wolfe sees a way to earn his fee without doing any further work. He tells Inspector Cramer that he has a fact, unknown to the police, without which they will be unable to solve the murder. Wolfe's proposal to Cramer: Cramer can have the fact if, when he subsequently exposes the murderer, he will also tell Wolfe's client that the case would not have been solved without the information that Wolfe provided. That, Wolfe concludes, will satisfy his client that Wolfe has earned his fee. Cramer agrees, Wolfe tells him why the tape was on the bottle – because of Miss Fraser's indigestion – and Cramer immediately phones Lieutenant Rowcliff to have Homicide shift gears: "We've got to start all over. It's one of those goddam babies where the wrong person got killed."
But it's not just the police that Wolfe has stirred up. For it to be generally known that Hi-Spot gives its main pitchman indigestion would dwarf the bad press from the murder itself. Tully Strong is furious that Wolfe disclosed the secret to the police. Traub, from the advertising agency, is upset because Bill Meadows says that Traub served Orchard the poisoned bottle. Savarese, who is trying to use mathematics to solve the murder, is annoyed because the police have set their questions on a new tack, and that's a variable that he can't account for.
Archie cools his heels for a week while Wolfe waits in vain for the police to identify the murderer with the clue he's given them. At last Archie gets so impatient that he enlists Lon Cohen's help in getting the Gazette to run a stinging editorial that criticizes Wolfe's lack of progress after the fanfare that followed his hiring. The editorial moves Wolfe to ask Cramer about another recent murder: that of Beula Poole, the publisher of What to Expect, a weekly forecast of political and economic affairs. Both Wolfe and Cramer think it no coincidence that two publishers of overpriced newsletters are murdered within a couple of weeks of one another. Cramer has looked into the Poole murder as well as Orchard's, and was unable to find a subscriber list in either victim's office.
Wolfe advertises for information about subscribers to either publication, and gets two nibbles. One leads him to a successful Park Avenue doctor, W. T. Michaels. Wolfe learns from Michaels that some of his patients received poison pen letters, implying unethical behavior by Michaels. Shortly after hearing of the letters, Michaels got a phone call telling him that the letters would stop if he subscribed to What to Expect for one year, at $10 per week. The caller stressed that the letters would then stop, and that there would be no requests for subscription renewals.
The second nibble is from Arnold Zeck, the shadowy head of a crime syndicate. In the past, Wolfe has made inquiries about Zeck and learned that he is resourceful and dangerous. Now Zeck has seen Wolfe's advertisement concerning Track Almanac and What to Expect, and warns him that he should drop the matter. Wolfe lets Zeck know that he will pursue the matter as far as necessary to complete the job he was hired for. The phone conversation ends, abruptly.
Wolfe assembles the known facts: that Zeck is behind a wholesale blackmailing enterprise. People are threatened by anonymous letters making false claims about them. They are then told that the letters will stop if they subscribe to a publication at a relatively high, but bearable, cost. They are also promised that the extortion will end after one year. Wolfe's inference is that one of the subscribers decided to stop the extortion by killing Orchard and Poole.
Wolfe calls Inspector Cramer to his office to give him this new information, only to find that Cramer learned about the blackmail connection a couple of days earlier. Cramer has since then had his men trying to track down anonymous letters about the Orchard suspects, but they have found nothing.
Archie tosses Lon the information about the blackmail and the subscriptions. The Gazette prints it, and that brings Hi-Spot's president to the brownstone. He is appalled that the case is no longer about murder – something "sensational and exciting" – but about blackmail – something dirty and disgusting. He gives Wolfe a check for the full amount of his fee and fires him. He also states that he's canceled his sponsorship of the Fraser radio program.
Wolfe once again sends Archie to call on the Fraser coterie, and he finds them discussing which company will replace Hi-Spot – they've had sixteen offers, one from a company that makes a candy called Meltettes. While Archie is waiting to be heard, Deborah Koppel tries a sample bite of a Meltette. She spits it out, convulses, and dies of cyanide poisoning.
Suddenly the police are all over the Fraser apartment, and all those present are to be subjected to a strip-search. Archie declines – he has a bogus anonymous letter in his pocket – and is taken into custody. When he finds the letter on Archie, Sgt. Purley Stebbins gets so mad that he, not Lt. Rowcliff, starts stuttering.
It looks as though Archie is going to have a charge of obstruction of justice hung on him until the police get a call from a radio station. Nero Wolfe has phoned the station to announce that he has solved all three murder cases and is ready to furnish the murderer's identity to the District Attorney. The radio station wants to know if the police have any comment.
They don't. They release Archie from custody and appear at Wolfe's brownstone, along with the surviving staff and sponsors. In a wrapup that's extraordinary even by Wolfe's standards, Wolfe forces admission after admission from those present, and concludes by exposing the murderer. A coda describes a phone call of congratulations from Zeck, one that foreshadows his next two appearances in the series.
Nero Wolfe
Nero Wolfe is a fictional detective, created in 1934 by the American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe's confidential assistant Archie Goodwin narrates the cases of the detective genius. Stout wrote 33 novels and 39 short stories from 1934 to 1974, with most of them set in New York City. Wolfe's...
detective novel by Rex Stout
Rex Stout
Rex Todhunter Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. Stout is 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...
, first published by the Viking Press
Viking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
in 1948. The story was collected in the omnibus volumes Full House (Viking 1961) and Triple Zeck (Viking 1974).
Plot introduction
A radio show guest is poisoned on the air during a plug for the show's sponsor, a soft-drink manufacturer. The negative publicity, and the low bank balance at tax time, brings Nero Wolfe into the case — and into his first recorded encounter with a shadowy master criminal.And Be a Villain is the first of three Nero Wolfe books that involve crime syndicate leader Arnold Zeck and his widespread operations. The others in the Zeck Trilogy are The Second Confession
The Second Confession
The Second Confession is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1949. The story was collected in the omnibus volume Triple Zeck ....
and In the Best Families
In the Best Families
In the Best Families is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1950...
. In each book, Zeck — Wolfe's Moriarty
Professor Moriarty
Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character and the archenemy of the detective Sherlock Holmes in the fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Moriarty is a criminal mastermind, described by Holmes as the "Napoleon of Crime". Doyle lifted the phrase from a real Scotland Yard inspector who was...
— telephones Wolfe to warn him off an investigation that Zeck believes will interfere with his crime syndicate. Each time, Wolfe refuses to cooperate, and anticipates that there will be consequences.
The title is from Act I, Scene V, line 114 of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, in which the prince says of his murderous uncle Claudius, "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." Remarking on the change from Stout's title to More Deaths Than One for the British edition, Rev. Fredrick G. Gotwald wrote, "It seems strange that the name was changed in a country from which the original came."
Plot summary
That particular show featured two guests: Cyril Orchard, who published a weekly horse race tip sheet called Track Almanac, and F. O. Savarese, an assistant professor of mathematics at Columbia. Orchard was there to talk with Miss Fraser and her sidekick, Bill Meadows, about betting on horse races. Savarese was invited to talk about the probabilities of winning those bets.
One of the regular commercial features on the show is the ritual of drinking Hi-Spot, a soft drink. It's an event, starting with the sound of Meadows pushing back his chair and walking to the refrigerator to get the bottles, and continuing with opening the bottles and pouring Hi-Spot into glasses. Everyone at the broadcast table – Fraser, Meadows, Orchard and Savarese – gets a glass and marvels for the microphone at the taste of Hi-Spot, The Drink You Dream Of.
But Mr. Orchard has no sooner taken a swallow from his glass than, in Archie's words, he "makes terrible noises right into the microphone, and keels over, and pretty soon he's dead, and he got the poison right there on the broadcast, in the product of one of your sponsors."
Faced with being cleaned out financially by the necessity of paying his income taxes, Wolfe sends Archie on a sales call. Archie meets with some of the program's principals: Miss Fraser, Mr. Meadows, Deborah Koppel (Fraser's business manager), and Tully Strong (secretary of the show's Sponsors' Council). Archie points out that the best way to turn the negative publicity positive is to hire Nero Wolfe to investigate. Because he needs the money, Wolfe offers to take the case on a contingent basis: expenses only, with a fee payable if Wolfe gets both the murderer and credible evidence. Fraser and the several sponsors like the idea, and they hire Wolfe on that basis.
The police have focused their investigation on eight people who had the best opportunity during the broadcast to get the poison into Orchard: Fraser, Meadows, Koppel, Strong, Savarese, Nathan Straub (a member of an advertising agency that represents three of the Fraser sponsors), Elinor Vance (a script writer for the show) and Nancylee Shepherd. Miss Shepherd is a teenager who idolizes Miss Fraser and has organized a successful Fraser fan club – she is allowed to take part in the show by taking care of minor tasks such as carrying glasses to the table.
Wolfe concentrates on those eight, and calls a meeting at his office, attended by all but Savarese and Miss Shepherd. Wolfe learns that the idea of doing a show on horse race betting had been under consideration for some time, that the question had finally been put to the audience as a survey, and the response had been enthusiastic and positive. One of the listeners who responded was Savarese, who asked for an invitation to participate as a second guest and to act as an expert on what Tully Strong calls the law of averages.
Subsequently, Savarese shows up for an interview with Wolfe, but Wolfe does not yet have anything specific to pursue: he is, as he puts it, "… wandering around, poking at things." One of the things that Wolfe is poking at is Michigan. The poison in Orchard's glass was cyanide, and Miss Fraser's husband (who was Deborah Koppel's brother; Fraser and Koppel are sisters-in-law) committed suicide in Michigan some years before by taking cyanide.
Wolfe hasn't yet spoken with Miss Shepherd, and Lon Cohen helps out by informing Archie that she is in hiding with her mother in Atlantic City. Wolfe sends Saul to get them, but for once Saul is flummoxed: he takes a good approach, but Mrs. Shepherd is too wary for him. Wolfe then sends Archie to bring the Shepherds.
Mindful that even Saul stubbed his toe on this errand, Archie makes elaborate preparations. He composes a telegram, purporting to be from Mr. Shepherd, to tell Mrs. Shepherd and Nancylee to come immediately to Nero Wolfe's house. Then Archie takes a train to Atlantic City, arriving the next morning, at about the time that Saul is sending them the telegram.
The trick works: Archie follows Mrs. Shepherd and Nancylee to the brownstone, where they choose to submit to Wolfe's questioning. At first Wolfe lulls Nancylee with innocuous questions, but then he slowly approaches the topic of how the broadcasts are managed, particularly the Hi-Spot bottles and glasses. He finally catches the girl in a discrepancy: Elinor Vance has said that she puts eight bottles of Hi-Spot in the studio refrigerator to cool off for the broadcast, but Nancylee says it's seven.
Wolfe pounces on the discrepancy. Nancylee resists, but Wolfe forces her hand by threatening to convince the police to arrest Miss Fraser. Nancylee gives Wolfe what he's after: Elinor Vance has lied about how the Hi-Spot bottles are managed. Miss Vance always brings an extra bottle to the studio, and it always has a length of transparent tape encircling its neck.
Sending Nancylee and her mother back to Atlantic City, Wolfe gathers the main suspects and confronts them with the information he wrung from Nancylee. At first they try to humbug him, claiming that Miss Fraser prefers her Hi-Spot much colder than most people, and the tape is on the bottle to show which one goes to Miss Fraser. After Wolfe shows them the holes in that story, he gets the confession: the awful truth is that despite all the Hi-Spot hoopla on every show, the soft drink gives Miss Fraser indigestion. The tape is on the bottle to identify it as containing iced coffee, not Hi-Spot, so that Miss Fraser is able to pretend to drink the beverage in view of the studio audience. It complicates matters that the poison was in the bottle with the tape – so the intended victim wasn't Mr. Orchard at all, but Miss Fraser.
Now Wolfe sees a way to earn his fee without doing any further work. He tells Inspector Cramer that he has a fact, unknown to the police, without which they will be unable to solve the murder. Wolfe's proposal to Cramer: Cramer can have the fact if, when he subsequently exposes the murderer, he will also tell Wolfe's client that the case would not have been solved without the information that Wolfe provided. That, Wolfe concludes, will satisfy his client that Wolfe has earned his fee. Cramer agrees, Wolfe tells him why the tape was on the bottle – because of Miss Fraser's indigestion – and Cramer immediately phones Lieutenant Rowcliff to have Homicide shift gears: "We've got to start all over. It's one of those goddam babies where the wrong person got killed."
But it's not just the police that Wolfe has stirred up. For it to be generally known that Hi-Spot gives its main pitchman indigestion would dwarf the bad press from the murder itself. Tully Strong is furious that Wolfe disclosed the secret to the police. Traub, from the advertising agency, is upset because Bill Meadows says that Traub served Orchard the poisoned bottle. Savarese, who is trying to use mathematics to solve the murder, is annoyed because the police have set their questions on a new tack, and that's a variable that he can't account for.
Archie cools his heels for a week while Wolfe waits in vain for the police to identify the murderer with the clue he's given them. At last Archie gets so impatient that he enlists Lon Cohen's help in getting the Gazette to run a stinging editorial that criticizes Wolfe's lack of progress after the fanfare that followed his hiring. The editorial moves Wolfe to ask Cramer about another recent murder: that of Beula Poole, the publisher of What to Expect, a weekly forecast of political and economic affairs. Both Wolfe and Cramer think it no coincidence that two publishers of overpriced newsletters are murdered within a couple of weeks of one another. Cramer has looked into the Poole murder as well as Orchard's, and was unable to find a subscriber list in either victim's office.
Wolfe advertises for information about subscribers to either publication, and gets two nibbles. One leads him to a successful Park Avenue doctor, W. T. Michaels. Wolfe learns from Michaels that some of his patients received poison pen letters, implying unethical behavior by Michaels. Shortly after hearing of the letters, Michaels got a phone call telling him that the letters would stop if he subscribed to What to Expect for one year, at $10 per week. The caller stressed that the letters would then stop, and that there would be no requests for subscription renewals.
The second nibble is from Arnold Zeck, the shadowy head of a crime syndicate. In the past, Wolfe has made inquiries about Zeck and learned that he is resourceful and dangerous. Now Zeck has seen Wolfe's advertisement concerning Track Almanac and What to Expect, and warns him that he should drop the matter. Wolfe lets Zeck know that he will pursue the matter as far as necessary to complete the job he was hired for. The phone conversation ends, abruptly.
Wolfe assembles the known facts: that Zeck is behind a wholesale blackmailing enterprise. People are threatened by anonymous letters making false claims about them. They are then told that the letters will stop if they subscribe to a publication at a relatively high, but bearable, cost. They are also promised that the extortion will end after one year. Wolfe's inference is that one of the subscribers decided to stop the extortion by killing Orchard and Poole.
Wolfe calls Inspector Cramer to his office to give him this new information, only to find that Cramer learned about the blackmail connection a couple of days earlier. Cramer has since then had his men trying to track down anonymous letters about the Orchard suspects, but they have found nothing.
Archie tosses Lon the information about the blackmail and the subscriptions. The Gazette prints it, and that brings Hi-Spot's president to the brownstone. He is appalled that the case is no longer about murder – something "sensational and exciting" – but about blackmail – something dirty and disgusting. He gives Wolfe a check for the full amount of his fee and fires him. He also states that he's canceled his sponsorship of the Fraser radio program.
Wolfe once again sends Archie to call on the Fraser coterie, and he finds them discussing which company will replace Hi-Spot – they've had sixteen offers, one from a company that makes a candy called Meltettes. While Archie is waiting to be heard, Deborah Koppel tries a sample bite of a Meltette. She spits it out, convulses, and dies of cyanide poisoning.
Suddenly the police are all over the Fraser apartment, and all those present are to be subjected to a strip-search. Archie declines – he has a bogus anonymous letter in his pocket – and is taken into custody. When he finds the letter on Archie, Sgt. Purley Stebbins gets so mad that he, not Lt. Rowcliff, starts stuttering.
It looks as though Archie is going to have a charge of obstruction of justice hung on him until the police get a call from a radio station. Nero Wolfe has phoned the station to announce that he has solved all three murder cases and is ready to furnish the murderer's identity to the District Attorney. The radio station wants to know if the police have any comment.
They don't. They release Archie from custody and appear at Wolfe's brownstone, along with the surviving staff and sponsors. In a wrapup that's extraordinary even by Wolfe's standards, Wolfe forces admission after admission from those present, and concludes by exposing the murderer. A coda describes a phone call of congratulations from Zeck, one that foreshadows his next two appearances in the series.
The unfamiliar word
In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. And Be A Villain contains several examples, including the following:- Temerarious. Chapter 15.
- Chambrer. Chapter 17. (This verb might well have been apt in the middle of the 20th century, but not toward the beginning of the 21st.)
- Fructify. Chapter 19.
- Dysgenic. Chapter 20.
Cast of characters
- Nero Wolfe — The private investigator
- Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant, and the narrator of all Wolfe stories
- Cyril Orchard and Beula Poole — Publishers of high priced newsletters, both murder victims
- Madeline Fraser — The host of a radio talk show and one of Wolfe's clients
- Deborah Koppel — Miss Fraser's manager and sister-in-law
- Bill Meadows — Miss Fraser's "sidekick" on the radio
- Elinor Vance — Scriptwriter for the show
- Tully Strong — Secretary of the show's Sponsors' Council
- F. O. Savarese — Mathematics professor who appeared on the radio show during which the first murder occurred
- Nathan Straub — Member of an advertising agency that represents the show's sponsors
- Nancylee Shepherd — Teenage organizer of a very successful Madeline Fraser fan club
- Walter Anderson — President of the firm that makes Hi-Spot
- W. T. Michaels — A medical doctor and victim of extortion
- Lon Cohen — An editor at the Gazette
- Inspector Cramer, Lieutenant George Rowcliff, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins — Representing Manhattan Homicide
Problematic probability
In Chapter 8, Professor Savarese provides a formula for the normal curve, touting it as a tool that could be used in crime detection. Unfortunately, the typesetting process let the professor down. Over time, different editions of And Be a Villain represent the formula differently, changing (for example) exponents from 2 to 3. Furthermore, the equation contains a mysterious "V" which is in fact just the leftmost portion of a radical sign. A more accurate discussion of the probability density function can be found at Normal distribution.Reviews and commentary
- Jacques BarzunJacques BarzunJacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...
and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of CrimeA Catalogue of CrimeA Catalogue of Crime, by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, is a critique of crime fiction first published in 1971. A revised edition was published in 1989 by Barzun after the death of Taylor in 1985. The book was awarded a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in...
— A first-rate sample of the author's art, this tale brings us face to face with the radio advertising of a beverage which the lady who promotes it cannot abide. Hence hanky-panky with the bottle of substitute liquid and resulting doubt as to whom the dose was intended for. Archie is spectacular in word and deed. - The New York Times Book ReviewThe New York Times Book ReviewThe New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
(September 26, 1948) — The income tax has made such a dent in Nero Wolfe's bank balance that he finds it necessary to look for work instead of waiting for it to come to him as is his usual custom. He selects a case upon which the New York Police Department has been working for six days without getting anywhere, and he sends Archie Goodwin out as his envoy to persuade the people involved that it would be to their interest to employ Wolfe. The case has to do with what happened on a radio program sponsored by the manufacturers of a beverage called Hi-Spot. Cyril Orchard, a guest on the program, drank a glass of Hi-Spot and dropped dead. The other persons present drank the same beverage, but there was no cyanide in their glasses. So much, and nothing more of any consequence, is known to the police. Nobody admits to remembering who poured Orchard's drink or who handed him the glass. Archie's patience is sorely tried when weeks pass by with scarcely any progress being made. It seems to him that Wolfe is not even trying, but he is mistaken. Wolfe is thinking, and when that giant intellect goes to work let the malefactor beware. The story is enlivened by Archie's expert needling of his employer and by Wolfe's lively passages at arms with the bigwigs of the Homicide Department. - Saturday Review of Literature (October 9, 1949) — Poisoning, in radio studio, of beverage maker's guest, provides action and needed funds for Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Nero "takes crazy dive into two-foot tank" and snares blackmail killer in hurricane off-stage finish of major adventure.
Publication history
- 1948, New York: The Viking PressViking PressViking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
, September 27, 1948, hardcover
- In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #9, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part I, Otto PenzlerOtto PenzlerOtto Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction in the United States, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, where he lives.-Biography:...
describes the first editionEdition (book)The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed “from substantially the same setting of type,” including all minor typographical variants.- First edition :...
of And Be a Villain: "Gray cloth, front cover and spine printed with red lettering and green rules; rear cover blank. Issued in a black, white, red and green dust wrapper. ... With this title, The Mystery GuildBook of the Month ClubThe Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
began to publish the Nero Wolfe books. The cover of its [book club] edition is smooth, while the trade edition is heavily textured." - In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of And Be a Villain had a value of between $300 and $500. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.
- 1948, New York: Viking (Mystery GuildBook of the Month ClubThe Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
), November 1948, hardcover
- 1948, New York: Viking (Mystery Guild
- The far less valuable Viking book club edition may be distinguished from the first edition in three ways:
-
- The dust jacket has "Book Club Edition" printed on the inside front flap, and the price is absent (first editions may be price clipped if they were given as gifts).
- Book club editions are sometimes thinner and 1950s and newer Viking BCEs are taller (usually a quarter of an inch) than first editions, but the BCE of And Be a Villain (and perhaps some other pre-1950s Viking Nero Wolfe BCEs) is the same height as the first edition.
- Book club editions are bound in cardboard, and first editions are bound in cloth (or have at least a cloth spine).
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- Another distinguishing characteristic of the Nero Wolfe Viking first editions is the appearance of a listing of other books by Rex Stout preceding the title page. Such a listing does not appear in the BCEs.
- 1948, New York: Book League of America, December 1948, hardcover
- 1948, Toronto: MacmillanMacmillan PublishersMacmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, 1948, hardcover - 1948, London: Collins (White Circle) #223c, 1948, paperback (as More Deaths Than One)
- 1949, London: Collins Crime ClubCollins Crime ClubThe Collins Crime Club was an imprint of UK book publishers William Collins & Co Ltd and ran from May 6, 1930 to April 1994. Customers registered their name and address with the club and were sent a newsletter every three months which advised them of the latest books which had been or were to be...
, February 21, 1948, hardcover (as More Deaths Than One) - 1950, New York: BantamBantam BooksBantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
#824, September 1950, paperback - 1955, New York: The Viking Press, Full House: A Nero Wolfe Omnibus (with The League of Frightened MenThe League of Frightened MenThe League of Frightened Men is the second Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout. The story was serialized in six issues of The Saturday Evening Post under the title The Frightened Men. The novel was published in 1935 by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc...
and Curtains for ThreeCurtains for ThreeCurtains for Three is a collection of Nero Wolfe mystery novellas by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1951 and itself collected in the omnibus volume Full House...
), May 15, 1955, hardcover - 1958, London: Fontana #255, 1958, paperback (as More Deaths Than One)
- 1964, London: Panther, 1964, paperback (as And Be a Villain)
- 1973, London: Tom Stacey, 1973, hardcover (as More Deaths Than One)
- 1974, New York: The Viking Press, Triple Zeck: A Nero Wolfe Omnibus (with The Second ConfessionThe Second ConfessionThe Second Confession is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1949. The story was collected in the omnibus volume Triple Zeck ....
and In the Best FamiliesIn the Best FamiliesIn the Best Families is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1950...
), April 5, 1974, hardcover - 1975, Tiptree, Essex: Severn House Publishers, 1975, hardcover (as More Deaths Than One)
- 1976, London: Penguin, The First Rex Stout Omnibus (with The Doorbell RangThe Doorbell RangThe Doorbell Rang is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1965.-Plot introduction:Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who gave away 10,000 copies of a book that is critical of the Bureau and...
and The Second ConfessionThe Second ConfessionThe Second Confession is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1949. The story was collected in the omnibus volume Triple Zeck ....
), 1976, paperback (as More Deaths Than One) - 1992, London: Little, Brown and Company (UK) Limited ISBN 0316903140 1992, hardcover (as More Deaths Than One)
- 1994, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 0553239317 February 1994, paperback
- 2005, Auburn, California: The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters ISBN 1572704985 December 10, 2005, audio CD (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
- 2011, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 978-0-307-78390-5 February 23, 2011, e-bookE-bookAn electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...