Plot It Yourself
Encyclopedia
Plot It Yourself is a Nero Wolfe
detective novel by Rex Stout
, published by the Viking Press
in 1959, and also collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces (Viking 1969).
In Plot It Yourself, Stout draws on his lengthy experience with book publishers, with authors (via, for example, his presidency of the Authors Guild), and with the writing process itself. Apart from the series' continuing characters, all the players in the book are directly associated with the publishing industry. Stout adds as subtext his take on the peculiar relationship between book authors and book publishers — part symbiosis, part animosity. Stout himself experienced at least one instance of contentious relations with his publishers.
These claims have damaged both the publishers and the authors. The Book Publishers of America (BPA) and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists (NAAD) form a joint committee to explore ways to stop the fraud, and the committee comes to Wolfe for help. The first four claims have shared certain characteristics: in the first, for example, the best selling author Ellen Sturdevant is accused by the virtually unknown Alice Porter of stealing a recent book's plot from a story that Porter sent her, asking her suggestions for improvement. Sturdevant ignores the accusation until Porter's manuscript is found in Sturdevant's house. The writing and publishing industry is convinced that the manuscript was planted, but the case was settled out of court.
That scenario, with minor variations, is repeated four times, with other authors and by other plagiarists. The latest complaint has been made only recently, and the target of the complaint wonders when a manuscript will show up somewhere that it wasn't the day before.
Wolfe's first step is to acquire and read the manuscripts that form the basis for the complaints. Wolfe's love of literature turns out to be useful in his investigation: from the internal evidence in the manuscripts, Wolfe concludes that they were all written by the same person. Aspects such as diction, punctuation and syntax – and, most convincingly, paragraphing – point Wolfe directly to the conclusion that one person wrote all the manuscripts.
At first, this seems like progress, but then it becomes clear that it's the opposite. The task initially seemed to be to show that the first fraud inspired a sequence of copycats, and the universe of suspects was limited to the complainants. But now that Wolfe has determined that one person wrote all the fraudulent manuscripts, that one person could be anyone. Wolfe meets with the joint committee to discuss the situation.
A committee member suggests that one of the plagiarists be offered money, along with a guarantee of immunity, to identify the manuscripts' actual author. The committee concurs, and asks Wolfe to arrange for the offer to be made to Simon Jacobs. The next day, Archie goes to make the offer to Jacobs, but finds Sergeant Purley Stebbins at the Jacobs apartment: Mr. Jacobs has been murdered, stabbed to death the night before.
In short order, Archie discovers two more dead plagiarists. Wolfe blames himself for not taking steps to protect Jacobs and the others, who had been made targets by the plan to pay for information. The only one left is Alice Porter, who first worked the fraud successfully, and who is now repeating it with Amy Wynn and her publisher. Wolfe, concentrating on Porter, catches her in a contradiction that identifies the murderer for him.
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...
, 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 1959, and also collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces (Viking 1969).
Plot introduction
A group of authors and publishers hires Nero Wolfe to investigate a series of plagiarism claims. Wolfe, by his own admission, bungles the investigation so badly that three murders result.In Plot It Yourself, Stout draws on his lengthy experience with book publishers, with authors (via, for example, his presidency of the Authors Guild), and with the writing process itself. Apart from the series' continuing characters, all the players in the book are directly associated with the publishing industry. Stout adds as subtext his take on the peculiar relationship between book authors and book publishers — part symbiosis, part animosity. Stout himself experienced at least one instance of contentious relations with his publishers.
Plot summary
Someone has been getting away with a different spin on plagiarism. It's the old scam – an unsuccessful author stealing ideas from an established source – but it's being worked differently. Now, the plagiarists are claiming that the well known authors are stealing from them (as Wolfe puts it, "plagiarism upside down."). And they are making their claims stick: three successful claims in four years, one awaiting trial, and one that's just been made.These claims have damaged both the publishers and the authors. The Book Publishers of America (BPA) and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists (NAAD) form a joint committee to explore ways to stop the fraud, and the committee comes to Wolfe for help. The first four claims have shared certain characteristics: in the first, for example, the best selling author Ellen Sturdevant is accused by the virtually unknown Alice Porter of stealing a recent book's plot from a story that Porter sent her, asking her suggestions for improvement. Sturdevant ignores the accusation until Porter's manuscript is found in Sturdevant's house. The writing and publishing industry is convinced that the manuscript was planted, but the case was settled out of court.
That scenario, with minor variations, is repeated four times, with other authors and by other plagiarists. The latest complaint has been made only recently, and the target of the complaint wonders when a manuscript will show up somewhere that it wasn't the day before.
Wolfe's first step is to acquire and read the manuscripts that form the basis for the complaints. Wolfe's love of literature turns out to be useful in his investigation: from the internal evidence in the manuscripts, Wolfe concludes that they were all written by the same person. Aspects such as diction, punctuation and syntax – and, most convincingly, paragraphing – point Wolfe directly to the conclusion that one person wrote all the manuscripts.
At first, this seems like progress, but then it becomes clear that it's the opposite. The task initially seemed to be to show that the first fraud inspired a sequence of copycats, and the universe of suspects was limited to the complainants. But now that Wolfe has determined that one person wrote all the fraudulent manuscripts, that one person could be anyone. Wolfe meets with the joint committee to discuss the situation.
A committee member suggests that one of the plagiarists be offered money, along with a guarantee of immunity, to identify the manuscripts' actual author. The committee concurs, and asks Wolfe to arrange for the offer to be made to Simon Jacobs. The next day, Archie goes to make the offer to Jacobs, but finds Sergeant Purley Stebbins at the Jacobs apartment: Mr. Jacobs has been murdered, stabbed to death the night before.
In short order, Archie discovers two more dead plagiarists. Wolfe blames himself for not taking steps to protect Jacobs and the others, who had been made targets by the plan to pay for information. The only one left is Alice Porter, who first worked the fraud successfully, and who is now repeating it with Amy Wynn and her publisher. Wolfe, concentrating on Porter, catches her in a contradiction that identifies the murderer for him.
Cast of characters
- Nero Wolfe — The private investigator
- Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories)
- Philip Harvey, Amy Wynn, Mortimer Oshin — Representing the NAAD
- Gerald Knapp, Reuben Imhoff and Thomas Dexter — Representing the BPA
- Cora Ballard — Executive secretary for the NAAD
- Alice Porter, Simon Jacobs, Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert — Plagiarists all
- Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins — Representing Manhattan Homicide
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 plagiarism racket brings Nero and Archie into conflict with each other and with crime. Excellent repartee on all hands and strong suspense. The murderer's confession alone is below the surrounding perfection. - Anthony BoucherAnthony BoucherAnthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
, 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...
(November 8, 1959) — Rex Stout has been a member, an officer and a guiding spirit of many an organization of professional writers, and his lively knowledge of such organizations brightens Plot It Yourself, in which Nero Wolfe's client is the Joint Committee on Plagiarism of the National Association of Authors and Dramatists and the Book Publishers of America. An adroit scheme for bringing fraudulent chargers of plagiarism leads into murder and to an error by Wolfe which so enrages him that he vows to drink no beer and eat no meat until he solves the case — which he does promptly and satisfactorily in one of his better book-length adventures. - Kirkus ReviewsKirkus ReviewsKirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
(September 1, 1959) — An ingenious story — as successive charges of plagiarism are brought against writers and publishing houses, and confirmatory evidence presented which seems to make it something more than blackmail. - L. G. Offord, The San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
(December 13, 1959) — For writers or anyone who wants to know what goes on in the literary world, this is wonderful stuff ... There's a good surprise finish and a masterly last scene. - Nancy PearlNancy PearlNancy Pearl is an American librarian, best-selling author, literary critic and was, until August 2004, the Executive Director of the Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library...
, Book Lust — When Stout is on top of his game, which is most of the time, his diabolically clever plotting and his storytelling ability exceed that of any other mystery writer you can name, including Agatha Christie, who invented her own eccentric genius detective Hercule Poirot. Although in the years since Stout's death I find myself going back and rereading his entire oeuvre every year or two, I return with particular pleasure to these five novels: 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...
; Plot It Yourself; Murder by the BookMurder by the BookMurder by the Book is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout published in 1951 by the Viking Press, and collected in the omnibus volume Royal Flush .-Plot summary:...
; Champagne for OneChampagne for OneChampagne for One is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1958.The back matter of the 1995 Bantam edition of this book includes an exchange of correspondence between Stout and his editor at Viking Press, Marshall Best...
; and GambitGambit (novel)Gambit is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1962.-Plot introduction:A chess prodigy is poisoned during a club tournament, and the police arrest the member who served the victim hot chocolate...
. - Saturday Review of Literature (January 23, 1960) — Mass plagiarism charges send New York publishers and authors (lions and lambs) to Nero Wolfe for help; triple-murder sequence also puts damper on belles-lettres. Usual pro performance, with Archie Goodwin never so flip.
- Terry TeachoutTerry TeachoutTerry Teachout is a critic, biographer and blogger. He is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the chief culture critic of Commentary, and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in the Friday Wall Street Journal...
, About Last Night, "Forty years with Nero Wolfe" (January 12, 2009) — Rex Stout's witty, fast-moving prose hasn't dated a day, while Wolfe himself is one of the enduringly great eccentrics of popular fiction. I've spent the past four decades reading and re-reading Stout's novels for pleasure, and they have yet to lose their savor ... It is to revel in such writing that I return time and again to Stout's books, and in particular to 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...
, Some Buried CaesarSome Buried CaesarSome Buried Caesar is the sixth Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout. The story first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine , under the title "The Red Bull." It was first published in book form by Farrar & Rinehart in 1939...
, The Silent SpeakerThe Silent SpeakerThe Silent Speaker is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1946. It was published just after World War II, and key plot elements reflect the lingering effects of the war: housing shortages and restrictions on consumer goods, including government...
, Too Many WomenToo Many WomenToo Many Women is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, published in 1947 by the Viking Press. The novel was also collected in the omnibus volume All Aces .-Plot introduction:...
, Murder by the BookMurder by the BookMurder by the Book is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout published in 1951 by the Viking Press, and collected in the omnibus volume Royal Flush .-Plot summary:...
, Before MidnightBefore MidnightBefore Midnight is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout published in 1955 by the Viking Press. The story was also collected in the omnibus volume Three Trumps .-Plot introduction:...
, Plot It Yourself, Too Many ClientsToo Many ClientsToo Many Clients is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1960, and collected in the omnibus volume Three Aces .-Plot introduction:...
, 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 Death of a DoxyDeath of a DoxyDeath of a Doxy is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by Viking Press in 1966.-Plot introduction:Orrie Cather, one of Wolfe's operatives, has been secretly seeing a wealthy man's kept mistress at her secret lovenest...
, which are for me the best of all the full-length Wolfe novels.
Publication history
- 1959, 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...
, October 30, 1959, hardcover
- In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #10, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part II, 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 Plot It Yourself: "Blue-green cloth, front cover and spine printed with red; rear cover blank. Issued in a mainly red pictorial dust wrapper." - In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of Plot It Yourself had a value of between $200 and $350. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.
- 1960, 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...
), February 1960, hardcover
- 1960, 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 always taller (usually a quarter of an inch) than first editions.
- Book club editions are bound in cardboard, and first editions are bound in cloth (or have at least a cloth spine).
- 1960, 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...
, August 4, 1960, hardcover (as Murder in Style) - 1960, 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...
#A2156, December 1960, paperback - 1969, New York: The Viking Press, Kings Full of Aces: A Nero Wolfe Omnibus (with Too Many CooksToo Many CooksToo Many Cooks is the fifth Nero Wolfe detective novel by American mystery writer Rex Stout. The story was serialized in The American Magazine before its publication in book form in 1938 by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc...
and Triple JeopardyTriple JeopardyTriple Jeopardy is a collection of Nero Wolfe mystery novellas by Rex Stout, published by the Viking Press in 1952. Itself collected in the omnibus volume Kings Full of Aces , the book comprises three stories that first appeared in The American Magazine:* "Home to Roost" * "The Cop-Killer" Triple...
), January 28, 1969, hardcover - 1986, New York: Bantam BooksBantam 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...
ISBN 0553253638 1986, paperback - 1989, New York: Bantam Books ISBN 0553278495 April 1989, paperback
- 1993, London: Little, Brown and Company (UK) Ltd., ISBN 0316904597 1993, hardcover (as Murder in Style)
- 2007, New Kingstown, RI: BBC Audiobooks America, Mystery Masters ISBN 1602834903 November 11, 2008 [1996], CD (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
- 2011, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 978-0-307-76818-6 August 17, 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...
- 1960, London: Collins Crime Club
-