 | |
| Author | Rex Stout |
|---|---|
| Country | United states |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nero Wolfe |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | December 1985 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 213 pp. (first edition) |
| ISBN | 0-553-25425-1 |
| OCLC | 12853382 |
| Preceded by | A Family Affair |
Death Times Three is a collection of Nero Wolfe novellas by Rex Stout, published posthumously by Bantam Books in 1985. It is the only collection of Stout's Nero Wolfe stories not to have appeared first in hardcover. The book contains three stories, one never before published:
Nero Wolfe is a fictional character, a brilliant, oversized, eccentric armchair detective created in 1934 by American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe was born in Montenegro and keeps his past murky. He lives in a luxurious brownstone on West 35th Street in New York City, and he is loath to leave his home for business or anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or eating the gourmet meals prepared by his chef, Fritz Brenner. Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's sharp-witted, dapper young confidential assistant with an eye for attractive women, narrates the cases and does the legwork for the detective genius.
Rex Todhunter Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels and 39 novellas between 1934 and 1975.
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; 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, with funding from Grosset & Dunlap and Curtis Publishing Company. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most recently, Bertelsmann; it became part of Random House in 1998, when Bertelsmann purchased it to form Bantam Doubleday Dell. It began as a mass market publisher, mostly of reprints of hardcover books, with some original paperbacks as well. It expanded into both trade paperback and hardcover books, including original works, often reprinted in house as mass-market editions.
Contents
- "Bitter End", first printed in the November 1940 issue of The American Magazine , and collected in the limited-edition volume Corsage: A Bouquet of Rex Stout (1977). The story is a re-working of Stout's Tecumseh Fox story Bad for Business . [1]
- "Frame-Up for Murder", an expanded rewrite of the 1958 novella "Murder Is No Joke" that was serialized in three issues of The Saturday Evening Post (June 21, June 28 and July 5, 1958) but never published in book form. [2]
- "Assault on a Brownstone", an early draft of the 1961 novella "Counterfeit for Murder"; in this draft, Hattie Annis, who would become one of the most carefully drawn and favorite non-recurring Nero Wolfe characters in the revised, renamed published version, is the murder victim, while Tammy survives and has an implied romantic relationship with Archie. [3]
The American Magazine was a periodical publication founded in June 1906, a continuation of failed publications purchased a few years earlier from publishing mogul Miriam Leslie. It succeeded Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly (1876–1904), Leslie's Monthly Magazine (1904–1905), Leslie's Magazine (1905) and the American Illustrated Magazine (1905–1906). The magazine was published through August 1956.
Tecumseh Fox is a fictional private detective created by Rex Stout to provide some diversity from his housebound and opinionated rival Nero Wolfe.
Bad for Business is a mystery novel by Rex Stout starring his detective Tecumseh Fox, first published in 1940. Private investigator Tecumseh Fox was the protagonist of three mysteries written by Stout between 1939 and 1941.
