The Missing Chapter - Hardcover

Goldsborough, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553072412 ISBN 13: 9780553072419

Publisher: Bantam, 1993

Synopsis

Robert Goldsborough returns with his seventh stunning Nero Wolfe novel. Follow along into Wolfe's famed West Thirty-fifth Street brownstone, where the corpulent orchid-tending genius devours meals, books, and murderers with a passion - and where this time he gets the chance to send a writer's killer to the pen.
Charles Childress, the author tapped to continue the beloved Sergeant Barnstable detective stories when the originator died, may not have been the most gifted writer in the world, but he did have his talents...Contentious, combative, and exceedingly vengeful, Childress had an unsurpassed way of making enemies. Which is why, when the police write off his death as suicide, his publisher, Horace Vinson, comes to Nero Wolfe. Vinson knows all too well that in the cutthroat world of publishing, the competition can be murder.
Wolfe, however; is not so easily convinced...or distracted from his more genteel pursuits. After all, the evidence does conform to the official version of the killing: The gun found at the crime scene not only belonged to the victim but bore only his fingerprints. Perhaps Childress finally contrived a successful climax...as the author of his own death.
But Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's ever-faithful friend and partner; points out that Vinson's fee would keep the big man in beer and bouillabaisse for some time to come. That is a reality Nero Wolfe can't refuse, and soon Archie is posing questions that turn up a whole cast of character assassins, including Childress's ex-editor and agent, his most scathing critic, and his icily beautiful, ambitious fiancee - each of whom would have taken great pleasure in writing the final chapter in the life of Charles Childress.
And then, in a plot twist any auteur would envy, Archie gets wind of the involvement of a mysterious kissing cousin from Childress's past. Could this be a case of a small-town girl come to right an old wrong? It's a conundrum so novel even the reluctant Nero Wolfe can't resist...as extortion, deceit, and jealousy come together in a perfect potboiler of revenge - and murder.

About this title

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 both from critics and devoted fans, winning a Nero Award from the Wolfe Pack. Six more novels followed, including Death on Deadline (1987) and Fade to Black (1990). In 2005, Goldsborough published Three Strikes You’re Dead, the first in an original series starring Chicago Tribune reporter Snap Malek. His most recent novel is Terror at the Fair (2011).

From Publishers Weekly:

Life imitates art imitates life. In his seventh Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin caper, the writer responsible for continuing the noted series after the death of originator Rex Stout plots a case around the corpse of an author who has continued a mystery series after the original writer's demise. A publisher hires Wolfe and Goodwin to investigate the death, labeled a suicide, of Charles Childress, an ill-tempered author who had recently angered several people, including his agent, his editor and the possibly corrupt reviewer who had lambasted the latest Childress novel. Yet for all that, Childress also had a pretty fiancee, a loyal friend in a fellow author and the devotion of many fans. Goldsborough carefully draws Wolfe and company into the '90s (computers figure in the plot and hold records of Wolfe's beloved orchids), yet the corpulent sleuth still abandons himself to Fritz Brenner's high-fat meals. As always, Archie does the legwork, which in this instance takes him to rural Indiana, Childress's home state, to unearth secrets that Wolfe pieces together in an assured and effective conclusion. Goldsborough ( Fade to Black ) may not recruit new fans to the anachronistic and bulky Wolfe, but he's likely to satisfy the old Rex Stout faithful.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0553072412
• ISBN 13: 9780553072419
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 229