4.5*

While this entry in the Nero Wolfe series is more of a thriller than a mystery, it also features Wolfe voluntarily leaving his New York brownstone to return to his native Montenegro in order to find the killer of his close friend Marko Vukcic. As Archie comments, he and Wolfe end up exchanging positions (primarily because Archie doesn't speak Italian or Serbian or any other foreign language).

And my 1955 Bantam edition has this cover:
( )

4/9/22

4/9/22

In most Nero Wolfe stories and novels, Nero does not leave his house. When he does, it is usually either because of his orchids, food or Archie - and even then, he goes somewhere, finds a place to sit and just does what he usually does in his office. And then there is this novel.

Marko Vukcic, the restaurant owner and Wolfe's best friend since they were boys in Montenegro, is killed. Once Nero Wolfe gets the news, he surprises everyone by showing up at the scene and then even going to the morgue for the first time in his life. Unfortunately, none allows him to even start figuring out what happened so he returns home - to a visit of a woman he had not seen for a long time - his adopted daughter. Before long it starts looking very likely that the murder is tied to Marko's work with an illegal organization back in Montenegro. Once a second death is reported, Nero is off, with Archie of course, to Italy and from there illegally into Montenegro.

It is a frustrating novel in more than one way - from Archie belly-aching every second page about how he cannot understand a word and needs Nero to translate or how unusually Wolfe behaves to characters which reads more like caricatures than real people. Traipsing around the mountains of Albania and Montenegro is not what you expect in this series - and the solution of the mystery almost falls into out laps (and Nero's) out of nowhere. We get to learn a lot more about Nero's past but that does not really help the novel much.

Maybe if the narration had shifted to Nero, it would have worked a lot better - the novel is upside down on who does what - with Archie not speaking anything but English (and he even has issues with the announcements in London where he asks what language they were in just to be told that it was English) but the narration stays with Archie and his reports based on what Nero translates (or does not). With Archie narrating, things just get annoying - his style works in New York but here his cleverness and puns misfire more often than not and the constant grumbling starts to get on one's nerves.

Definitely not my favorite book from the series. ( )

Wolfe goes abroad on a cold war spy mission. Of sorts. Kind of. Not a good story. Fails on so many levels. ( )