Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

The New York of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin still exists between the covers of Stout’s books, waiting for us to enter. For that we should be grateful, because it’s a place worth visiting, where calm reasoning (Wolfe) and dogged determination and physical energy (Archie) ultimately bring desired results. Though it’s a delicate balance to be sure, Stout’s New York is a city where order still outweighs chaos, while perhaps in the New York of the nineties it’s become the other way around.

Not Quite Dead Enough is quintessential Nero Wolfe. The fact that it is set on the World War II home front only adds to its solid sense of place. Stout skillfully weaves us into that not-so-long-ago and still familiar prenuclear era that was governed by simple, important principles and the obvious necessity of national survival.

It is in this place and time that Wolfe and Archie must cope with one of the most ancient, persistent, and horrible problems plaguing the human race-not war, but murder. Despite their opposing outlooks and their sometimes acerbic banter, these two very different men, united in a common purpose, know and understand each other well. And they know that as a team they are the best.

Millions of readers over six decades have concurred.

I think you’ll agree with their assessment.

–John Lutz

Not Quite Dead Enough

Chapter 1

We swooped down and hit the concrete alongside the Potomac at 1:20 p.m. on a raw Monday in early March.

I didn’t know whether I would be staying in Washington or hopping a plane for Detroit or Africa, so I checked my bags at the parcel room at the airport and went out front and flagged a taxi. For twenty minutes I sat back and watched the driver fight his way through two million government employees, in uniforms and in civies, on wheels and on foot, and for another twenty minutes, after entering a building, I showed credentials and waited and let myself be led through corridors, and finally was ushered into a big room with a big desk.

It was the first time I had ever seen the top mackaroo of United States Army Intelligence. He was in uniform and had two chins and a pair of eyes that wasted neither time nor space. I was perfectly willing to shake hands, but he just said to sit down, glanced at a paper on top of a pile and told me in a dry brittle voice that my name was Archie Goodwin.

I nodded noncommittally. For all I knew, it was a military secret.

He inquired acidly, “What the hell is the matter with Nero Wolfe?”

“Search me, sir. Why, is he sick?”