Murder by the Book by Rex Stout
This is one of my favorites in the Wolfe canon. Not just because it takes place in the literary world, although I loved time-traveling around the postwar New York publishing scene with author Rex Stout. And not just because it’s always a pleasure to hang out in detective Nero Wolfe’s Manhattan brownstone with the eccentric genius and his right-hand man Archie Goodwin. The plot is satisfyingly intriguing: who’s killing every person who’s read a not particularly controversial manuscript? I especially liked the opening twist: Wolfe’s first visit from his friend and rival Inspector Cramer isn’t a request for help solving murder #1, but to figure out why an odd list of names was found on the scratch pad of a dead law clerk. Any writer will immediately have her/his suspicions; but it takes America’s finest Holmes-Watson duo to piece together the series of clues that will unmask the killer.
