9/12/1938 When Archie met Lily

September 12, 1938.  This is a day that should be marked with honor on the calendar of all Rex Stout fans.  It is the day that Archie Goodwin met the love of his life, Lily Rowan. This happens in the first chapter of the sixth Nero Wolfe novel, Some Buried Caesar, and it is certainly one of the most memorable openings in that long series.

The fat sleuth is in upstate New York, heading to a flower show, when his car has an accident.  Wolfe and Archie take a short cut through a pasture, which turns out to have a bull in it.  Archie has to run and tumble over a fence, nearly getting mangled to death by an angry beast, and as he struggles to his feet he hears a woman applauding and  cheering as if he were a circus act.  And that, of course, is Lily Rowan.

But my favorite line in the book is from Wolfe: "If you regard it as a rational project to find a legitimate nocturnal pickwasher, go ahead."  You had to be there.

9/10/1989 The icy clutches of Aaron Elkins

September 10, 1989.  On this day the action begins in Aaron Elkins' sixth novel about anthropologist and bone expert Gideon Oliver.  Icy Clutches involves three scientific researchers who died in an avalanche in the  1960s. Now their remains are coming out of the glacier, but there is something very odd about them...

Elkins once said that all the brilliant discoveries Oliver makes in his book have been made by other physical anthropologists.  Elkins just makes them all occur to our hero, and gives them a criminal twist.  Did I make that sound easy?  If it was then everybody would be writing books like this.  And they don't.

Gideon Oliver, that most engaging forensic anthropologist, solves a lulu here....Aaron Elkins is witty, and oh so clever with that final twist."
- New York Daily News

7/23/1965 Ed Gorman causes a riot.

July 23, 1965.  On this day there was a near riot in Black River Falls, Iowa, resulting in the town's only appearance on the news with Walter Cronkite.  It seems that Cliffie Sykes, the dumb-as-dirt chief of police decided to arrest every teenage boy with long hair.

That is the fictional beginning of Ticket To Ride, Ed Gorman's eighth novel about Sam McCain, lawyer and private eye, coping with life in the fifites and sixties in a small town in the midwest.  Before long there will be violence at a peace rally, and Sam will be defending a man he loathes at the request of the man's girlfriend - who used to be Sam's.

Publisher's Weekly said: "Besides getting the pop culture of the period right, Gorman captures the baffled frustration of provincial folk who don't want to believe that things are more complicated than they look, that it's sometimes a mistake to trust people in authority"

7/18/1917 Agatha Christie's century of murder

July 18, 1917.  One hundred years ago today  a woman was murdered at a mansion called Styles, beginning Agatha Christie's long killing spree.  The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920, is the first of her 66 mystery novels.  Her books are estimated to have sold 4 billion copies.

7/8/2001 Blues in the Night commence

July 8, 2001.  It was the nightgown that hooked me: Sunday, July 8, 1:46 A.M.  Near Lookout Mountain and Laurel Canyon.  An unidentified woman in her mid to late twenties, wearing a nightgown, was the victim of a hit-and-run accident that left her unconscious.  There were no witnesses.

That's the opening for Blues in the Night, Rochelle Krich's first novel about freelance reporter Molly Bloom.  Molly is happily divorced but her high school sweetheart is back, and he's single.  And a rabbi...

"Krich shows that she really knows her stuff...Molly investigates with both thoroughness and compassion, making this new sleuth worth her salt." - New York Times Book Review 

7/4/1976 In which friends are absent

July 4, 1976.  S.J. Rozan's first non-series mystery is all about the after-effects of 9/11 on the lives of New Yorkers, but it actually starts on Independence Day in the Bicentennial year, when her characters were just kids. 

“Rozan shifts among several narrators and between present and past in this riveting offering reminiscent of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River.  An unforgettable elegy to the clear September morning that forever changed our lives.” –Booklist

6/22/1958 Steve Carella becomes a daddy

June 22, 1958.  On the day of his sister's wedding 87th Precinct detective Steve Carella becomes the father of twins.  Oh, and tries to prevent his new brother-in-law from getting murdered.  That's the plot of Ed McBain's Til Death.  Literary Review called it “zestful, inventive, and utterly compulsive.”

6/15/191? An assassination is planned

June 15, 191?.  This is the planned date for the assassination whose prevention is the McGuffin that fuels John Buchan's first novel, The Thirty-nine Steps.

Jason Worden argued that Buchan actually invented a new subgenre: the story in which a civilian gets chased both by the bad guys, AND by the police who think he is the bad guy.  That paranoia made it perfect for Alfred Hitchcock, who not only filmed The Thirty-nine Steps, but used a similar plot in two other movies.

Buchan, by the way, went on to write a bunch of other novels. He was also one of the top figures in British Intelligence during the First World War.  Then he became the Governor General of Canada.  Not a bad resume for a thriller writer.

6/2/19?? Lew Archer's birthday

June 2, 19??.  Happy birthday to Lew Archer, the private eye hero of Ross Macdonald's well-loved novels. 

"The greatest P.I. series ever written? Probably." -Thrilling Detective

5/24/192? Ellery Queen takes a powder

May 25, 192?.  On this date a model in the show window of a New York City department store pushed a button on a folding bed, which unfolded, revealing a dead body.  Thus began The French Powder Mystery, the second novel written by Ellery Queen, starring mystery writer Ellery Queen, who is not the mystery writer who wrote the book... Oh, you know what I mean.

5/13/1901 Lord Saltire Disappears

March 13, 190?.  This day saw the disappearance of Lord Saltire, ten year old son of the Duke of Holdernesse.  This event sent Sherlock Holmes into action in "The Adventure of the Priory School."  Arthur Conan Doyle's plot involves murder, blackmail, and horses disguised as cows.  Sort of.

5/4/1891 Meet me at the Reichenbach

May 4, 1891.  On this date there occurred the most famous event that never actually happened (well... there are more famous ones, if you agree that all religions can't be be true).  In Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Final Problem" Sherlock Holmes grappled with Professor James Moriarty at the top of Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland.  Both fell to their death.
 
But one of those deaths was cancelled, due to popular demand.  How often does that happen?

Illustration by the great Sidney Paget.

4/28/199? Soft MOney starts

April 28, 199?.  On this date in some year in the 1990s the plot begins in Soft Money, a novel by K.J.A. Wishnia.  Former New York cop Filomena Buscarsela agrees to look into the murder of a local grocery store owner.  Publisher's Weekly called it "a spirited sequel," to Buscarela's first appearance in 23 Shades of Black, which was  nominated for an Edgar and and Anthony.

4/6/1950 In the Best Families begins

April 6, 1950.  Nero Wolfe first encountered master criminal Arnold Zeck in And Be A Villain.  He confronted him again in The Second Confession.  It was clear that Reichenbach Falls was approaching.  And on this date the final confrontation began...

 The plot of In The Best Families opens on April 6, 1950. In this book Zeck becomes so threatening that Wolfe flees, abandoning his beloved brownstone (leaving the door open, because with him gone there is nothing valuable left, the insufferable egotist).  His loyal assistant Archie Goodwin is left to cope on his own with no knowledge of where his boss has gone (although no one believes that he doesn't know, which makes it all the more frustrating).  But Wolfe hasn't surrendered, he's merely planning, and months later...

For some reason this book seems to attract the worst covers in the whole Stout corpus.  As the one on the right demonstrates.

3/18/1954 Marko Vukcic is murdered

March 18, 1954.  On this date Marko Vukcic was gunned down in New York City.  Besides being the owner of Rusterman's, a posh eatery, he was also the best friend of Nero Wolfe.  His death led Wolfe and Archie Goodwin on one of their most spectular - and frankly unbelievable - adventures.  The Black Mountain found the rotund detective marching his seventh-of-a-ton through the hills of Yugoslavia, his homeland, in search of the killer.  Does Wolfe find him?  Well, duh.

3/7/1963 Such A Killing Crime

March 7, 1963.  On this date the action begins in the novel Such A Killing Crime, set in Greenwich Village during the Great Folk Music Scare.  Joe Talley runs a coffee house in New York.  When one of his favorite singers is killed on his stage he hunts for the man's missing demo tape, which may lead him to a killer...

2/24/1964 A Right to Die is claimed

February 24, 1964.  Rex Stout's A Right to Die begins on this date when an African-American anthropologist named Paul Whipple asks Nero Wolfe to prove his son did not commit a murder.  Obviously it was Stout's opportunity to comment on the civil rights movement, but some fans think it is one of his less successful books because of a tactical error the author made.

You see, Paul Whipple appeared in Too Many Cooks as a college student.  Decades later, here he is with a grown son, and Wolfe and Archie haven't aged a day.  Whipple should have demanded to search their attic for mysterious paintings.

1/29/1966 A doxy dies

January 29, 1966.  On this date Orrie Cather sends Archie Goodwin to do a little investigative burglary and Archie finds a corpse.  So begins Death of a Doxy, written by Rex Stout at the age of 80.  He wrote a few more Nero Wolfe novels after this one, skillful to the end.

Weird cover, huh?

1/7/1888 The Valley of Fear begins

January 7, 1888.  On this date Sherlock Holmes gets a note from one of Professor Moriarty's henchmen.  Thus begins Arthur Conan Doyle's fourth and last novel about the great detective.  The Valley of Fear was published in 1915.  Not generally considered the best of the books, but it does have a wondErful plot twist.

1/5/1965 The Doorbell Rang begins

January 5, 1965.  On this date Mrs. Rachel Bruner came to Nero Wolfe with a little problem.  The wealthy widow had sent 10,000 copies of an anti-FBI book to people of influence.  Now the FBI wants revenge.

So begins The Doorbell Rang, Rex Stout's most successful, controversial, and  popular novel.