Death of a Dude

Plot introduction

Archie Goodwin is part of a house party at Lily Rowan's vacation home in Montana when a murder brings Nero Wolfe from New York to take a hand. Uniquely for a Nero Wolfe novel, it takes place entirely away from the brownstone on West 35th Street. (Some Buried Caesar came close, but returned to the brownstone for a brief coda; Too Many Cooks similarly came very close, but includes a brief description of the departure from the brownstone, including the good-byes from Fritz, Saul and Theodore.)

Publication history

1969, New York: The Viking Press, August 20, 1969, hardcover

In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #10, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part II, Otto Penzler describes the first edition of Death of a Dude: "Blue boards, dark blue cloth spine; front and rear covers blank; spine printed with green, blue, and white lettering. Issued in a mainly black pictorial dust wrapper." In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of Death of a Dude had a value of between $100 and $200. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.

1969, New York: Viking (Mystery Guild), October 1969, hardcover

The far less valuable Viking book club edition may be distinguished from the first edition in three ways:

1969, Canadian Magazine (abridged), November 1969

1970, London: Collins Crime Club, April 13, 1970, hardcover

1970, New York: Bantam #S-5487, August 1970, paperback

1972, London: Fontana #2673, 1972, paperback

1972, London: Book Club Associates, 1972

1995, New York: Bantam Books ISBN 0-553-76295-8 January 2, 1995, paperback

2000, Newport Beach, California: Books on Tape, Inc. ISBN 0-7366-5084-9 April 19, 2000, audio cassette (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)

2010, New York: Bantam ISBN 978-0-307-75587-2 May 12, 2010, e-book

The unfamiliar word

"Nero Wolfe talks in a way that no human being on the face of the earth has ever spoken, with the possible exception of Rex Stout after he had a gin and tonic," said Michael Jaffe, executive producer of the A&E TV series, A Nero Wolfe Mystery. "Readers of the Wolfe saga often have to turn to the dictionary because of the erudite vocabulary of Wolfe and sometimes of Archie," wrote Rev. Frederick G. Gotwald.

Nero Wolfe's vocabulary is one of the hallmarks of the character. Examples of unfamiliar words — or unfamiliar uses of words that some would otherwise consider familiar — are found throughout the corpus, often in the give-and-take between Wolfe and Archie.

Plerophory, chapter 6.