Rex Stout, Not Quite Dead Enough (1944)

Not Quite Dead Enough was originally published as a Nero Wolfe double--two novellas published in a single book.  The two novellas here are "Not Quite Dead Enough" and "Booby Trap."  While each covered almost 100 pages in the Bantam printing that I read, they were both printed with lots of space on the page, so they are really just long short stories.

Both are set in World War II New York.  For those of you thinking, "Well of course it was set in New York--Nero Wolfe never leaves his house," even when Wolfe stays home, his narrator and Watson, Archie Goodwin, frequently runs around New York City and the surrounding area.  And in fact in both stories Nero Wolfe is seen all over New York--quite actively so in "Not Quite Dead Enough," in which Archie comes back as a Major in the U.S. Army to try to convince Wolfe to help the government during the war.  Archie is horrified to discover that Wolfe has taken up healthy eating and jogging so that he can become a soldier.  Thus Archie has to come up with something to distract Wolfe from dreams of soldierdom.  Fortunately for Archie's hopes, a murder falls into his lap.  At its core, "Not Quite Dead Enough" is a puzzle with a very simple solution that is very hard to see.  At least it was for me.

In "Booby Trap," Wolfe is helping the Army with Archie's assistance when a grenade detonates in a senior officer's office.  Again Wolfe is out of the house, this time so he can go to the Army.  Readers of Nero Wolfe will know that the usual rule is that Wolfe never leaves the house on business, so this story suggests just how much the war has upset everyday life (at least in Nero Wolfe's household). This story seemed much more complex than "Not Quite Dead Enough," but I still enjoyed the first one more.

For the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge, the category is the "Dynamic Duo" of Wolfe and Goodwin.