Archie Goes Home

Starred review from March 9, 2020
Goldsborough’s first-rate Nero Wolfe mystery (after 2019’s Death of an Art Collector) deepens Rex Stout’s characters by extrapolating from the original novels’ few clues to paint a plausible portrait of Archie Goodwin’s unnamed Ohio hometown. Archie’s aunt, Edna Wainwright, alerts him to a suspicious death there. Octogenarian banker Logan Mulgrew was found dead in his home, an apparent suicide, but Edna believes that Mulgrew, who had enemies in the area, may have been murdered. That belief is strengthened after someone fires a gun at the apartment of a journalist who wrote a column questioning whether Mulgrew took his own life. Archie uses a trip home to visit his mother as an opportunity to indulge his aunt’s curiosity and look into those wronged enough by Mulgrew to have a motive to kill him. Goldsborough doesn’t strike a false note, an impressive feat given the sparse information about Archie’s background that Stout provided. This clever pastiche will enthrall Stout fans. Agent: Erik Simon, Martha Kaplan Agency.