I would read it for the ongoing commentary by Archie Goodwin. The participation of Nero Wolffe is minimal, amounting to little more than puffing his lips in and out. But Archie has some amusing stories here.
Three novellas (novels?) in one book, all involving women, which we know Nero Wolffe abhors.
These could also be classified as historical fiction, since they were written so long ago. The writing holds up well. ( )

4/9/22

This is a book that should never have been published. It is a collection of 3 alternative versions of existing Nero Wolfe stories.

The first of the three is a story written by Stout for another character but adapted to fit Nero Wolfe (except that it doesn't unless Wolfe suddenly forgot how to cook). Stout elected to never publish it and I think he would have been unhappy with this.

The second and third are inferior versions of already published stories. Again, I can only think that Stout would have been unhappy with these versions being published. There is a reason he published other versions of them.

The long, very long, preface that tries to explain how these story versions are interesting do not help.

For someone reading this book without having read the published versions of the stories, they will probably find them ok, but they would have been so much better off reading the versions Stout wanted to publish. ( )

Contents: Bitter end — Frame-up for murder [Murder is no joke] — Assault on a brownstone

These 3 novellas were all vaguely familiar to me - I guess from watching the TV adaptations...

I enjoyed them all but I think that the first one, "Bitter End", was my favorite. ( )

This is three stories collected posthumously,. all of which were alternate versions of stories Stout published in his lifetime. The first one, "Bitter End" was a Wolfe/Goodwin version of the Tecumseh Fox story Bad for Business. It was published earlier in Corsage. See my comments there. The second, ""frame-up for Murder" is an expanded version of "Murder is No Joke" published in And Four To Go. This version turns Flora Gallant from a middle-aged frump to a cute young woman who flirts with Archie to persuade him to let her talk to Wolfe, but the basic plotline is the same. .The flirtation is fun. The third story is "Assault on a Brownstone' a version of "Counterfeit for Murder" published in Homicide Trinity. This has more significant plot changes, in that the colorful old lady Hattie Annis who is killed in a it an run early in "Counterfeit" survives in this version, while the female 'treasury agent is murdered. An introduction by John McAleer of the Wolfe Pack explores these variants. The blurb claim "first book publication anywhere" is not entirely accurate since "Bitter End" appeared in Corsage. The other two stories had only had magazine publication in Stout's lifetime. ( )