Nero Wolfe/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Crowning Moment of Awesome (Wolfe makes J. Edgar Hoover wait on his doorstep in The Doorbell Rang.
    • And in the same story, the method used to smuggle Saul, Fred, and Orrie into the house.
    • Wolfe's reaction to food that's been tampered with in Bitter End:

"That will do, Archie." Wolfe put down his empty glass. I had never heard his tone more menacing. "I am not impressed with your failure to understand this abominable outrage. I might bring myself to tolerate it if some frightened or vindictive person shot me to death, but this is insupportable." He made the growling noise again. "My food. You know my attitude toward food." He aimed a rigid finger at the jar, and his voice trembled with ferocity. "Whoever put that in there is going to regret it."

  • Crowning Moment of Funny Among several: In the 1966 novel Death of a Doxy Wolfe -- who 'hates women' to the point of leaving his office in panic if a female suspect cries, and refuses any personal contact at all -- instructs Archie to find a nightclub singer named Julie Jacquette and bring her in for questioning. When she arrives, she immediately struts up to Wolfe's desk, performing an improvised cabaret routine (the lyrics begin, "Big man, go-go, big man, go big!") He stares at her, completely befuddled, then accuses Archie of having staged it. She interrupts to tell him that "Nobody suggests anything to me!". Wolfe is intrigued, continues the conversation, and eventually becomes openly solicitous of her, having recognised that 'your view of mankind and mine are not dissimilar'.
  • Ear Worm: the waltz in the A&E adaptation of Champagne for One is Jazz Suite No. 2 by Shostakovich. You'll thank us later.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Saul Panzer. Yes, there is enough of a fandom for this trope to apply.
  • Values Dissonance: Since each story is set in the year it was written, and the first one was written in 1939, there's lots of this, especially in the earliest stories.
    • Too Many Cooks, set in the American South during the Forties, reaches a level of casual racism -- Archie included -- that might startle even jaded modern readers (the N-word gets thrown around a lot), but is also notable for weaving the issue into the plot in a serious and meaningful way, to the extent that recognising the foolishness of prejudice becomes crucial to solving the mystery.