Murder in the Ball Park Author: Robert Goldsborough | Language: English | ISBN:
B00H9WZSPY | Format: EPUB
Murder in the Ball Park Description
Wolfe earns a big league call-up after a senator gets taken out at the ball game
Archie Goodwin and Saul Panzer have ventured into the wilds of northern Manhattan to watch the Giants take on the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. The national anthem is just winding down when Panzer spies a notable in the box seats: state senator Orson Milbank, a silver-haired scoundrel with enemies in every corner of upstate New York. In the fourth inning, a monstrous line drive brings every fan in the grandstand to his feet—every fan save for one silver-haired senator, who has been shot dead by a sniper in the upper deck.
Archie’s employer—the rotund genius Nero Wolfe—has no interest in investigating the stadium slaying, but Archie is swayed by the senator’s suspiciously lovely widow. Her husband was mired hip-deep in corruption, and sorting out who killed him will be a task far less pleasant than an afternoon at the ball park.
- File Size: 455 KB
- Print Length: 193 pages
- Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (January 28, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00H9WZSPY
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,111 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
I'm sure Robert Goldsborough is a nice man and he's nobly tried to carry on the Nero Wolfe stories. I bare him no animus.
That said, this is the worst mystery novel I've read in my life. It's a bad novel as a Nero Wolfe book, and it's a horrible mystery.
It begins on the cover. The cover trim is nice (only one of two good things I can say about the book), but the picture looks like a cheap public domain picture and I'm not sure what era it's from.
This was important, as I was thrown by the timing of the novel. Goldsborough previous run of Wolfe novels updated Wolfe to the late 1980s and early '90s. His most recent, Archie Meets Nero Wolfe: A Prequel to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Mysterieswas set in the 1920s when Archie first met Nero Wolfe. This one was set in the 1950s for some reason.
However, since that wasn't clear from the get go, I didn't think at the time that it was odd for Archie to be asking and receive an info dump from Saul Panzer. However, given that this is the same Archie Goodwin who reads both the Gazette and Times every day, having Saul suddenly give all the back story on a prominent State Senator for Archie's benefit was stupid.
Archie and Panzer are in the park and they see the selfsame Senator murdered in the state and make a bee-line for the exit. The fact that they were at the stadium to see the murder doesn't serve any purpose for the plot, and nearly all the information that Saul Panzer dumped in Chapter 1 for some reason is later repeated by other characters throughout the book meaning the entire first Chapter was completely pointless.
From Chapters 2-26, there are key two points to address:
First of all, Archie Goodwin as written by Rex Stout is one of the most fun to read narrators in any language.
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