Bitter End (the First Nero Wolfe Novella)

Rex Stout (1886-1975) was the sixth of nine children born of Quaker parents. He was educated in a country school and, later, attended briefly the University of Kansas before enlisting in the Navy where he served for two years. After he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began writing freelance article [...]
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Rex Stout (1886-1975) was the sixth of nine children born of Quaker parents. He was educated in a country school and, later, attended briefly the University of Kansas before enlisting in the Navy where he served for two years. After he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began writing freelance articles, but made his fortune devising and implementing a school banking system that was adopted in four hundred cities and towns throughout the country. In 1927 he retired from the world of finance and, with the proceeds, left for Paris to write serious fiction. Before turning to detective fiction, he wrote three novels that received favorable reviews, but it was writing detective fiction, and as creator of the Nero Wolfe character, that he become famous as a writer. The first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, appeared In 1934. It was followed by many others, which established Nero Wolfe on a par with Erle Stanley Gardner's famous Perry Mason. Rex Stout wrote thirty-three novel-length Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin adventures and thirty-eight (or forty-one, depending on how one counts or classifies re-writes/adaptions) novella-length stories featuring the two famous detectives. Bitter End is the first story to receive the shorter novella-length treatment. These shorter cases are unjustly considered inferior to the novels by some critics (and even some fans), but they simply are, for the most part, faster reads of adventures with well-developed plots and characters that compare very favorably with the full length novels, though if they are roughly one third in length. Bitter End, the first novella length adventure featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, appeared in the November 1940 issue of The American Magazine and marked the beginning of a long relationship between Rex Stout and that publication that lasted uninterrupted for 15 years. The story, which is dark and complex, explores the family, business and personal relationships of the owners and employees of a specialty food manufacturer. Wolfe has a personal encounter with one of their products that has been poisoned and feels compelled to investigate. After its first appearance in The American Magazine, the novella was published in book form in a collection titled Corsage: A Bouquet of Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe first and later in the book titled Death Times Three. This book includes, as a bonus, the short story "Out of the Line" that was published first in the June 13, 1914, issue of All-Story Cavalier Weekly.