A Bull Market: SOME BURIED CAESAR (1937)

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"If this is all true—you knew it last night, didn't you? Why the hell didn't you spill it when the sheriff was there? When the cops were there on the spot?"

"I represented no interest last night, sir."

Part of my motivation for reading Some Buried Caesar was that I came away from John Dickson Carr's essay 'The Grandest Game in the World' thinking that it was his one of his favourite mystery novels. When I looked up the essay again recently, I realized that the full list was written out elsewhere in the book it was collected in (if I had just turned back a couple chapters) and this was not one of them. Egg on my face, and the post has been amended accordingly. Well, I can still point to the other motivation, David Bordwell's lengthy and fascinating essay on Rex Stout's novels, which points out that in this one, Wolfe forces the killer to commit suicide. What on earth leads up to that?

Some Buried Caesar is an atypical entry in the Nero Wolfe canon. It's more overtly comedic than many entries (yeah, despite the suicide bit), and also the rare book where Wolfe is taken out of New York. Nero Wolfe is basically like if Mycroft Holmes was the protagonist instead of that other, more energetic guy. Being the type who wants to stay in his house all day with his flowers and his bros, Wolfe outsources the action duties to his assistant and narrator Archie Goodwin. Not so here. The book opens with Wolfe and Archie stranded after a car accident:

That sunny September day was full of surprises. The first one came when, after my swift realization that the sedan was still right side up and the windshield and windows intact, I switched off the ignition and turned to look at the back seat.

What a great opening, by the way. The accident itself is snuck in there as an afterthought rather than one of the surprises. They then find themselves in an open pasture:

Wolfe snorted. "The man's a fool. It's only a cow pasture." Being a good detective, he produced his evidence by pointing to a brown circular heap near our feet.

The pasture happens to be home to an angry bull who is the source of the rancher drama that Wolfe and Archie find themselves embroiled in. Caesar is a champion bull who has been bought by the owner of a New York restaurant chain to be barbecued as a publicity stunt. (Before you go on DoesTheCowDie.com, I'll just make it clear that animals are very much harmed.) Naturally this leads to murder, though not for the reason you might think.

I feel like the dynamic between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin is what many people think all detective stories have, but isn't actually present in most mysteries of the era. The mutual exasperation can be more House and Wilson than Holmes and Watson (c.f. the evidence switcheroo, the exchange at the jail, or Wolfe's repeated, drama-queen complaint that Archie totalled the car, as if he lost control of the wheel).

Excluding some dated elements (ranging from bad language, to Archie's derogatory remark that being a female athlete is kind of gay, to car repair costing $60) felt like it could have been an episode of something like Elementary (2012-2019). There's a humorous sideplot where the sheriff holds Archie in a jail, and he unionizes the prisoners. The mystery kept me guessing—it was a long time before a motive became clear—but was perhaps a bit under-clued. Both Wolfe's decision not to collect any evidence towards the murderer until someone is paying him and his eventual decision to corner the murderer when the evidence no longer exists are rather mercenary. Then again, he is out of his element.

Other notable points are the introduction of Archie's sometimes-love interest Lily Rowan, and a joke he tells her: "What's the difference between a Catholic and a river that runs uphill?" The punchline is not shared with the reader, and when asked later Stout admitted that it was just for the scene, and he didn't have a punchline in mind. That's no excuse! I polled a recent family gathering to see if anyone could develop a good punchline that fits the joke. Suggestions included:

  • One lacks gravity, the other has mass.
  • One flows up a slope, the other throws up a pope.

So, we're still looking. I put the problem to you: if you can think of one, please share.

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