THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN (1935) Come Face to Face with Fear

"They were trying it with a bogy, but for a bogy to be effective its terrors must be known to the victim."

This is the actual Rex Stout book chosen for John Dickson Carr's 10 Best Detective Novels, and I realized on cracking open the first chapter that I had read it in high school, despite remembering nothing about it. JDC chose Stout for his "literary" skill and character work:

In the powerful story called The League of Frightened Men, with its tortured figure of Paul Chapin, you will find Wolfe the psychologist drawing a moral which might well be heeded by many writers of the too-hard-boiled school.

A group of Harvard boys seriously injure an underclassman in a hazing prank, leaving him with a permanent leg disability. They guiltily form a "League of Atonement" to take care of him. What they don't realize is that their victim is Moriarty. Twenty-five years later, he is apparently taking his revenge by killing off the League one by one in equally "funny" "accidents" and using the scenarios to fuel his literary career.

In his defence, inspiration is hard, Your Honour. I found the setup to be darkly humorous, and Nero Wolfe's attitude to the case equally so. Wolfe is actually petitioned by the niece of a missing member, but he quickly realizes that he could make vastly more money by convincing the 30+ Harvard alumni to hire him instead. "Yeah, and you turned her down so you could soak us," one member quips. "You're just out to do all the good you can, huh?"

A number of readers find Wolfe's focus on money over justice to be off-putting, which is fair. Wolfe himself has a rather dim view of the amateur detective archetype—this is his business, after all:

"I understand that there are individuals who will undertake to apprehend wrongdoers, especially murderers, without being paid for it. They do it, I presume, for amusement, which is not astonishing when you consider what odd diversions have been sought out by various members of our race. I myself have other means of escaping boredom, but this is the only one I have developed of avoiding penury."

Personally, I find the antiheroic nature of the protagonists to set the Nero Wolfe books apart from their peers. The decision to charge each member exactly what they can afford to pay reminded me of Black Jack's business model. Although, there is one element of the situation where you could definitely argue that Wolfe is at fault, that I didn't catch on the first read (ROT 13 for spoilers):

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There is some early-instalment weirdness with this one: e.g. Archie is much rougher than he is in some of the later books, though I'll take Wolfe's claim that he has an ex-wife to be a joke/lie. The character work is good, though, especially the last act (in which Wolfe gasp leaves the house to rescue an imperilled Archie).

"What was wrong with my analogies?" I demanded.

Wolfe turned another page. "Let us say," he murmured patiently, "that as an analogist you are supreme. Let us say that."