I left off my re-read of the Nero Wolfe short story collections back in 2002, with Three Doors to Death. I went back to the re-read a few night past, when I couldn’t sleep and was downstairs where the Wolfe collection lives. The next was Curtains for Three; I like the first of these the best, but don’t actually dislike any of them.
In “The Gun With Wings,” a famous opera singer has apparently committed suicide, on the day that his wife discovered that she was in love with another man, who loved her back. They come to Wolfe because they think they know that the singer didn’t commit suicide, and they want to be sure that the other didn’t kill him. It’s interesting for its sympathetic clients and as an example of the rather high-handed way Wolfe will treat his clients; the solution is not terribly difficult. The second, “Bullet for One,” has an entirely arbitrary title; it’s the one where a man is shot while riding in Central Park. I found this non-engaging, for no reason I could put a finger on. The last, “Disguise for Murder,” is another someone-killed-in-Wolfe’s-office story, this time as members of the Manhattan Flower Club visit Wolfe’s orchids upstairs. As I may have said regarding the TV adaptation of this story, it would have been vastly more interesting with a different and more straightforward motive (spoilers rot-13’d: vs gur xvyyre (gur jvsr qvfthvfrq nf n zna) unq orra gur ivpgvz’f ybire, engure guna gur jvsr bs ure ybire). Not Stout’s kind of story, though.