The Pour Amour perfume contest reeks of death when Louis Dahlmann is robbed of the riddles and then shot dead. The LBA ad firm wants the clever campaign to continue and hires Nero Wolfe to locate the pilfered paper. While Archie trails the scent of fragrant ladies, Wolfe tracks a murderer and detects something foul close to home.

In all his years of detecting, Nero Wolfe has never encountered an investigation as damnably messy as this one. For what began as a clean case of larceny quickly sank into a quagmire of blackmail and broken promises, international scandal and cold-blooded murder. Now Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, must bridge eras and oceans to find the link between a Wild West lynching and a respected British peer. Only then can they save Wolfe's beautiful...

Originally published in 1946, The Silent Speaker unfolds yet another mystery starring the vainglorious detective Nero Wolfe and his quick-thinking assistant Archie Goodwin. When Cheney Boone, the Director of the Bureau of Price Regulation, is murdered with a monkey wrench just minutes before he presents a speech at a National Industrial Association dinner, the Association hires Nero Wolfe to solve the troubling murder mystery.

"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. Panzer spies state senator Orson Milbank, a silver-haired scoundrel with enemies in every corner of upstate New York, sitting in the box seats. 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...