Jeanne Calment: From Van Gogh's Time to Ours, 122 Extraordinary Years Book

A wealthy woman came to Nero Wolfe asking him for help. Her husband was kidnapped for ransom:

Well in this case a tiny sum of just half a million dollars was requested; may I remind you that the book was written in the early sixties when this kind of money could buy a lot of happiness. She was obviously was afraid to notify the police and Nero Wolfe seemed to be the obvious choice.

I have yet to see any story from the series without at least one dead body. So judging from the beginning I was very sure about whose dead body would make an appearance first; it is obvious, right? Wrong! Somewhere within first fifty pages of the book there was a plot twist which caught me completely off guard. I also need to add this was the first, but not the last one; they just kept on coming.

Archie Goodwin always calls his boss genius. So do I occasionally. Do you have any doubts about this? As anybody familiar with the series knows Nero Wolfe is also very lazy. So in this book he really outdid himself: he found a way to earn a good chunk of money by doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. If this is not genius, I do not know what is. Nero Wolfe, I bow my head to your brilliance in avoiding work while still making a high class living.

I rated this book with 4 stars initially. I raised the rating to 5 after I reread my own review. I think I made a fairly good case for the new rating.