Death on Deadline

Death on Deadline is a Nero Wolfe mystery novel by Robert Goldsborough, first published by Bantam in 1987, the second of Goldsborough's seven novels featuring Rex Stout's famous sedentary detective.

Introduction

The book opens with an unsigned introductory essay comparing Rex Stout's style to Robert Goldsborough's, and also explains that Goldsborough was the winner of a pack of would-be continuators, and compares Goldsborough's effort to that of Adrian Conan Doyle to continue Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Although unsigned, the place of writing given (Mount Independence) makes it likely that the author of the introduction is John McAleer, Rex Stout's official biographer. Bantam, Goldsborough's publisher, later inserted a note in books explaining that McAleer was indeed the author, and that it was never Bantam's intention to make a mystery out of the identity of the author of the introductory essay.

Background

In the Rex Stout corpus of Nero Wolfe stories, heavy use is made at times of a symbiotic relationship between Nero Wolfe and a fictional New York newspaper, the Gazette. Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's right-hand man, and a senior editor at the paper, Lon Cohen, are long-time poker buddies, stretching back to the earliest Wolfe stories. However, none of Stout's stories involve the inner structure of the Gazette.

Catalyst to murder

In Death on Deadline, the current owners of the Gazette are getting old, and a Scottish press baron, Ian MacLaren, is expressing an interest in acquiring the Gazette as part of his quest to own a major paper in the largest city of every English-speaking country (he already has the others). Lon Cohen confides this to Archie at their weekly poker game, and Wolfe becomes concerned on a number of fronts: he likes the newspaper the way it is, he has heard bad things about MacLaren's other newspapers, and his preferred relationship with the press may be threatened (Cohen, in particular, would quit/retire if MacLaren took over).

After sending Archie on a mission to get samples of several of MacLaren's newspapers for more detailed examination, Wolfe becomes alarmed enough to place a full-page advertisement in The New York Times to publicly question whether MacLaren is a suitable owner of the newspaper and to offer assistance to any parties that agree with his point of view.

Characters, in order of appearance

Dénouement


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