This note contains spoilers for the book.

Huh, don't seem to have read this since I started the booknotes. This is the first Nero Wolfe book, published pretty much when Dorothy Sayers was winding down and when Doc Smith was getting the Lensman series started. Very interesting set of contrasts when you look at it that way.

It starts midstream in Archie's relationship with Wolfe; Wolfe has been in the house for 20 years and Archie for nearly 7. Fritz and Horstman are there, and the roof full of orchids, and the safe in the office. But fixtures like the red leather chair aren't in place yet, and the observation panel into the office, and Inspector Cramer. And early in the book, Archie gets into the car they keep parked at the curb outside, but by the end of the book he's running to the garage to get and put away cars as needed; with no explanation of the change. These books were not written by a maniac for continuity.

Still, most of the feel for the main relationship, Archie and Wolfe is there from page one.