Whodunit?

But, also, where did they do it?

I read a few mysteries last year. How many? *checks Goodreads* Seventeen of the 55 books I read in 2020 were mysteries. I suppose the closure of learning who did it, why they did it, and usually, some form of justice for the villain, met a deep need in 2020. This formula was extremely satisfying during a difficult year where no one had any idea who had done what, or why, and if we ever did find out who and why, there would unlikely be any justice.

I’m not usually a “mystery person,” by which I guess I mean that I’m not like my parents, who have always been big readers of mysteries. They refer to the books by detectives instead of the author. Which makes sense, because you come for the basic grammatically-suspect question (whodunit?) but you stay for the likeable lead. The hard-boiled, former cop, seen-it-all but still has a joke detective. The unassuming, knitting, kneading, nosy elderly lady finds a body everytime she peeks over her rose bushes. The pretty-without-makeup, ex-Marine who can track a murderer through an oil-slicked alley in four-inch heels. The morbidly-obese genius who never leaves his house and spend four hours a day tending his rooftop orchids even while half the glitterati of New York are depending on him to solve the unsolveable. 

Oh, you don’t know that last one? You must not be in the Wolfe Pack. 

Nero Wolfe is the perfect pandemic hero.

Even without the excuse of avoiding COVID, Nero prefers to stay at home all the time. He solves most of the crimes without ever leaving. His sidekick, Archie Goodwin, wears out the shoe leather picking up clues and collecting suspects. Even when they are in the middle of a case, Nero spends four hours a day (two hours in the morning, two in the late afternoon) upstairs in the rooftop greenhouse of his brownstone on West 35th street, caring for his orchids. He also refuses to work on a case during mealtimes--of which there are many. He’s a big man. Huge. His size is both a cause of his agoraphobia and a symptom of it. 

Because he hardly leaves his home, the brownstone is third lead in the series. But as a New Yorker, I was scratching my head at the descriptions of place. The series runs between the 1930s to the 1970s, but since I started with the series at the beginning, I’m still solidly in the 1930s. I suppose it’s not crazy to think that 1930s New York had a midtown that was full of brownstone houses, but now it’s all glass high rises and the train yards that lead into Penn Station. 

First I headed to the address that is revealed in the books: 922 West 35th street.

West 35th street ends at the Javits Convention Center (currently a COVID vaccine distribution site! Woo hoo!)

So, 922 West 35th street could be this empty lot, which is actually a deep hole.

This has been the case for a while apparently because the Wolfe Pack, i.e. the Official Nero Wolfe Literary Society, picked another spot on West 35th street to put up the requisite plaque.*

They chose a building that could be Nero Wolfe’s famous fictional home at 454 West 35th St. It’s better than a convention center, or a hole, but it takes a bit of squinting and imagination to believe that this was the place that the famous detective would never feel the urge to leave.

I walked around for a while and tried to get a sense of the area. There is a number of brand new glass buildings filled with luxury condos. This spot is just a block away from the new fancy Hudson Yards area that includes the High Line, a brand new mall, and the honeycomb stair bowl known as the Vessel. It’s a long ways from Wolfe’s New York. But I feel like he still wouldn’t spend much time outside.

Here’s the plaque:

“On this site stood the elegant brownstone of the corpulent fictional private detective Nero Wolfe with his able Assistant Archie Goodwin. Mr. Wolfe raised orchids and dined well, while solving over 70 perplexing cases as recorded by novelist Rex Stout from  1934 to 1975. Plaque placed by the Wolfe Pack Summer 1996.”

*If you live in NYC, or ever visit, I heartily recommend that you stop to read every plaque you spot. You never know what you might find!