Robert Goldsborough Books

"A prequel to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries"--Cover.

Archie Goodwin is not overly fond of Theodore Horstmann, who takes care of the orchids on the rooftop of Nero Wolfe's West Thirty-Fifth Street brownstone. But as loyal assistant to the legendary private detective, Archie will put his animosity aside when the surly orchid-keeper stumbles through the front door beaten within an inch of his life. While the gardener lies in a coma, Nero sends Archie to poke around his apartment near the river, but across the street on Tenth Avenue Archie quickly discovers the longshoremen's watering hole in whose back room Horstmann has been playing a lot of bridge lately. Archie does his best to blend in, filling the victim's empty seat in his running card game. But when one of his new bridge partners is killed, Archie finds himself caught up in something much bigger than a bar fight.

After the heir to a frozen-food fortune gets iced, Nero Wolfe’s right-hand man becomes a suspect:“Goldsborough does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy” (Booklist). When Lily Rowan doesn’t laugh at his jokes, Archie Goodwin knows something's wrong. Her niece Noreen has been running around with Sparky Linville, a club-hopping bad boy who's the terror of Manhattan nightlife, and the last time she went out with him, Noreen wasn’t herself when she came home. All she would tell her aunt was that she had been assaulted. Springing into action, Goodwin waits for Linville outside of Morgana’s, a chrome-and-glass palace that sits like a wart on Second Avenue. They nearly come to blows, but Linville’s bodyguard intervenes, and Goodwin retreats to plan his next move. In the morning, Linville is dead, and Goodwin is the chief suspect. For years he has helped rotund genius Nero Wolfe out of jams, and now it's time for the master detective to return the favor.

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin go back to college to investigate a campus death in this first paperback edition of the acclaimed hardcover that earned Goldsborough praise from critics and Nero fans alike for his faithful, fun-filled re-creation of the "stout" sleuth.

In the phenomenal New York Times bestselling tradition of John Gardner's James Bond novels, Robert Goldsborough draws the legendary super sleuth Nero Wolfe back out of retirement in the first of two new novels that take up where Rex Stout left off.Cover Artist: Tom Hallman

In the mob-ridden Chicago of 1938, a reform candidate for mayor is gunned down, and Steve Malek, a police reporter for The Tribune, senses the story of a lifetime. Incurring his editors' anger, he ranges far beyond his beat, plunging headlong into a maverick investigation of the murder. In the process, he crosses paths with actress Helen Hayes, future Mayor Richard J. Daley, one-time syndicate kingpin Al Capone, and pitching great Dizzy Dean, traded to the Cubs at the start of the season. Even with the excitement of the World Series, Dean may be the key to Malek's very survival.

Chicago Tribune police reporter Steve "Snap" Malek is one of the newspaper's best feature writers, and now it looks like one of his well-crafted feature stories might come back to bite him. Malek had, at one time, turned out a laudatory piece about the heroics of a black man in the highly segregated Chicago of the mid-20th century. But now his erstwhile hero, Willson Forrest, stands accused of the near-fatal beating of his wife, who lingers in a coma. Malek, however, doubts Forrest's guilt, and begins a rougue investigation despite the police department's strong belief that they got the right man. The intrepid reporter digs in and uses all of his instincts and resourcefulness to figure out just what happened in the apartment building that left a bludgeoned woman fighting for her life and her husband fighting against prison - or the electric chair. Stairway to Nowhere is ony one of Snap's dramatic encounters. This bonus companion book to the Snap Malek Mysteries offers several more of his unique experiences.

A reporter's routine assignment turns deadly when a serial killer stalks the Chicago Railroad Fair in this historical noir thriller. It's the summer of 1949, and Chicago Tribune reporter Steve "Snap" Malek has been assigned to cover the Chicago Railroad Fair. For three months this sprawling and lavish event will draw visitors to the showcase on the city's beautiful lakefront. Malek, used to covering the gritty police headquarters, sees this assignment as the first step in being put out to pasture. But violence has a way of finding the intrepid Snap Malek, even in this least likely of locales. A killer with a grudge against the railroad industry is striking at random, threatening to shut down the national expo with a series of bizarre murders. Before this reign of terror ends, famed filmmaker Walt Disney enters the scene with a theory about the killer, and Malek himself, bloodied and wounded, becomes a target of the madman's wrath.

A Chicago crime reporter is out to stop a local hate group from assassinating President Truman in this historical crime thriller. Chicago, 1948. As President Harry Truman prepares to visit Chicago in the final tense days of his reelection campaign, police reporter Steve "Snap" Malek receives an ominous threat. An anti-Semitic group plans to assassinate the president for officially recognizing the new state of Israel. When Malek refuses the hate group's demands for newspaper publicity, they begin killing Chicagoans--one a day, including a policeman and a fireman. As the so-called New Reich promises more of the same, Malek begins his dogged hunt to uncover their true identities. Along the way, he meets maverick automaker Preston Tucker, and even gets the chance to drive the revolutionary Tucker Torpedo. But when Truman arrives in Chicago for a parade, time is running out for Malek to stifle the deadly plot.

Rex Stout fans will relish this book, a whodunit in the authentic style of Stout's classics. Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie Goodwin, are back again--this time, to solve the murder of a nasty newspaper magnate whose death has been labeled a suicide.