 First edition | |
| Author | Rex Stout |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Bill English |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nero Wolfe |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | July 18, 1963 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 182 pp. (first edition) |
| OCLC | 1015193 |
| Preceded by | Gambit |
| Followed by | Trio for Blunt Instruments |
The Mother Hunt is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by Viking Press in 1963.
Do you like eggs?"
She laughed. She looked at me, so I laughed too.
Wolfe scowled. "Confound it, are eggs comical? Do you know how to scramble eggs, Mrs. Valdon?"
"Yes, of course."
"To use Mr. Goodwin's favorite locution, one will get you ten that you don't. I'll scramble eggs for your breakfast and we'll see. Tell me forty minutes before you're ready."
Her eyes widened. "Forty minutes?"
"Yes. I knew you didn't know."— Nero Wolfe, conversing with Lucy Valdon, in The Mother Hunt, chapter 17
A baby is left in a young widow's vestibule, along with a note implying that her late husband is the baby's father. The widow hires Nero Wolfe to identify and locate the baby's birth mother.
Throughout the Wolfe oeuvre, Archie's main romantic interest is Lily Rowan, a Manhattan socialite and heiress who, after an incident in a bull pasture, nicknames Archie "Escamillo." But Stout portrays their relationship as two close friends who share an intimacy of long standing, rather than one of exclusivity. Stout makes it clear that Archie has other romances. One with Phoebe Gunther, in The Silent Speaker, has an exceptionally powerful spark. In The Mother Hunt, Stout for the first time makes unambiguous an affair between Archie and another major character.
In a rare physical outburst, Wolfe becomes so angry and frustrated at one point that he throws his suit jacket at Archie.
Lucy Valdon has recently been widowed by the accidental death of her husband, the novelist Richard Valdon. Lucy has a surprise waiting for her in her vestibule one evening: an abandoned baby, dressed, with a note pinned to a blanket. The note claims that the baby is Richard's son. Lucy wants to learn who the mother is. That information would help determine whether her husband and the mother had been intimate, and therefore the likelihood that the child is in fact Richard's.
Wolfe is reluctant as always, but agrees to investigate. Archie examines the clothes that the baby was wearing and spots an unusual item: the baby's overalls have horsehair buttons, apparently handmade. After Archie draws a blank trying to track the buttons down via businesses in the garment trade, Wolfe tries a tactic that he uses to good effect in other cases. He advertises for information.
The advertisement succeeds in prompting a call from someone who has seen a similar button, and when Archie follows up he eventually locates Ellen Tenzer in Mahopac, about fifty miles north of New York City. Miss Tenzer is a retired nurse who from time to time cares for babies temporarily. She is unwilling to help Archie, though, and orders him off her property. Archie complies, Miss Tenzer disappears, and the next day she is found, strangled, in her car on a Manhattan street.
With that line of investigation closed to them, Wolfe and Archie try another. Lucy arranges for several of Richard's acquaintances to come to the brownstone. Wolfe asks that they each supply him with a list of all the women with whom Richard was in contact during a three-month period roughly corresponding to the date of the baby's conception. A list of 148 names results, and it takes nearly four weeks for Archie, Saul, Fred and Orrie to verify that none of the women had an unaccounted for baby following the period in question.
Finally, Wolfe decides to go for the swindle. His plan involves the Gazette, Lon Cohen's employer, and it succeeds in flushing the baby's mother from hiding. But then she is found dead, also strangled.
When Inspector Cramer learns that there is a connection between the dead woman and Wolfe, he shows up at the front stoop, forcing Wolfe and Archie to flee via the back door. Wolfe is furious about the murders, particularly the second, and desperately wants to expose the killer himself. But if Cramer finds him, he will either have to tell Cramer about the search for the baby's mother or withhold evidence in a capital case.
To avoid having to make that choice, Wolfe and Archie hole up in Lucy's house—she, her baby and her staff are away for a few days. While there, Wolfe has an insight about how the murderer and Ellen Tenzer might have become acquainted. That insight leads to the traditional Wolfe finale, with witnesses and suspects gathered together, but this time it's in someone else's house.
Examples of unfamiliar words—or unfamiliar uses of words that some would otherwise consider familiar—are found throughout the corpus, often in the give-and-take between Wolfe and Archie. The Mother Hunt contains just this one (the page reference is to the Bantam edition):
Also, in this story, Archie must find the source of the peculiar buttons on the baby's clothes, which leads him to the garment district and a man who is a button collector, who asks him if he is a "button man." This expression would probably only be familiar to readers who read noir detective stories or to actual gangsters. This is played up in the A&E version by repeating the phrase a few times.
The Mother Hunt was adapted for the second season of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001–2002). Written by Sharon Elizabeth Doyle, "Motherhunt" made its debut in two one-hour episodes airing May 12 and 19, 2002, on A&E. The direction is credited to Alan Smithee.[4]
Timothy Hutton is Archie Goodwin; Maury Chaykin is Nero Wolfe. Other members of the cast (in credits order) include Colin Fox (Fritz Brenner), Bill Smitrovich (Inspector Cramer), Conrad Dunn (Saul Panzer), Trent McMullen (Orrie Cather), Fulvio Cecere (Fred Durkin), Penelope Ann Miller (Lucy Valdon), Richard Waugh (Manuel Upton), Boyd Banks (Willis Krug), R.D. Reid (Sergeant Purley Stebbins), Saul Rubinek (Lon Cohen), Steve Cumyn (Julian Haft), Shannon Jobe (Miss Mimm), Griffin Dunne (Nicolas Lossoff), Brooke Burns (Beatrice Epps), Erinn Bartlett (Anne Tenzer), Carrie Fisher (Ellen Tenzer), James Tolkan (Leo Bingham) Manon von Gerkan (Sally Corbett) and Kathryn Zenna (Carol Mardus).
In addition to original music by Nero Wolfe composer Michael Small, the soundtrack includes music by Frédéric Chopin (titles), Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Davies, Antonín Dvořák, Scooter Pietsch and Sidney James, Otto Sieben and Dick Walter.[5]
A Nero Wolfe Mystery is available on DVD from A&E Home Video (ISBN 0-7670-8893-X). "Motherhunt" is one of three telefilms initially aired in two parts that A&E released as a "double episode," with a single set of titles and credits.[6]
The adaptation is very faithful to the novel except for moving the setting to the show's 1950's timeframe and a few minor changes in detail, such as Lucy's beach house becomes a country house, Lucy being interested in preventing killer fog from occurring in New York City, and Ellen Tenzer being found slain on a fire escape instead of in her car.
