Trio for Blunt Instruments

Trio for
Blunt Instruments

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

| April 24, 1964
Media type| Print (hardcover)
Pages| 247 pp. (first edition)
OCLC| 36962358
Preceded by| The Mother Hunt
Followed by| A Right to Die

Trio for Blunt Instruments is a collection of Nero Wolfe mystery novellas by Rex Stout, published in 1964 by the Viking Press in the United States and simultaneously by MacMillan & Company in Canada. The book comprises three stories:

* "Kill Now—Pay Later", serialized in three issues of The Saturday Evening Post (December 9, 16 and 23–30, 1961)
* "Murder Is Corny", previously unpublished; the last Nero Wolfe novella to be written, and the last published in Stout's lifetime
* "Blood Will Tell", first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (December 1963)

## Reviews and commentary[edit]

* Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime — Of these, the first is a compendium of all the author's merits—a fast tale of double murder, drama, conflict with officialdom, banter about love, and a violent ending on Wolfe's premises, where the vulnerable heroine is a refugee. The second has agricultural elements that do not go well with the quasi-sexual drama; and the third is a premeditated crime rather simply untwisted. Archie is good throughout."[1]
* Anthony Boucher, The New York Times (May 17, 1964) — This time he offers, in addition to two solidly admirable specimens, one that may well be the finest Nero Wolfe case of the past decade. By no means fail to read "Blood Will Tell" — and look forward (like me) to even more impressive mastery from Mr. Stout when he reaches his eighties.
* John Canaday, The New York Times (May 28, 1964) — Rex Stout, who gives his birth date as Dec. 1, 1886, is either the victim of false records or the beneficiary of a biological aberration, eternal youth. His new New Wolfe threesome, Trio for Blunt Instruments, keeps him right where he has been for so long — on top of the heap and the liveliest of all detective fiction writers.

## Publication history[edit]

Bill English dust jacket design

* 1964, New York: The Viking Press, April 24, 1964, hardcover[2]
In his limited-edition pamphlet, Collecting Mystery Fiction #10, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part II, Otto Penzler describes the first edition of Trio for Blunt Instruments: "Orange cloth, front cover and spine printed with blue rules; the front cover printed with blue lettering; the spine is printed with black lettering; rear cover blank. Issued in a mainly red pictorial dust wrapper."[3]
In April 2006, Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine estimated that the first edition of Trio for Blunt Instruments had a value of between $150 and $300. The estimate is for a copy in very good to fine condition in a like dustjacket.[4]
The "concept-driven" dustjacket designed by Bill English was cited by graphic design scholar Steven Heller for its spare use of color, sans-serif typography and use of the entire front and back cover area.[5]
* 1964, New York: Viking (Mystery Guild), June 1964, hardcover
The far less valuable Viking book club edition may be distinguished from the first edition in three ways:
* The dust jacket has "Book Club Edition" printed on the inside front flap, and the price is absent (first editions may be price clipped if they were given as gifts).
* Book club editions are sometimes thinner and always taller (usually a quarter of an inch) than first editions.
* Book club editions are bound in cardboard, and first editions are bound in cloth (or have at least a cloth spine).[6]
* 1965, London: Collins Crime Club, January 1965, hardcover
* 1967, New York: Bantam #F-3298, January 1967
* 1997, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 0-553-24191-5 January 1, 1997, paperback
* 1997, Newport Beach, California: Books on Tape, Inc. ISBN 0-7366-4061-4 October 31, 1997, audio cassette (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
* 2010, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 978-0-307-75629-9 July 21, 2010, e-book

## References[edit]

1. ^ Barzun, Jacques and Taylor, Wendell Hertig. A Catalogue of Crime. New York: Harper & Row. 1971, revised and enlarged edition 1989. ISBN 0-06-015796-8
2. ^ Townsend, Guy M., Rex Stout: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1980, New York: Garland Publishing; ISBN 0-8240-9479-4), p. 86. John McAleer, Judson Sapp and Arriean Schemer are associate editors of this definitive publication history.
3. ^ Penzler, Otto, Collecting Mystery Fiction #10, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part II (2001, New York: The Mysterious Bookshop, limited edition of 250 copies), p. 17
4. ^ Smiley, Robin H., "Rex Stout: A Checklist of Primary First Editions." Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine (Volume 16, Number 4), April 2006, p. 35
5. ^ Heller, Steven (July 9, 2015). "Bill English Covers Rex Stout". Print. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
6. ^ Penzler, Otto, Collecting Mystery Fiction #9, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part I, pp. 19–20

## External links[edit]

Quotations related to Trio for Blunt Instruments at Wikiquote

* v
* t
* e

Nero Wolfe

Creator|

* Rex Stout

Characters|

* Nero Wolfe
* Archie Goodwin
* Nero Wolfe supporting characters

Novels|

* Fer-de-Lance (1934)
* The League of Frightened Men (1935)
* The Rubber Band (1936)
* The Red Box (1937)
* Too Many Cooks (1938)
* Some Buried Caesar (1939)
* Over My Dead Body (1940)
* Where There's a Will (1940)
* The Silent Speaker (1946)
* Too Many Women (1947)
* And Be a Villain (1948)
* The Second Confession (1949)
* In the Best Families (1950)
* Murder by the Book (1951)
* Prisoner's Base (1952)
* The Golden Spiders (1953)
* The Black Mountain (1954)
* Before Midnight (1955)
* Might as Well Be Dead (1956)
* If Death Ever Slept (1957)
* Champagne for One (1958)
* Plot It Yourself (1959)
* Too Many Clients (1960)
* The Final Deduction (1961)
* Gambit (1962)
* The Mother Hunt (1963)
* A Right to Die (1964)
* The Doorbell Rang (1965)
* Death of a Doxy (1966)
* The Father Hunt (1968)
* Death of a Dude (1969)
* Please Pass the Guilt (1973)
* A Family Affair (1975)

Novellas and
short stories|

* "Bitter End" (1940)
* "Black Orchids" (1941)
* "Cordially Invited to Meet Death" (1942)
* "Not Quite Dead Enough" (1942)
* "Booby Trap" (1944)
* "Help Wanted, Male" (1945)
* "Instead of Evidence" (1946)
* "Before I Die" (1947)
* "Man Alive" (1947)
* "Bullet for One" (1948)
* "Omit Flowers" (1948)
* "Door to Death" (1949)
* "The Gun with Wings" (1949)
* "Disguise for Murder" (1950)
* "The Cop-Killer" (1951)
* "The Squirt and the Monkey" (1951)
* "Home to Roost" (1952)
* "This Won't Kill You" (1952)
* "Invitation to Murder" (1953)
* "The Zero Clue" (1953)
* "When a Man Murders" (1954)
* "Die Like a Dog" (1954)
* "The Next Witness" (1955)
* "Immune to Murder" (1955)
* "A Window for Death" (1956)
* "Too Many Detectives" (1956)
* "Christmas Party" (1957)
* "Easter Parade" (1957)
* "Fourth of July Picnic" (1957)
* "Murder Is No Joke" (1958), expanded as "Frame-Up for Murder" (1958)
* "Method Three for Murder" (1960)
* "Poison à la Carte" (1960)
* "The Rodeo Murder" (1960)
* "Counterfeit for Murder" (1961)
* "Death of a Demon" (1961)
* "Kill Now—Pay Later" (1961)
* "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" (1962)
* "Blood Will Tell" (1963)
* "Murder Is Corny" (1964)
* "Assault on a Brownstone" (1985, posthumously published early draft of "Counterfeit for Murder")

Adaptations|

| Film|

* Meet Nero Wolfe (1936)
* The League of Frightened Men (1937)

|

Radio|

* The Adventures of Nero Wolfe (1943–44)
* The Amazing Nero Wolfe (1945)
* The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe (1950–51)
* Nero Wolfe (1982)

Television|

* Nero Wolfe (1977)
* Nero Wolfe (1981)
* The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2000)
* Nero Wolfe (2001–02)

Novels by
Robert Goldsborough|

* Murder in E Minor (1986)
* Death on Deadline (1987)
* Fade to Black (1990)

Related|

* Black Orchid Novella Award
* Nero Award
* The Wolfe Pack

*[OCLC]: Online Computer Library Center number
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template