Before Midnight (novel)
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| Author | Rex Stout |
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| Cover artist | Bill English |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nero Wolfe |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
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Publication date
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October 27, 1955 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 184 (first edition) |
| OCLC | 170384 |
| Preceded by | The Black Mountain |
| Followed by | Three Witnesses |
Before Midnight is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout published in 1955 by the Viking Press. The story was also collected in the omnibus volume Three Trumps (Viking 1973).
A national literary contest to promote a new brand of perfume leads to murder and more.
Numerous major works of literature are mentioned as part of the contest. Four poetic riddles to real and fictional women are given, and three of them are solved, two by Archie, and one by Wolfe. The fourth is never solved within the text.
Although Nero Wolfe is, by his own immodest measure, a great detective, and in particular the greatest murder specialist in Manhattan, this allows him to charge outrageous fees, working only when he is short of money or Archie Goodwin, his live-in right-hand man, manages to goad him into it, preferring instead to read books, tend a magnificent orchid conservatory on the roof of his brownstone, or consult (annoy) his live-in world-class chef Fritz Brenner.
Archie therefore considers pestering Wolfe about his literary knowledge to be fitting repartée. He also wants to go to the Flamingo nightclub with his girlfriend Lily Rowan, but cannot get away on a Tuesday night unless he irritates Wolfe enough to boot him out. So he starts quoting Wolfe poetic riddles from a national contest promoting Pour Amour, a new brand of perfume. At first Wolfe tolerates it, and even humors Archie by telling him about Nell Gwyn and Charles II of England, but a fourth riddle exhausts Wolfe's patience and Archie gets his wish and goes out.
The very next morning, as Archie is eating a wonderful breakfast prepared by Fritz, he gets a call from attorney Rudolph Hansen, representing the advertising firm LBA, which is conducting the perfume contest. Louis Dahlmann, the executive in charge of that account, has been murdered the night before, but Hansen is calling about something more urgent! The concept of something more urgent than murder gets Archie's attention and he makes an appointment for Hansen and the three partners of LBA to meet Wolfe at 11 am that morning.
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