The Doorbell Rang
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| Author | Rex Stout |
|---|---|
| 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 8, 1965 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 186 pp. (first edition) |
| OCLC | 1617370 |
| Preceded by | A Right to Die |
| Followed by | Death of a Doxy |
The Doorbell Rang is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1965.
Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who gave away 10,000 copies of a book that is critical of the Bureau and its director, J. Edgar Hoover.
The Doorbell Rang generated controversy when it was published, due largely to its unflattering portrayal of the FBI, its director and agents. It was published at a time when the public's attitude toward the FBI was turning critical, not long after Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover clashed and the Bureau was coming under fire for its investigations of Martin Luther King. Some dismissed the book: National Observer described it as "little more than an anti-FBI diatribe," and Nero Wolfe fan John Wayne wrote Rex Stout a terse note of goodbye after reading the condensed magazine version. But Clifton Fadiman, quoted in a Viking Press advertisement for The Doorbell Rang, thought it was "… the best of all Nero Wolfe stories."
The backdrop to The Doorbell Rang is supplied by J. Edgar Hoover's redirection of the FBI's resources away from its role in criminal investigation and toward its director's own political and ideological ends.
In 1964, American investigative journalist Fred J. Cook published The FBI Nobody Knows — collecting in book form several of his articles on FBI abuses that had previously appeared in The Nation. Although Stout considered Hoover a "megalomaniac" and "one of the most objectionable people in our country," he maintained that he had targeted Hoover's FBI almost randomly in search of a new organizational antagonist for his detective duo which would make a good story, as a break from the NYC homicide detectives and the Westchester district attorney's office. Stout's biographer states that Stout hit on the idea of the FBI while reading Cook's exposé; Stout sent Cook an autographed copy of The Doorbell Rang, thanking him for "priming my pump." Stout had not before used a Wolfe book to air his own political views so extensively, and did not do so again until 1975's A Family Affair.
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