The Golden Spiders
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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 26, 1953 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 186 pp. (first edition) |
| OCLC | 1391763 |
| Preceded by | Prisoner's Base |
| Followed by | Three Men Out |
The Golden Spiders is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout. It was first published in 1953 by The Viking Press.
His fist hit the desk, which for him was a convulsion. "No!" he roared. "Reputation? Am I to invite the comment that it is a mortal hazard to solicit my help? On Tuesday, that boy. On Friday, that woman. They are both dead. I will not have my office converted into an anteroom for the morgue!"
A youngster comes to Wolfe's office and tells Wolfe that he saw a woman driving a car, apparently being menaced by her passenger. The next day, the boy is murdered while washing car windows at a nearby intersection.
After Wolfe reacts petulantly to a change in one of his favourite meals, Archie plays a prank on him by allowing Pete Drossos, a neighbourhood child, to enter and ask for Wolfe’s help on a case. Pete claims that while he was washing the windows of car at a stop light the driver, a woman wearing distinctive golden earrings in the shape of spiders, silently asked him to summon a police officer, and Pete believes she was being threatened by her male passenger. To indulge Pete, Wolfe has Archie pass Pete’s information on to the police, but the next day they learn that the same car, now driven by a man in a brown suit and hat, has struck and killed Pete. Matthew Birch, an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was also struck and killed by the same car, apparently on the same day that Pete approached Wolfe. While this suggests Birch was the man Pete saw in the car evidence at the scene proves Birch was killed before Pete, ruling him out as Pete's murderer.
Wolfe is visited by Pete’s mother, who gives them his meagre savings and asks them to use it to find his killer. Archie, angered at Wolfe’s reluctance to get involved, puts an advertisement in the newspaper, asking the woman in the car to contact Wolfe. Laura Fromm, a wealthy widow, responds to the advertisement and arrives at Wolfe’s house wearing the golden spider earrings. Wolfe and Archie quickly determine that she is not the person they seek, but she is horrified on learning of Pete’s death and claims that she may know who was driving. Fromm refuses to reveal the information, but the next day Wolfe and Archie receive news that she too has been struck by a car and killed. Angered by the fact that two people who came to him for help are now dead, Wolfe decides to solve the murders.
Archie learns that the last people to see Fromm alive are all directly or indirectly connected to a charity for displaced persons that Fromm supported with sizeable donations. While Wolfe assigns his operatives Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather to pursue various leads, Archie approaches those present at the dinner - including Fromm’s secretary Jean Estey, the charity’s attorney Dennis Horan and his wife, and the charity’s director Angela Wright - and offers to sell them details of the conversation between Wolfe and Fromm in an attempt to flush out the guilty party. Before he can approach Paul Kuffner, the charity’s PR director, Kuffner approaches Wolfe and offers to pay for the information. Realising he has been tipped off, Wolfe rejects the offer.
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