The Rubber Band
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| Author | Rex Stout |
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| Cover artist | Winifred E. Lefferts |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nero Wolfe |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Farrar & Rinehart |
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Publication date
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April 9, 1936 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 308 pp. (first edition) |
| OCLC | 4962869 |
| Preceded by | The League of Frightened Men |
| Followed by | The Red Box |
The Rubber Band is the third Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout. Prior to its publication in 1936 by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., the novel was serialized in six issues of The Saturday Evening Post (February 29 – April 4, 1936). Appearing in one 1960 paperback edition titled To Kill Again, The Rubber Band was also collected in the omnibus volume Five of a Kind (Viking 1961).
Wolfe still paid no attention to me. As a matter of fact, I didn't expect him to, since he was busy taking exercise. He had recently got the impression that he weighed too much—which was about the same as if the Atlantic Ocean formed the opinion that it was too wet—and so had added a new item to his daily routine. … He called the darts javelins.
The Rubber Band opens with the revelation that Wolfe has added a workout to his daily schedule. He hurls yellow-feathered darts at a poker-dart board that Fritz hangs in the office from 3:45 to 4 p.m. Archie had joined in at first, but quit when he found he had lost nearly $100 to Wolfe in the first two months. "There was no chance of getting any real accuracy with it, it was mostly luck," Archie writes. On this particular Sunday, Wolfe exercises alone while Archie needles him by reading aloud, at length, from The New York Times Magazine.
The novel introduces Lieutenant Rowcliff, not one of the NYPD's finest (in the opinion not only of Wolfe but Inspector Cramer). Rowcliff's search throughout the brownstone for Wolfe's client, Clara Fox, earns Wolfe's enmity, which lasts until the final Wolfe novel in 1975. In addition, The Rubber Band contains the first documented death to occur in Wolfe's office.
During Nero Wolfe's daily exercise—a game of darts—Archie amuses himself by reading aloud from a magazine profile of the Marquis of Clivers, a British nobleman who has recently arrived in America on official government business. The next day, Archie meets with Anthony Perry, president of the Seaboard Products Corporation, who is concerned that one of his employees, Clara Fox, is being unjustly accused of theft. A package containing $30,000 held for a client by Ramsey Muir, the company's senior vice president, has gone missing, and Muir is accusing Clara. Despite the evidence pointing to Clara, Perry hopes that Wolfe will be able to clear her.
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