Black Orchids is the ninth installment in the Wolfe/Goodwin series, and the first to not be a novel. Instead, it’s a collection of two novellas, one that shares it’s name with the book and Cordially Invited to Meet Death. For whatever reason, I kept putting this one off for years–until 2 years ago, I think. What a stupid, stupid move. These are not Stout’s best work–in character, complexity, theme or whatever–but they are just about the most entertaining entries in the corpus. I literally LOL’ed more than once the first time I read them, and a couple of times on this second read as well.

It’s no mistake that the book shares the title with the first novella–it’s the superior entry, a funny, light romp until it stops and becomes one of the grimmer entries in the corpus. Wolfe throughout is childish, peevish, calculating and, eventually, ruthless. Archie is, well, Archie.

Lewis Hewitt, a fellow orchid fanatic and sometimes ally of Wolfe’s has produced a new hybrid that Wolfe is very jealous of–some black orchids (not the most subtle of titles), and is showing them at New York’s annual flower show. Naturally disinclined to attend himself, Wolfe sends Archie down to view them, take notes on them, etc. Archie indulges him in this, fully expecting Wolfe to try something to get them.

Another exhibit at the show features a couple acting out a summer picnic, the man is okay, and the woman is so striking that Archie immediately starts calling her his fiance. Judging by the crowd that assembles at the time each day where the man naps and she washes her feet, Archie’s not the only one smitten.

Now is the time where I mention that as this is a Wolfe story, someone gets killed. Hewitt is tangentially associated with killing, enough to scare him into being open to some pressure from Wolfe regarding the hybrids.

Things remain lighter for a little while, but then as I said they get dark and morally murky. Even so, a rollicking good read that ends too soon.

The second story, has it’s moments, too. Bess Huddleston, a party planner for the obscenely rich, is being blackmailed and comes to Wolfe for help. Years before, Huddleston had insulted Wolfe’s dignity by trying to hire him to play detective at a party (she ended up settling for Inspector Cramer), nevertheless, Wolfe takes the case and sends Archie to her home to investigate.

Huddleston’s home and the inhabitants thereof are some of the strangest a reader will encounter anywhere–as is the method of murder and attempted murder that Archie stumbles into.

Unlike Black Orchids, this one was just short enough to remain entertaining. Oh, I should mention that both Fritz and Wolfe end up taking guidance in the kitchen from a (female!!) suspect–that alone makes this worth the time.

Lines that struck me as insightful/funny/revealing/whatever

from Black Orchids
I do not deny that flowers are pretty, but a million flowers are not a million times prettier than one flower. Oysters are good to eat, but who wants to eat a carload?

[Archie speaking to Wolfe] Will you kindly tell me,” I requested, “why the females you see at a flower show are the kind of females who go to a flower show? Ninety per cent of them? Especially their legs? Does it have to be like that? Is it because, never having any flowers sent to them, they have to go there in order to see any?”

[Rose Lasher speaking of Archie] “That ten-cent Clark Gable there that thinks he’s so slick he can slide uphill”

And Archie’s reaction: …her cheap crack about me being a ten-cent Clark Gable, which was ridiculous. He simpers, to begin with, and to end with no once can say I resemble a movie actor, and fi they did it would be more apt to be Gary Cooper than Clark Gable.

from Cordially Invited to Meet Death
[Wolfe speaking] There is nothing in the world, as indestructible as human dignity.”

For a cop to move persons from the house, any person whatever, with or without a charge or a warrant, except at Wolfe’s instigation, was an intolerable insult to his pride, his vanity and his sense of the fitness of things. So as was to be expected, he acted with a burst of energy amounting to violence. he sat up straight in his chair. [I cannot read that last sentence w/o chuckling]