For the famous detective Nero Wolfe, an eccentric fat man, a gourmet, and an orchid lover, there are no mysterious murders. Any crime that comes within his sight will certainly be solved.
For the first time, Wolfe and Goodwin encounter this case when Kremer shows them a sheet of paper with the names of fictional people. The sheet was found among the papers of a dead lawyer. After a month and a half, a man comes to Wolfe—an inconsolable father of a girl who died the day before…
The killer is clever, intelligent, and extremely cautious. He destroys not only the main evidence—the manuscript of an unpublished novel—but also everyone who has seen that manuscript. He almost manages to confuse the trail… so much so that the prosecutor’s office and the police are already ready to close the case and never return to it…
But Wolfe isn’t in a hurry to send a bill to the client—because, as always, he has his own opinion.