Several months before our story begins, a businessman has been struck down by a hit-and-run driver. Was it murder? One of the firm's executives claims it was, and Nero Wolfe is called in to get proof, if proof exists. But the case involves on-the-spot investigating in the pine-paneled executive offices of a great New York corporation. All Wolfe fans know that the great man never leaves his upholstered, beer-bearing, orchid-blooming habitat, so it falls the the cynical Archie Goodwin to do all the leg work and quite a bit of the thinking.

Archie goes to work for the big corporation and loses all his cynicism by five minutes past nine on the first morning of his new duties. It seems as if the colossal firm of Naylor-Kerr, Inc. must retain a casting director as chief of personnel. How else explain the fact that 500 of America's most beautiful secretaries, typist, file clerks, and receptionists have been gathered under one corporate roof? The presence of these beauties, coupled with the fact that the dead man seems to have been mixed up with an intemperate number of them, makes Archie's investigation involved but scarcely arduous. Among his other tasks, he undertakes to placate a nymphomaniac, to teach a few new pugilistic arts to an angry heavyweight husband, and to make himself agreeable to a rich, handsome, and willing matron. While Archie gathers evidence en passant, Nero sits at home more Buddha-like than ever. The denouement leaves the reader startled and satisfied.

"It was nothing new for Wolfe to take steps, either on his own, or with one or more of the operatives we used, without burdening my mind with it. His stated reason was that I worked better if I thought it all depended on me. His actual reason was that he loved to have a curtain go up revealing him balancing a live seal on his nose." (p. 96)

A hilarious story, and an interesting mystery. Opens with Archie's appointment with Mr. Pine, at the office of corporate giant Naylor-Kerr.

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