Archie in the Crosshairs by Robert Goldsborough
Friday, May 29, 2015 at 9:35AM 
Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on March 10, 2015
Archie in the Crosshairs is a Nero Wolfe novel. Someone is threatening to kill Archie (and even fired an errant shot in his direction) which puts a crimp in Archie's nightlife. More bullets are fired at Archie when he isn't busy flirting with every attractive female who enters the story. Meanwhile, Nero Wolfe takes on the case of a young woman who is being blackmailed over a dalliance she had during a trip to Florence -- one she would prefer to keep a secret from her fiancé and family.
Of course, Nero's job is to do the thinking, puzzling out the mystery of Archie's assailant and a couple of murders that occur during the course of the novel while unmasking the blackmailer. Archie does the legwork, interviews the woman's family members and a friend, then reports his findings to Wolfe, who (in classic detective fashion) calls for everyone to be assembled at his home so he can reveal the answer to the mystery. The time he spends dealing with those issues only mildly intrudes upon his orchid tending, gourmet dining, and beer guzzling, but any intrusion on those life-pursuits makes Nero unhappy.
I liked the complex entwined mysteries (some characters aptly call the blackmail plot convoluted). The novel is a worthy emulation of Rex Stout. That's both good and bad. The formality of the characters' dialog and what passes for banter strikes me as artificial (as it did in the Rex Stout books), even given the era in which the novel is set. All of the minor characters make their routine appearances and play their routine parts in ways that seem formulaic. Still, the story is good, even if it doesn't hit the heights of the best Rex Stout novels.
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