The Doorbell Rang is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by the Viking Press in 1965. Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who gave away 10,000 copies of a book that is critical of the Bureau and its director, J. Edgar Hoover. In addition, an author was murdered, and Archie deduces who murdered him. The novel was found to be both one of Stout’s best and controversial.
Plot introduction
Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who gave away 10,000 copies of a book that is critical of the Bureau and its director, J. Edgar Hoover.
The Doorbell Rang generated controversy when it was published, due largely to its unflattering portrayal of the FBI, its director and agents. It was published at a time when the public's attitude toward the FBI was turning critical, not long after Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover clashed and the Bureau was coming under fire for its investigations of Martin Luther King Jr. Some dismissed the book: National Observer described it as "little more than an anti-FBI diatribe", and Nero Wolfe fan John Wayne wrote Rex Stout a terse note of goodbye after reading the condensed magazine version.McAleer, John, Rex Stout: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977, hardcover But Clifton Fadiman, quoted in a Viking Press advertisement for The Doorbell Rang, thought it was "the best of all Nero Wolfe stories".
The FBI and The FBI Nobody Knows
The backdrop to The Doorbell Rang is supplied by J. Edgar Hoover's redirection of the FBI's resources away from its role in criminal investigation and toward its director's own political and ideological ends.
In 1964, American investigative journalist Fred J. Cook published The FBI Nobody Knows – collecting in book form several of his articles on FBI abuses that had previously appeared in The Nation. Although Stout considered Hoover a "megalomaniac" and "one of the most objectionable people in our country", he maintained that he had targeted Hoover's FBI almost randomly in search of a new organizational antagonist for his detective duo which would make a good story, as a break from the NYC homicide detectives and the Westchester district attorney's office. Stout's biographer states that Stout hit on the idea of the FBI while reading Cook's exposé; Stout sent Cook an autographed copy of The Doorbell Rang, thanking him for "priming my pump". Stout had not before used a Wolfe book to air his own political views so extensively, and did not do so again until 1975's A Family Affair.
Plot summary
Rachel Bruner, a wealthy Manhattan widow, has recently incurred the wrath of the FBI. After reading a book called The FBI Nobody Knows, a prominent critique of the many unethical practices of the Bureau, she has mailed 10,000 copies of it to prominent figures across the country. Having endured several incidents of harassment and prying, she offers to hire Wolfe to persuade the FBI to leave her alone. Although initially hesitant of making a powerful enemy, Wolfe is persuaded over Archie’s objections when Bruner offers a $50,000 retainer and then doubles it to $100,000, as well as a fee and any expenses he may incur. He is also sympathetic to both Bruner’s plight and the arguments made in the book, and decides not to withdraw in the face of what he sees as heavy-handed and bullying opposition tactics.
As the FBI put Wolfe and Archie under surveillance, Wolfe plans to gain examples of FBI malfeasance and use it to persuade the FBI to back down. To defeat the FBI bugs, Wolfe & his speaker agree to occasionally say false things but raise their finger when doing so; as the bugs are sound-only, the FBI listeners will not know if a statement was true or false. Archie’s initial investigations prove fruitless, but he soon receives an anonymous message from Dr. Vollmer, Wolfe’s physician, asking for a clandestine meeting. Although initially suspecting an FBI trap, Archie is astonished to learn that the message is from Inspector Cramer. Cramer reveals that the FBI are attempting to have Wolfe and Archie’s private investigator licenses revoked. He also reveals that he suspects that FBI agents may be involved in the murder of Morris Althaus, a freelance journalist who was researching an article critical of the Bureau, two months earlier. Althaus was found shot to death in his apartment, but the fatal bullet was never recovered; in addition, his research notes were also missing. Cramer, who is opposed to the FBI’s efforts to sabotage Wolfe and stonewall the police's homicide investigation, offers to write a report favourable to Wolfe and Archie if Wolfe proves that the FBI are responsible for the murder of Althaus.
Wolfe instead decides that it would serve his purposes better to prove that the FBI had no part in the murder. He also devises a plan to trap the FBI. Acting on the suspicion that the FBI have secretly bugged Wolfe’s office, Wolfe gathers the key suspects in his office and publicly claims that he is gathering proof that FBI agents murdered Althaus and are covering it up, while directing Archie to conduct his own investigation.
Archie discovers that Sarah Dacos, Bruner’s secretary, lives in the same apartment building as Althaus and claimed to have seen FBI agents leaving the apartment on the night of the murder. When Wolfe and Archie question her, Dacos claims only a casual acquaintance with Althaus, but Archie remains suspicious of her. Acting on a hunch, he breaks into Dacos’s apartment, where he discovers proof that Dacos and Althaus were engaged in an affair. He also discovers the gun that was used to kill Althaus. Archie realises that Dacos murdered Althaus after he broke off their relationship to marry another woman, and that he needs to leave the gun behind. He moves it to a new hiding place, but worries that Dacos will dispose of it before Wolfe and Archie can prove her guilt.
Meanwhile, Wolfe has been preparing his trap for the FBI. Publicly arranging a dinner with his old friend and fellow orchid lover Lewis Hewitt, he privately hires two actors resembling himself and Archie and has them smuggled into the brownstone, along with his operatives Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather. The actors are sent to Hewitt’s dinner posing as Wolfe and Archie, while Wolfe, Archie and the operatives secretly remain in the brownstone. Having spread his public suspicions of the FBI and his plans for the house to be empty, Wolfe suspects that the FBI will use the opportunity to break in and steal any evidence he has that FBI agents murdered Althaus.
Two agents break into the house that night, only to be held at gunpoint by Archie and the operatives. Wolfe confiscates their credentials, having obtained conclusive proof of the FBI's harassment of a private citizen and conduct of illegal activities. The next day, Wolfe meets with senior FBI official Richard Wragg and offers a deal, with Bruner watching through the office peephole. Wolfe refuses to return the credentials, but offers to abstain from pressing charges and publicly embarrassing the FBI, in exchange for the FBI ceasing all surveillance and harassment of Bruner and those connected to her, including Archie and himself. He adds that he can prove that FBI agents were not responsible for Althaus' murder.
After Wragg agrees to Wolfe’s terms, Archie approaches Inspector Cramer and gives him a lead on Dacos. After the police search her apartment and find the gun, Dacos is arrested for the murder. Wolfe then gathers Wragg and Cramer in his office and negotiates a deal between them. In exchange for Wragg handing over the missing bullet that will prove Dacos' guilt, taken by the FBI along with Althaus' research notes, Cramer will conceal any involvement on the part of the FBI. Wragg and Cramer reluctantly agree to Wolfe’s deal.
The novel ends with Wolfe and Archie receiving an unidentified but important visitor, implied to be J. Edgar Hoover ("the big fish", someone Archie has never seen before, but of whom he has seen plenty of pictures). Speculating that this visitor has come in person to collect the FBI credentials, Wolfe refuses to let him into the house, leaving the visitor to keep ringing the doorbell.
Cast of characters Nero Wolfe, private detective Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's assistant, narrator of all the Wolfe stories Rachel Bruner, Wolfe's client, a wealthy business owner who, along with her family and employees, is being harassed by the FBI Sarah Dacos, Mrs. Bruner's secretary Morris Althaus, a writer whose murder is somehow connected to the FBI's activities in Manhattan Ivana Althaus, Morris's mother, who quotes both Leviticus and Aristotle on the subject of vengeance Richard Wragg, special agent in charge of the FBI's New York office Ashley Jarvis and Dale Kirby, actors hired to stand in for Wolfe and Goodwin, respectively Inspector Cramer, head of West Manhattan Homicide
Reviews and commentary
Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime – "The plot is transparent and the detection is fairly simple, but one or two of the dodges practiced here by Wolfe are new (for him). The scene in which the New York head of the FBI is 'rated' in Wolfe's office and told he can't have a set of credentials belonging to one of his own men is rich. The anti-'bugging' scheme is also amusing." Harper's, Books in Brief (December 1965) – "One always feels that Mr. Stout is having fun with his Nero Wolfe and Archie, but never has it been more apparent than in this complicated but easily followed tale. It's a story of sleuthing, harassment, murder, the FBI – very especially the FBI – and the police, with the usual delicious decor of orchids, fine foods, and happily unconventional and pungent dialogue. Almost everybody's role is unexpectedly askew and you don't see how they can all possibly get their deserts, but they do, convincingly and rather hilariously."Jackson, Katherine Gauss, Books in Brief: Novels for the Holidays; Harper's, December 1965, pp. 133–134 The Nation – "No doubt about it – the best civil liberties mystery of all time."Lingeman, Richard R., and the editors of The Nation, The Nation Guide to The Nation (2008, Vintage Books; ), p. 62 Nancy Pearl, Book Lust – "When Stout is on top of his game, which is most of the time, his diabolically clever plotting and his storytelling ability exceed that of any other mystery writer you can name, including Agatha Christie, who invented her own eccentric genius detective Hercule Poirot. Although in the years since Stout's death I find myself going back and rereading his entire oeuvre every year or two, I return with particular pleasure to these five novels: The Doorbell Rang; Plot It Yourself; Murder by the Book; Champagne for One; and Gambit."Pearl, Nancy, Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (Seattle, Washington: Sasquatch Books, 2003, ); p. 226 Terry Teachout, "Forty years with Nero Wolfe" (January 12, 2009) – "Rex Stout's witty, fast-moving prose hasn't dated a day, while Wolfe himself is one of the enduringly great eccentrics of popular fiction. I've spent the past four decades reading and re-reading Stout's novels for pleasure, and they have yet to lose their savor ... It is to revel in such writing that I return time and again to Stout's books, and in particular to The League of Frightened Men, Some Buried Caesar, The Silent Speaker, Too Many Women, Murder by the Book, Before Midnight, Plot It Yourself, Too Many Clients, The Doorbell Rang, and Death of a Doxy, which are for me the best of all the full-length Wolfe novels." Time, "The Grand Race" (book review) (November 5, 1965) – "Stout once said all that he thinks is important to say. A good mystery writer, he wrote, merely tells the reader: "Let's run a race. Here goes my mind, I'm off, see if you can catch me." In Doorbell, even FBI fans will have to admire his agility."