Bad for Business

Infobox Book |
name = Bad for Business


author = Rex Stout
country = United States
language = English
series = Tecumseh Fox
genre = Detective novel
publisher = US 1st edition, Farrar (1940) in the omnibus "The Second Mystery Book"; UK 1st edition Collins 1945
release_date = 1940
media_type = Print; hardcover and paperback
pages =
isbn = 0553206745
preceded_by = Double for Death
followed_by = The Broken Vase

Bad for Business is a mystery novel by Rex Stout starring his detective Tecumseh Fox, first published in 1940. Private investigator Tecumseh Fox was the protagonist of three mysteries published by Stout between 1939 and 1941.

Publication History

"Bad For Business" was first published in book form in the United States in the omnibus "The Second Mystery Book" and its first paperback edition was as Dell mapback #299.

This book was later adapted by Stout into the Nero Wolfe short story "Bitter End" published in the November 1940 issue of American Magazine. "Bitter End" was first published in book form in the posthumous Rex Stout collection "Corsage: A Bouquet of Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe" edited by Michael Bourne, James A. Rock & Co., Publishers, published in 1977. "Bitter End" was later published in the collection "Death Times Three", published by Bantam in December 1985.

Plot summary

Amy Duncan is a private investigator for the firm of Bonner and Raffray (see The Hand in the Glove for more complete information about Dol Bonner and this company) and the youngest of four women on what is called the "siren squad". Her detective work is based on the theory that most men get careless eventually around pretty women, especially those with chartreuse eyes like hers, and she's been trying to encourage a handsome young man named Leonard Cliff to get careless when she gets knocked down (harmlessly) by a car driven by private investigator Tecumseh Fox. He learns of her assignment, which is to investigate the possibility the company of which Cliff is a vice-president, a large food conglomerate, has been putting quinine into jars of food sold by her uncle's company, Tingley's Tidbits; someone certainly has, and it's bad for business.

After a further series of coincidences involving her boss, Cliff and Fox, she is fired and goes to visit her uncle after working hours -- she finds him murdered in his office and is promptly knocked unconscious without seeing her assailant. Fox and the police both investigate the company, including its sales manager Sol Fry and production manager G. (for Gwendolyn) Yates, but reserve their suspicions for Tingley's son Phil, who has crackpot ideas about reforming the economic system, and Guthrie Judd, who owns the food conglomerate. Since the quinine problems began, Mr. Tingley has been taking samples from the production line, and the latest sample jar is missing, but so are some documents that relate to the personal lives of Phil Tingley and Guthrie Judd. Fox tracks down the documents and learns Judd's secret, but it brings him no closer to the identity of the murderer. The only thing that does so is remembering a chance remark made by one of the suspects that leads directly to the missing sample jar and the guilty party.

Literary significance and criticism

"A Tecumseh Fox story, in which all the elements of the later Wolfe tales are as it were held in solution: the attitude toward people and the use of reason, the holding of conferences, the description of places and characters, and the pace of storytelling (though here we have a bit of a plateau). Fox helps a girl (assistant to the operative Dol Bonner exculpate herself when her uncle is murdered. ... A good job."Barzun, Jacques and Taylor, Wendell Hertig. "A Catalogue of Crime". New York: Harper & Row. 1971, revised and enlarged edition 1989. ISBN 0-06-015796-8]

References