Some Buried Caesar

infobox Book |
name = Some Buried Caesar
title_orig =
translator =


author = Rex Stout
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series = Nero Wolfe
genre = Detective fiction
publisher = Farrar & Rinehart
release_date = February 2, 1939
media_type = Print (Hardcover)
pages = 296 pp. (first edition)
isbn = NA
preceded_by = Too Many Cooks
followed_by = Over My Dead Body

"Some Buried Caesar" is the sixth Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout. The story first appeared in abridged form in "The American Magazine" (December 1938), under the title "The Red Bull." It was first published in book form by Farrar & Rinehart in 1939. The novel is included in the omnibus volume "All Aces," published in 1958 by the Viking Press.

Plot introduction

quotation|We sat, the nephew and niece looking worried, Lily Rowan yawning, Pratt frowning. Wolfe heaved a sigh and emptied his glass.
Pratt muttered, "All the commotion."
Wolfe nodded. "Astonishing. About a bull. It might be thought you were going to cook him and eat him."
Pratt nodded. "I am. That's what's causing all the trouble."
Conversation on Thomas Pratt's patio, laying the groundwork for conflict, in "Some Buried Caesar", chapter 2.On the way to an agricultural fair north of Manhattan, Wolfe's car runs into a tree, stranding Wolfe and Archie at the home of the owner of a chain of fast-food cafés. A neighbor is later found gored to death; the authorities rule the death an accident but Wolfe deduces that it was murder. Lily Rowan, Archie's longtime girlfriend, makes her first appearance.

This is one of several Wolfe plots that break one of Wolfe's cardinal rules, to never conduct business away from the Manhattan brownstone. It involves minor characters who appear in several other Wolfe novels, under different names and in different locales: the self-important police officer who tries to intimidate Archie, and the occasionally bumbling but politically attuned district attorney. The book's title is from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".

Plot summary

Wolfe and Archie are on their way to show orchids at an upstate exposition when a tire blows and their car crashes into a tree. Uninjured, they notice a house across a large pasture and decide to walk there, to phone for help. On their way across the pasture, they are threatened by a large bull. Archie runs for the fence to divert the bull, giving Wolfe time to climb to safety atop a large boulder. Wolfe is subsequently retrieved by car.

Wolfe and Archie get a lift to the house, where lives Thomas Pratt, the owner of a large chain of fast-food restaurants. Pratt plans to barbecue a champion Guernsey named Caesar, the very bull that threatened Wolfe and Archie, a few days later. The idea is to get publicity for Pratt's restaurants by serving beef from a bull that has been purchased for the then-fantastic price of $45,000. The plan has outraged the members of the Guernsey League, who are in town for the exposition.

Clyde Osgood, son of a despised neighbor, shows up and offers to bet Pratt $10,000 that Pratt will not barbecue Caesar. Pratt accepts the bet, and Wolfe offers Archie's services in exchange for a comfortable stay at Pratt's house: Archie will help guard the bull from possible theft. During his watch that night, Archie discovers Clyde's body, gored to death in the pasture. The bull is using its horns to push at the corpse. Everyone involved assumes that the bull killed Clyde, but Wolfe thinks not.

The unfamiliar word

In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. "Some Buried Caesar" contains several examples, including the following. (Stout did not normally resort to Latin phrases, but this novel contains several.) The page references are to the Bantam edition:
*Plerophery. Page 1. A word sufficiently unfamiliar that it does not appear in the 1973 edition of the Random House unabridged dictionary. (It is "the state of being fully persuaded.")
*"Ignoratio elenchi". Page 64, near the end of Chapter 4. (The Latin phrase is placed subsequent to "sophistry" and "casuistry". Unfamiliarity is a personal and subjective concept.)
*"Petitio principii". Page 97, near the start of Chapter 8.
*Apodictically. Page 122, near the end of Chapter 9.
*Ethology. Page 166, near the start of Chapter 13.

There are quite a few errata in the Bantam editions of the Nero Wolfe books. "Ethology" may be one such: the sentence in which it is used, "Ethology is chaos," barely makes sense in the context of the dialog. Note also that on page 149, near the end of Chapter 11, a minor character misquotes "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam": "I sometimes think that never grows so red the rose as where some buried Caesar bled."

Cast of characters

*Nero Wolfe – The private investigator
*Archie Goodwin – Wolfe's assistant, and the narrator of all Wolfe stories
*Thomas Pratt – The owner of a chain of fast-food restaurants, who plans to barbecue a champion Guernsey bull for publicity
*Monte McMillan – The stockman who sold the champion bull Caesar to Pratt
*Frederick Osgood – Pratt's neighbor, a wealthy landowner whose prodigal son is found gored to death in a cow pasture
*Clyde and Nancy Osgood – Frederick Osgood's son and daughter
*Carolyn and Jimmy Pratt – Thomas Pratt's niece and nephew
*Lily Rowan – A free spirit from Manhattan with whom Clyde Osgood is smitten. Introduced in this book, Miss Rowan makes frequent appearances later in the series, as a prominent figure in some plots and as Archie's close friend.
*Howard Bronson – A mysterious, sinister acquaintance of Clyde Osgood, also from Manhattan

Reviews and commentary

* Isaac Anderson, "The New York Times Book Review" (February 5, 1939) — Only twice since Rex Stout began to record his adventures in detection has Nero Wolfe left his home for an extended stay. The first time was when he attended a convention of chefs ("Too Many Cooks"). This time he goes to exhibit his orchids, and again he arrives at the scene of a murder before it happens. A prize bull is suspected of the killing, but Wolfe knows better, although he keeps his opinion to himself because he prefers not to take on another investigation away from home. When it proves impossible to keep out of the case he agrees to take a hand and the mystery is as good as solved, even though it does look at times as though Wolfe has, for once, met his match. The story is told in the usual breezy Rex Stout manner — the breeziness being supplied chiefly by Archie Goodwin — and anybody who reads detective stories can tell you that Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe make a combination that is hard to beat. [Anderson, Isaac, "The New York Times Book Review"; February 9, 1939, p. 20]
* Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, "A Catalogue of Crime" — The story of the prize bull, to be highly esteemed by all Stout partisans. Nero and Archie in top form despite rural surroundings.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]
* Clifton Fadiman, "The New Yorker" (February 3, 1939) — Clyde Osgood is found gored to death, and Hickory Caesar Grindon, prize bull, is the natural suspect. Fortunately, Nero Wolfe and his Watson, Archie Goodwin, are on the spot to run down the real murderer. Mr. Stout's dialogue and clever plots seem to get better and better. ["The New Yorker", February 3, 1939, p. 68]
*"The Saturday Review of Literature" (February 4, 1939) — Ingenious plot, Nero's eccentricities, Archie Goodwin's wise-cracks keep story on Stout's best level. Verdict: Unbeatable. ["The Saturday Review of Literature", February 4, 1939, p. 18]
*"Time" (March 6, 1939) — Attempted barbecue of a championship bull cooks the goose of two up-State New Yorkers. Not expert-proof, but Nero Wolfe's sleuthing and Archie Goodwin's cracks make it Rex Stout's best. ["Time", [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760886,00.html "February Mysteries,"] March 6, 1939, p. 63]

Adaptations

"Per la fama di Cesare" (Radiotelevisione Italiana)

"Some Buried Caesar" was adapted for a series of Nero Wolfe films produced by the Italian television network RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana). Directed by Giuliana Berlinguer from a teleplay by Edoardo Anton, "Nero Wolfe: Per la fama di Cesare" first aired March 11, 1969.

The series of black-and-white telemovies stars Tino Buazzelli (Nero Wolfe), Paolo Ferrari (Archie Goodwin), Pupo De Luca (Fritz Brenner), Renzo Palmer (Inspector Cramer), Roberto Pistone (Saul Panzer), Mario Righetti (Orrie Cather) and Gianfranco Varetto (Fred Durkin). Other members of the cast of "Per la fama di Cesare" include Gabriella Pallotta (Lily Rowan), Antonio Rais (Dave), Aldo Giuffrè (Thomas Pratt), Umberto Ceriani (Jimmy), Franco Sportelli (MacMillan), Giorgio Favretto (Clyde Osgood) and Nicoletta Languasco (Nancy Osgood).

Publication history

*1938, "The American Magazine", December 1938, abridged as "The Red Bull"
*1939, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, February 2, 1939, hardcover:In his limited-edition pamphlet, "Collecting Mystery Fiction #9, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part I", Otto Penzler describes the first edition of "Some Buried Caesar": "Green cloth, front cover and spine printed with black; rear cover blank. Issued in a full-color pictorial dust wrapper … The first edition has the publisher's monogram logo on the copyright page. The second printing, in March 1939, is identical to the first except that the logo was dropped." [Penzler, Otto, "Collecting Mystery Fiction #9, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Part I" (2001, New York: The Mysterious Bookshop, limited edition of 250 copies), pp. 14–15] :In April 2006, "Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine" estimated that the first edition of "Some Buried Caesar" had a value of between $2,500 and $5,000. [Smiley, Robin H., "Rex Stout: A Checklist of Primary First Editions." "Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine" (Volume 16, Number 4), April 2006, p. 32]
*1939, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1939, hardcover
*1939, London: Collins Crime Club, July 3, 1939, hardcover
*1940, New York: Grossett and Dunlap, 1940, hardcover
*1941, New York: Triangle, October 1941, hardcover
*1945, New York: Dell (mapback by Gerald Gregg) #70, January 1945, as "The Red Bull: A Nero Wolfe Mystery, or Some Buried Caesar", paperback
*1958, New York: The Viking Press, "All Aces: A Nero Wolfe Omnibus" (with "Too Many Women" and "Trouble in Triplicate"), May 15, 1958, hardcover
*1963, New York: Pyramid (Green Door) #R931, November 1963, paperback
*1972, London: Tom Stacey, 1972, hardcover
*1990, New York: Bantam Crimeline ISBN 0553254642 February 1990, paperback
*1998, Auburn, California: The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters ISBN 1572700548 August 1998, audio cassette (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
*2008, New York: Bantam Dell Publishing Group (with "The Golden Spiders") ISBN 0553385674 September 2008, paperback

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0347620|title=Nero Wolfe: Per la fama di Cesare
* [http://avenarius.sk/Quotations:Some_Buried_Caesar wiki collection of quotations from "Some Buried Caesar"]