The Mother Hunt

infobox Book |
name = The Mother Hunt
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Rex Stout
cover_artist = Bill English
country = United States
language = English
series = Nero Wolfe
genre = Detective fiction
publisher = Viking Press
release_date = July 18, 1963
media_type = Print (Hardcover)
pages = 182 pp. (first edition)
isbn = NA
preceded_by = Gambit
followed_by = Trio for Blunt Instruments

"The Mother Hunt" is a Nero Wolfe detective novel by Rex Stout, first published by Viking Press in 1963.

Plot introduction

quotation|"Do you like eggs?"
She laughed. She looked at me, so I laughed too.
Wolfe scowled. "Confound it, are eggs comical? Do you know how to scramble eggs, Mrs. Valdon?"
"Yes, of course."
"To use Mr. Goodwin's favorite locution, one will get you ten that you don't. I'll scramble eggs for your breakfast and we'll see. Tell me forty minutes before you're ready."
Her eyes widened. "Forty minutes?"
"Yes. I knew you didn't know."
Nero Wolfe, conversing with Lucy Valdon, in "The Mother Hunt", chapter 17

A baby is left in a young widow's vestibule, along with a note implying that her late husband is the baby's father. The widow hires Nero Wolfe to identify and locate the baby's birth mother.

Throughout the Wolfe "oeuvre", Archie's main romantic interest is Lily Rowan, a Manhattan socialite and heiress who, after an incident in a bull pasture, nicknames Archie "Escamillo." But Stout portrays their relationship as two close friends who share an intimacy of long standing, rather than one of exclusivity. Stout makes it clear that Archie has other romances. One with Phoebe Gunther, in "The Silent Speaker", has an exceptionally powerful spark. In "The Mother Hunt", Stout for the first time makes unambiguous an affair between Archie and another major character.

Plot summary

Lucy Valdon has recently been widowed by the accidental death of her husband, the novelist Richard Valdon. Lucy has a surprise waiting for her in her vestibule one evening: an abandoned baby, dressed, with a note pinned to a blanket. The note claims that the baby is Richard's son. Lucy wants learn who the mother is. That information would help determine whether her husband and the mother had been intimate, and therefore the likelihood that the child is in fact Richard's.

Wolfe is reluctant as always, but agrees to investigate. Archie examines the clothes that the baby was wearing and spots an unusual item: the baby's overalls have horsehair buttons, apparently handmade. After Archie draws a blank trying to track the buttons down via businesses in the garment trade, Wolfe tries a tactic that he uses to good effect in other cases. He advertises for information.

The advertisement succeeds in prompting a call from someone who has seen a similar button, and when Archie follows up he eventually locates Ellen Tenzer in Mahopac, about fifty miles north of New York City. Miss Tenzer is a retired nurse who from time to time cares for babies temporarily. She is unwilling to help Archie, though, and orders him off her property. Archie complies, Miss Tenzer disappears, and the next day she is found, strangled, in her car on a Manhattan street.

With that line of investigation closed to them, Wolfe and Archie try another. Lucy arranges for several of Richard's acquaintances to come to the brownstone. Wolfe asks that they each supply him with a list of all the women with whom Richard was in contact during a three month period roughly corresponding to the date of the baby's conception. A list of 148 names results, and it takes nearly four weeks for Archie, Saul, Fred and Orrie to verify that none of the women had an unaccounted for baby following the period in question.

Finally, Wolfe decides to go for the swindle. His plan involves the "Gazette", Lon Cohen's employer, and it succeeds in flushing the baby's mother from hiding. But then "she" is found dead, also strangled.

When Inspector Cramer learns that there is a connection between the dead woman and Wolfe, he shows up at the front stoop, forcing Wolfe and Archie to flee via the back door. Wolfe is furious about the murders, particularly the second, and desperately wants to expose the killer himself. But if Cramer finds him, he will either have to tell Cramer about the search for the baby's mother or withhold evidence in a capital case.

To avoid having to make that choice, Wolfe and Archie hole up in Lucy's house — she, her baby and her staff are away for a few days. While there, Wolfe has an insight about how the murderer and Ellen Tenzer might have become acquainted. That insight leads to the traditional Wolfe finale, with witnesses and suspects gathered together, but this time it's in someone else's house.

The unfamiliar word

In most Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, there is at least one unfamiliar word, usually spoken by Wolfe. "The Mother Hunt" contains just this one (the page reference is to the Bantam edition):
*Pucker. Page 105, chapter 10. Not merely unfamiliar but archaic, according to the "Random House Dictionary of the English Language".

Cast of characters

*Nero Wolfe — The private investigator
*Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant (and the narrator of all Wolfe stories)
*Lucy Valdon — Wolfe's client, the young widow of the novelist Richard Valdon, and guardian of an infant left at her door.
*Ellen Tenzer — A retired nurse who takes care of babies from time to time, and whose hobby is making buttons from horsehair.
*Anne Tenzer — Ellen's niece, Anne is a high level office temp, one who fills in for vacationing executive secretaries.
* Leo Bingham, Julian Haft, Willis Krug, Carol Mardus and Manuel Upton — Friends and associates of the late Richard Valdon.
*Nicholas Losseff — "The only button fiend in America." ["The Mother Hunt", page 27 (Bantam edition), chapter 3]
*Sally Corbett — An operative who works for Dol Bonner. Previously known as Sally Colt. [On page 124 of "The Mother Hunt", Bantam edition, chapter 12, Archie writes, "Dol and Sally had been responsible, six years back, for my revision of my basic attitude toward female ops …" The novella "Too Many Detectives," published in 1957 in Three for the Chair, features Dol Bonner and Sally "Colt". There, in chapter 7, Archie writes of a dinner date with Sally: "… I had decided that I would have to concede an exception to my verdict on she-dicks …" It is clear that the same Sally figures in both stories, and that the change of surname from Colt to Corbett may well be due to a marriage that Archie prefers not to mention.]
*Inspector Cramer — Representing Manhattan Homicide.

Reviews and commentary

*Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, "A Catalogue of Crime" — Nero and Archie make one of their flights from home, and the grand confrontation scene is staged at their refuge. Nero is competent but not remarkably so in finding out who did the two murders and the giving birth.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]

Adaptations

"A Nero Wolfe Mystery" (A&E Network)

"The Mother Hunt" was adapted for the second season of the A&E TV series "A Nero Wolfe Mystery" (2001–2002). Written by Sharon Elizabeth Doyle, "Motherhunt" made its debut in two one-hour episodes airing May 12 and 19, 2002, on A&E.

Timothy Hutton is Archie Goodwin; distinguished character actor Maury Chaykin is Nero Wolfe. Other members of the cast (in credits order) include Colin Fox (Fritz Brenner), Bill Smitrovich (Inspector Cramer), Conrad Dunn (Saul Panzer), Trent McMullen (Orrie Cather), Fulvio Cecere (Fred Durkin), Penelope Ann Miller (Lucy Valdon), Richard Waugh (Manuel Upton), Boyd Banks (Willis Krug), R.D. Reid (Sergeant Purley Stebbins), Saul Rubinek (Lon Cohen), Steve Cumyn (Julian Haft), Shannon Jobe (Miss Mimm), Griffin Dunne (Nicolas Losseff), Brooke Burns (Beatrice Epps), Erinn Bartlett (Anne Tenzer), Carrie Fisher (Ellen Tenzer), James Tolkan (Leo Bingham) Manon von Gerkan (Sally Corbett) and Kathryn Zenna (Carol Mardus).

"A Nero Wolfe Mystery" is available on DVD from A&E Home Video. ISBN 076708893X

Release details

*2002, USA, The Audio Partners Publishing Corp., Mystery Masters ISBN 1572702761 October 2002, audio cassette (unabridged, read by Michael Prichard)
*1993, USA, Bantam Crimeline ISBN 0553247379 April 1, 1993, paperback

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0394811|title=A Nero Wolfe Mystery — "Motherhunt"'
* [http://www.nerowolfe.org/nwm/nwm_s2_episodes/mh-home.htm "A Nero Wolfe Mystery" — "Motherhunt"] at The Wolfe Pack, official site of the Nero Wolfe Society