Robert Goldsborough, The Battered Badge: A Nero Wolfe Mystery

Robert Goldsborough, The Battered Badge
Open Road/The Mysterious Press
© Robert Goldsborough 2018
ISBN 978-1-5040-4910-8
Also available as an ebook

Rex Stout has long been my favorite author of mysteries, and the pair of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe my favorite fictional detectives.  Archie’s narrative voice is, in my opinion, unmatched, and Wolfe’s persona is at once captivating and intimidating.  So, when Robert Goldsborough first published a “Nero Wolfe” mystery (Murder in E-Minor, 1986) I had serious reservations about the enterprise.  Now, 32 years later (and having purchased and read all 13 of the “Nero Wolfe” mysteries Goldsborough has written), I find all my reservations confirmed and, if anything, strengthened.

I met Mr. Goldsborough in the early 1990s, having had the opportunity (at the invitation of a mutual friend) to have lunch with him.  He was, and I suspect still is, a pleasant, likable man, a good conversationalist, and a true devotee of Stout’s work (which he knows as well as anyone).  But, I must say, his efforts at continuing the saga have ranged from adequate to unfortunate,  The current effort, The Battered Badge, is not the least successful of his efforts [Murder, Stage Left (2017) has that dubious honor].  It is, however, a very disappointing book.

Now I will admit that my disappointment is in large part a reflection of my admiration for Stout’s writing and characterizations.  But even on their own terms, Goldsborough’s recent efforts are disappointing.  It is difficult, though, to read them, think about them, or write about them without comparing them to the originals.

Goldsborough’s (relative) strength is in his plots.  In this book, the director of the Good Government Group, a/k/a GGG (Lester Pierce) is shot in front of his Park Avenue apartment building, in circumstances that strongly suggest (a) a murder-for-hire that (b) might be a result of Pierce’s efforts to goad the New York Police Department into more vigorous efforts to investigate the Mob and disrupt it.  As a consequence of factors surrounding the investigation Inspector Cramer (Wolfe’s long-time rival in the NYPD) has been suspended as head of the Homicide squad.  (Another side note—some of the prepublication publicity for the book suggested that Cramer might be facing disciplinary action.  But nothing in the book really supports such a suggestion.)

As the remnants of the Homicide squad investigate (and fail to make much headway), Wolfe is hired by Pierce’s widow to investigate.  As usual, Archie does the legwork, including preliminary interrogations of the actors in the drama, and Wolfe also meets with them (usually briefly and, as least as I read the book, with little to show for it).  There is the usual gathering of the players and disclosure of the guilty party (in both cases with a twist).  But from the premise to the conclusion is not a particularly well-handled trip.

Without getting into the details of the investigation, I want to focus on what is the single greatest flaw with the book (and with Goldsborough’s work generally).  He gets the characters, and especially their voices, wrong.  The book contains many conversations in which Archie is a major participant (several between Archie and Lon Cohen, a newspaperman with the Gazette; Archie with his permanent flame Lily Rowan; and Archie and staff at GGG, and more).  While it’s established that Archie is glib and not above bantering, almost all these conversations are more banter than substance…and the banter is not even particularly witty or amusing. 

Another feature of Stout’s work involves the confrontations between Wolfe and either Cramer or people he expects to extract information from.  Here, Wolfe’s interrogations are strangely bland (or even pointless—but, at that, a notch above what we got in Murder, Stage Left), and, as extractions, seem mostly unproductive.  And the scenes with Cramer are almost wholly devoid of bite.

The conclusion, when it comes, seemed, at least to me, to be almost entirely ad hoc, based on no deductions (either by Wolfe or by Cramer), on no particular revelations during the climactic scene, but rather by the murderer’s verbal slip and subsequent outburst.  If what we see is supposed to provide us with any reason to believe that a jury would vote for conviction…well, call that another serious difficulty. 

Even leaving aside my respect and affection for the for the originals, assuming I could approach The Battered Badge without its context as a continuation and homage, the investigation and discoveries do not match the setup, and the conclusion was disappointing.  I clearly cannot recommend this as an addition to the Wolfe oeuvre, and I can’t really recommend it on its own merits.  I wish I could do one or the other—or both.  But I can’t.