Nero Wolfe (1981)/Murder by the Book

Murder by the Book
Season 1, Episode 8
Airdate	March 13, 1981
Teleplay by	Wallace Ware
Based upon	the novel "Murder by the Book" by Rex Stout
Directed by	Bob Kelljan
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Nero Wolfe — Season One

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Murder by the Book is the eighth episode of the first season of Nero Wolfe.

Starring: William Conrad (Nero Wolfe)

Also Starring: Lee Horsley (Archie Goodwin), George Voskovec (Fritz Brenner), Robert Coote (Theodore Horstmann), George Wyner (Saul Panzer)

and Allan Miller (Inspector Cramer)

Guest Stars (in alphabetical order): Walter Brooke (George Brooks), Delta Burke (Jean Wellman), Edmund Gilbert (Robert Phelps), David Hedison (Philip Corrigan), John Randolph (Ryan O'Malley)

Co-Starring: Jennifer Leak (Elizabeth Marsh), Elizabeth Halliday (Miss Johnson), Virginia Kiser (Publisher)

Featuring: Arthur Adams (Doctor), David Scott Milton (Cop)

Plot Overview

The victim of a fatal hit-and-run accident had two pieces of paper on his body...one a list of names, the other being the address of Nero Wolfe. Cramer pays the private detective a visit in the hopes of getting a clue as to the dead man's identity when he's called away on another call, where a young woman is found dead in her apartment, an apparent suicide. Her sister is on the scene and insists that it wasn't a suicide and later pays Wolfe a visit, saying that she knows the identity of her sister's killer...a man named Blake Ritchie, whose name just happens to be on the list of names found on the first victim. Ritchie wrote a novel that the dead girl, an employee of a publishing firm, thought had promise and was working with him to get it published. but the manuscript seems to have vanished. The dead man turns out to be a lawyer with a prominent firm, as well as being the mysterious Mr. Ritchie, so Archie sniffs around both the publishing company and the law firm, hoping to find the missing manuscript which could provide all the answers.

Trivia

Allusions and References

Blake Ritchie was a pseudonym that Executive Producers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts used when they wrote scripts for Mannix.