In Too Many Cooks, the fifth of the Nero Wolfe books, Stout says things about the treatment of blacks in this country that only became fashionable twenty-five years after the publication of this novel. During one of his rare excursions from his New York brownstone, Wolfe investigates a murder at a West Virginia spa. Although the local sheriff, who "knows how to deal with niggers," has learned nothing from them, Wolfe questions fourteen members of the kitchen staff as a group. He overcomes their understandable reluctance to get involved in a "white man's murder" by treating them precisely as he would any other group of men. His speech on their responsibilities to their society and their race — so unlike what they are accustomed to hearing from whites, neither bullying nor patronizing — moves the key witness to speak up. His patient follow-through elicits valuable supporting...