Archie Goodwin is not only my favorite Watson, he is the best Watson. He more than earns his keep as Nero Wolfe’s assistant, complementing the brilliant mind of his eccentric genius boss with his own massive skillset. As a chronicler of their adventures together, Archie is unmatched in his snappy prose and ever-present wit (although he might receive help there from some shmo named Stout.) After enjoying the heck out of The Doorbell Rang, I found that my thirst for more Wolfe/Goodwin adventures had not been slaked. Several commenters recommended 1952’s Prisoner’s Base, and as I had never read this one, I thought I’d take them up on it. 

“Prisoner’s Base” is a children’s game, a form of tag that I think I played as a kid. You set up teams, and each group has their safe spaces and has to get from one to the other without being tagged by the enemy team. If you are tagged, you are “dead” as far as this game is concerned. But for children, it’s worth the risk, because there’s nothing more exhilarating than the “danger” in which you put yourself as you run from base to base. It makes for a fine title for this mid-career Wolfe adventure, much more satisfying than the grammatically iffy British alternative, Out Goes She!

Rex Stout turns the game into a metaphor for what happens to Priscilla Eads, a wealthy young woman who comes to West 35^th Street in search of a safe space while she grapples with a difficult situation. Frankly, it’s an odd impulse for a beautiful girl to come to Nero Wolfe, of all people, expecting to find a safe haven, but Priscilla has done her research and wisely starts with Archie Goodwin. Her timing couldn’t be better: Archie and his boss are in the middle of a petty fight over his salary, and Mr. Goodwin thinks it would be a funny joke to install an anonymous woman in the guest suite directly above Mr. Wolfe’s own bedroom. The fact that she has offered to pay fifty dollars or more a night is a further inducement. 

Mr. Wolfe, however, is having none of this: he offers Miss Eads a choice that is so untenable that she leaves. The next morning, she is found strangled to death in her apartment.

In its shape and form, Prisoner’s Base is in most ways a conventional Nero Wolfe mystery, much more so than The Doorbell Rang. A client comes to Wolfe, a murder occurs, a group of suspects are summoned to the detective’s office for a confab, and eventually Wolfe exposes one of them as the killer. But this case has something special going for it, which centers around all the hell Archie has to go through to get to the end. 

It starts with the difference of opinion between Wolfe and Archie over the death of Priscilla Eads. The detective wants to dismiss the whole affair from his roster, as it promises no chance of financial reward. Very cold, if you ask me! But his Watson has some other thoughts on the matter.

“You realize that I have my personal problem, and it’s different from yours. If I had turned her down and put her out yesterday afternoon, as soon as I found out what she wanted, would she be in the morgue now? I doubt it. When you came down, and I sprung her on you, you told me to get her out of the house before dinner. If I had, would she be in the morgue now? Probably not. It was absolutely my fault that she didn’t leave until nearly midnight, and she decided to go home, it doesn’t matter why. It may have been just to change her clothes and luggage, or she may have decided not to play – anyhow, she went home, and she got it. That’s my personal problem.”

And with that, Archie sets off to solve Priscilla’s murder on his own. As he uses his citywide network of contacts, from Inspector Cramer of Homicide to news reporter Lon Cohen, to piece together the life and death of the victim, Mr. Goodwin has no idea that before darkness turns to dawn, things are going to get a lot worse. But as you may expect, it isn’t long before Nero Wolfe is dragged into the investigation, and in a sure sign that this case is a little out of the ordinary, Wolfe ends up taking the case for no fee and for a most extraordinary client: Archie Goodwin himself.

Prisoner’s Base ends up an exemplary chapter in the Chronicles of Wolfe and Goodwin. The circle of suspects is an especially strong assemblage of personalities: their showcase scenes – in a boardroom at a towel manufacturing company and in a long night around Wolfe’s office desk – make for good dramatic fun. But throughout all of this, it’s the focus on Archie that makes the novel so good. Despite the intense feelings he is trying to control, he must navigate between his prickly boss and a hostile cast of law enforcement personnel, handle a highly emotional suspect list, some of them with huge muscles, and still find time to do a good turn for another damsel in distress, a lovely widow named Sarah who was Priscilla’s best friend. 

But as I suggested, the road to hell is a long one, and Archie has more suffering in store before the end. It results in an extraordinary sequence where Archie goes without sleep to satisfy a personal vendetta, and where detective and police put aside their long-standing acrimony and work together to bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion. Of course, it is ultimately Nero Wolfe who exposes the guilty and ties all the facts together. And while he remains the gruff beer-swilling mental beast of old, it’s the little things throughout – his ongoing concern that Archie not miss breakfast, his willingness to get up early or welcome intruders into the house in order to solve the case – that reveal the depth of affection that one man has for the other. 

In fact, Prisoner’s Base is an ode to the closeness between all the series regulars. Their sniping at each other is what entertains us. But at the end of the day, Wolfe and Archie and Fritz Brenner and Saul Panzer will team up with Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins and everyone at Centre Street and the D.A.’s office to put the bad guys behind bars. 

Tag – you’re out!