Rex Stout's twenty-eighth Nero Wolfe novel, published in 1965.
Spurred by a retainer check for $100,000, Nero Wolfe accepts Rachel Bruner's request to get the FBI to stop tailing her. Bruner, like Wolfe, has read Fred J. Cook's The FBI Nobody Knows, a scathing indictment of the organization's abuses under J. Edgar Hoover; unlike Wolfe, Bruner sent 10,000 copies of the book to prominent figures across the country, and the Bureau has been tailing and harassing her in response. Now forced to act as though the brownstone and its inhabitants are under constant surveillance, Wolfe and Archie find no foothold until Inspector Cramer relays the police's investigation into the murder of freelance journalist Morris Althaus; Althaus had been writing a series of articles about the FBI, which were missing from his apartment, and three FBI agents were seen leaving the scene on the night of the murder. Rather than assume the FBI killed Althaus, Wolfe elects to assume that Bureau agents did not kill him, but investigates while openly suggesting they did. As Wolfe sets a trap for the FBI, he investigates those closest to Althaus - and Bruner - in order to ensure that Cramer gets his collar while also fulfilling Bruner's request as client.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery adapted The Doorbell Rang as the pilot of their series proper, succeeding the made-for-TV film of The Golden Spiders.
Tropes in this work: (Tropes relating to the series as a whole, or to the characters in general can be found on Nero Wolfe and its subpages.)
- Asshole Victim: While a lesser example compared to some from the Nero Wolfe canon, Morris Althaus does appear to have been a rather egotistical lothario with a rather callous attitude towards wooing and dumping women.
- Body Double: As part of his trap for the FBI, Wolfe smuggles two actors into the brownstone to impersonate himself and Archie.
- Human Mail: Wolfe smuggles Saul, Fred, Orrie, and the two actors into the brownstone by mailing them in orchid crates.
- Jurisdiction Friction: Cramer is convinced FBI agents murdered Morris Althaus; the FBI is doing all they can to interfere with the investigation, including concealing the bullet that killed him.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The murderer from the short story "Poison a la Carte" is revealed in a newspaper article Archie reads.
- Properly Paranoid: As the FBI have unparalleled abilities to monitor their targets, Wolfe and Archie have to enact all kinds of complicated counterespionage strategies, from Archie avoiding possible tails to a radio and television in the brownstone turned up to keep conversations secret. It gets to the point where they have to enact a routine of pointing up when telling a lie and pointing down when telling the truth to throw off anyone who might be remotely eavesdropping on their conversations.note Archie admits at one point that he's not entirely sure exactly how necessary all of this is, or whether the FBI can, say, listen to what Wolfe and Archie are saying in his office when they're not on a tapped phone line, but the nature of surveillance means that the uncertainty is the point; they have to act on the assumption that the FBI can do all of these things rather than get caught out. For what it's worth, when head FBI agent Richard Wragg finally confronts Wolfe, he claims that the house hasn't been tapped, but neither Wolfe nor Archie believe him.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Archie mentions in a throwaway line that one unnamed Gazette employee theorized that Morris Althaus was shot by his fiancée with his own gun because he was going to marry another woman. Right motive, right method, right gun, wrong woman.
- Woman Scorned: Sarah Dacos murdered Morris Althaus after he broke off their relationship to marry another woman.
