The second Nero Wolfe mystery novel by Rex Stout, published in 1935. The novel introduces Inspector Cramer, who would go on to become a key supporting character in the series. Not to be confused with the comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or its feature film adaptation, or the British Black Comedy sitcom The League of Gentlemen.
Several years ago a group of Harvard students played a prank on Paul Chapin, one of their classmates, which backfired and left Chapin crippled. Guilt-ridden and remorseful, the group have formed a "League of Atonement" to support Chapin ever since, in an effort to correct the wrong they did him. But now, several of them have died under suspicious circumstances, and soon after have received verses apparently from Chapin, now a bestselling controversial author, claiming responsibility. When a third, Andrew Hibbard, disappears after consulting Nero Wolfe for advice, Wolfe approaches the group with a proposition — for a generous fee from all of them, he will uncover the truth behind events and remove any threat that Chapin poses to them. So begins a battle of wits between Wolfe and the fiendish and maladjusted Chapin, with more death to come before the truth is unveiled...
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.)
- The Alcoholic: Both Pitney Scott and Mike Ayers like their booze a little too much.
- Always Murder: The first two victims were initially considered an accidental death and a suicide respectively, but several gaps in events and the mysterious letters everyone receives imply that Chapin murdered them both. Hibbard's disappearance convinces everyone that foul play is afoot, and the murder of Dr. Burton while Chapin is present seals the deal. Actually subverted. The first two deaths genuinely were as they appeared to be, Hibbard disappeared himself because he was paranoid about Chapin and working up the nerve to murder him first, and only Dr. Burton's murder actually was a murder. Chapin just exploited everyone's paranoia about him to mess with their heads.
- Asshole Victim: Played with; the members of the League under threat played a genuinely mean prank on Chapin that resulted in him becoming severely injured and permanently handicapped when they were younger. That was decades ago, they immediately expressed genuine remorse for what they did, and have done all they could over the years to try and make up for it. While Chapin's bitterness isn't exactly unjustified, he's clearly shown to be warped by that bitterness and unreasonable. And Ferdinand Bowen, the member of the League most clearly depicted as a jerk, turns out to be a murderer.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Archie manages to infiltrate a murder scene simply by stuffing some laundry in a large black bag and claiming to be a medical examiner. Later, he notes with amusement that there's a bit of a minor kerfuffle when the actual medical examiner turns up.
- Broken Ace: Pitney Scott has a degree in engineering and his friends consider him the most intelligent member of the League, being the only one able to understand Chapin's allusions and insinuations at their most obtuse. The Depression has reduced him to driving a cab and drinking like he aims to die inside a year.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: Paul Chapin's phony confession calls Wolfe "acute and intuitive" and says that after their first meeting, Chapin knew that deceiving a man of Wolfe's brilliance would be futile. Wolfe is the actual author of the confession.
- Condescending Compassion: While the League of Atonement genuinely wants to make up for what they did, Chapin views their charity towards him as this.
- Creator Breakdown: In-universe; Paul Chapin is a novelist who has written some exceedingly violent books in which versions of his friends, whom he (rightly) blames for an injury that crippled him years ago when they were at Harvard, meet with very unpleasant ends. This has partly convinced them that he is the one who has murdered two of their number and possibly a third. Wolfe, however, is insightful enough to realize that Chapin, although violently hateful of his friends, in fact is incapable of murder, and so merely writes about it and is manipulating their fear of him to get revenge. Once Wolfe exposes that he's innocent and thwarts his campaign of terror, Chapin resolves to include Wolfe as a character in his next novel - and bring that character to a violent end.
- Deadly Prank: The League of Atonement's prank on Paul Chapin didn't kill him, but did leave him permanently disabled. And the members of the "league" are now panicking at the idea that the recent deaths among them are the result of Chapin plotting to systematically murder them in revenge for his injuries.
- Death by Racism: Dr. Burton uses the n-word once while talking about Dora Chapin.
- Decided by One Vote: After Wolfe gives his summation, the League of Atonement members present (and the lawyer for two who are absent) vote about whether or not Wolfe deserves his fee. Many of them agree that Wolfe has completed the job satisfactorily while others either don't believe him or just want to keep their money and stiff him. The vote is tied when it reaches the last man, Alderman Pratt, Who votes against paying Wolfe. Archie had easily predicted given Pratt's past actions of complaining to the police about having to pay Wolfe to do their jobs. This causes Wolfe to give Ferdinand Bowen the chance to change his vote, then expose him once he refuses, which causes several men who voted against paying Wolfe to change their minds.
- Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: Chapin is openly a bit of a dick, but he both tends to abuse this trope towards his friends and, due to their guilt, they let him do so. Several of them openly refuse to help Wolfe and Archie in their investigation because they believe Chapin has a right to his anger.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Chapin deeply resents his friends, both for what they did and their resulting charity towards him. The fact that he has recently found independent success of his own is what drives his actions throughout the novel, as he now gained confidence.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Inspector Cramer is first introduced smoking a pipe. He'll never do this again throughout the series, and will instead chew on a cigar without lighting it.
- Orrie Cather is depicted as a grizzled war veteran, rather than the dashing young man-about-town later books will depict him as.
- In this book, Wolfe does a financial background check on each of the members of the League and uses this to calculate a reasonable fee that each man can contribute towards the overall total. In later books, he'll mainly just charge his clients incredibly large amounts without such considerations. Perhaps to mitigate the possible unsympathetic aspects that this might create, later books will also usually establish Wolfe's clients to be either independently wealthy, in circumstances that will secure them great wealth, or large business entities that can collectively afford the cost. By contrast, in this book it is clearly established that several members of the League have fallen on hard financial times, and Wolfe is simply offering them the opportunity to participate on affordable terms if so they wish.
- Evil Cripple: Played with. Chapin's physical disability is definitely used to mirror his warped personality, but we learn from another character who was engaged to be married to him before he was injured that he was always somewhat maladjusted and the bitterness from his injury only added to it. And ultimately subverted, since while Chapin is definitely malevolent he's not actually "evil", or at least is not a murderer.
- Foreshadowing:
- Early in the novel, one member of the League approaches Wolfe with some concerns about the amount each member of the League is being asked to pay. Not so much his own, but that another member — Ferdinand Bowen — is being asked to pay a lesser price than the other member would expect. He expresses some concern that Bowen's finances aren't in good shape, since Bowen is also managing some accounts for him. While not made a big deal of at the time, Wolfe doesn't forget this exchange, as it later becomes significant as a possible motive for murder...
- After Dr Burton's murder, Archie finds himself in Burton's apartment and tries to hide out there so that he can interview Burton's wife and family without the cops around. He finds a little hidden cupboard behind a curtain and decides to sneak in there until the cops have gone. Turns out he's not the first to have this idea — the murderer hid there until Chapin arrived so that he could kill Burton and frame Chapin.
- Ferdinand Bowen is consistently depicted as a bit of a smug, unlikeable jerk. In other words, the kind of person who — if everyone wasn't so obsessed with Paul Chapin — might otherwise be a murder suspect in one of these kinds of stories...
- Framing the Guilty Party: Played with. Ferdinand Bowen murders Dr. Burton to cover up his embezzlement from Burton's accounts, and frames Paul Chapin because everyone assumes he is guilty of the other murders. Except Chapin actually isn't guilty, and none of the other deaths are actually murders.
- The Great Depression: A constant background presence. Several of the League were hit hard by the Depression; Pitney Scott, formerly an engineer, is now a taxi driver slowly drinking himself to death as a result, while Augustus Farrell, trained as an architect, cheerfully accepts some minor investigating work from Wolfe simply because he needs the money.
- Greed: The murderer is eventually done in by this. Had Ferdinand Bowen simply voted to pay Wolfe the fee that he was rightfully due, then Wolfe — even though he'd figured out that Bowen had murdered Dr. Burton — would have kept quiet, since he hadn't been hired to solve Burton's murder. Wolfe even gave him several opportunities to do so, dropping increasingly unsubtle hints that he'd worked out what Bowen had done. But Bowen got cocky and greedy, and figured he could stiff Wolfe on the fee on top of getting away with murder. He was very quickly disabused of that notion.
- Ironic Echo: Chapin's first and last arrival in Wolfe's office. The first time, which is late in the evening, he's described in sinister and malevolent terms as a kind of evil genius. The last, a morning after his plan has been thwarted, he's literally seen in a different light, and Archie's surprised to realise that, after everything, he actually just looks kind of pathetic.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Discussed; in his analysis of Chapin based on reading his books, Wolfe speculates in an era-appropriately veiled fashion that he's impotent, likely as a result of his accident. This presumably contributes to Chapin's many issues.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Towards the climax, when events appear to be spiralling out of control Wolfe seems so driven to collect his fee that, to Archie's astonishment, he willingly leaves his house to visit the arrested Paul Chapin in prison in order to collect a vital statement that will solve the case. Subverted: Archie eventually realises that Wolfe only staged leaving the house for Archie's benefit, returned secretly and instead manufactured the evidence.
- Pet the Dog:
- In a somewhat tougher version than usual, once the case is concluded, one of the League members, a lawyer named Nicholas Cabot, offers to sue Bowen for Wolfe to make him pay up his $1,200, saying it's a contractual obligation that Bowen shouldn't be allowed out of even though Wolfe exposed him as a killer without expecting any fee.
- Alderman Pratt is a whiny cheapskate who tries to stiff Wolfe out of his fee and seriously considers hiring a gangster to murder Paul Chapin. His only notable moment of decency is when he rebukes Archie for handling Pratt's friend Bowen roughly in the climax, calling Bowen a "poor devil."
- Punch-Clock Hero: Wolfe, as always, but a notable example comes up at the end, when — despite figuring out who actually killed Dr. Burton, he's perfectly willing to let the killer go since no one actually hired him to solve that murder. The only reason he doesn't is because the killer makes a foolish mistake that sets Wolfe gunning for him: he tries to stiff Wolfe on his fee.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Paul Chapin is clearly rather emotionally stunted and spiteful, unable to get over his grudge towards his friends and willing to go to any lengths to make them suffer. But he's not a murderer.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Wolfe's summation is scattered with scathing insults about how reckless and foolhardy the murderer has been.Wolfe: You were worse than a tyro, you were a donkey. I tell you this, sir, your exposure is a credit to no one, least of all me.
- Revenge via Storytelling: Chapin is clearly doing this towards his friends via his novels; the mystery hinges on whether he's graduated to doing this in real life as well. He hasn't.
- Second Episode Introduction: Inspector Cramer, the primary Inspector Lestrade of the series, makes his debut in this novel.
- Title Drop: Subverted. The men who hire Wolfe describe themselves as a "League of Atonement", and are definitely rather on-edge throughout the novel, but the title of the novel is never actually used to describe them.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Archie observes a mysterious man with gold teeth and a pink tie also tailing Chapin, and it's eventually revealed that he's Andrew Hibbard, who had visited the Brownstone to consult Wolfe while Archie was away.
- Villainous Breakdown: Between the public setting, the thorough description of how strong of a case Wolfe has, and Wolfe's harsh mockery of the killer, The Summation does a good job of reducing the killer to "a gob of scared meat." Wolfe even acknowledges that he's specifically trying to induce such a breakdown.Wolfe: I am not merely taunting you, I am depriving you of your last tatters of hope and courage in order to break you down.
