These FER-DE-LANCE cover scans are from Seth Fidel’s Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. (USA) (1934) First Edition Facsimile Dust Jacket.
Thanks Seth!
1934 FDL Front Cover Dust Jacket
1934 FDL Back Cover Dust Jacket
FER-DE-LANCE 1934 First Edition Dust Jacket Intro
FER-DE-LANCE
By
REX STOUT
FER-DE-LANCE introduces, in a technique that will command the interest of every lover of detective fiction, the fascinating, eccentric figure of Nero Wolfe, in a dazzling story of crime. Immured in his office and utterly static, this lethargic fat man had a power belonging to few investigators before him to sweep through the most labyrinthine and inscrutable mysteries with complaisant ease and without disturbing his ritual of huge meals, regular hours, of being incommunicado among his exotic greenhouse flowers and perpetual guzzling of beer; a power which this barrel of a man modestly ascribed to his “feeling for phenomena.”
(Continued from front flap)
By his temperament, his super-psychology and his admirable wit, Nero Wolfe distinguishes himself, a master among sleuths, unequaled since Philo Vance stepped up beside Sherlock Holmes.
A college president was quietly buried in state. Wolfe abruptly sent Archie, his affable secretary and third eye, out to bet the District Attorney ten thousand dollars that an exhumation and a through autopsy would reveal a needle and traces of poison in the stomach of the deceased educator. The wager was a simple means of getting the body dug up. When the newspapers broke the story and when a second autopsy showed Wolfe to be right, excitement erupted all over the place.
From the outset of this excellent adventure, Wolfe is entertaining as consistently as he is amusing. An artist and a man of leisure, he startles clients, manoeuvers suspects and manipulates crime itself to his unalterable convenience.
Nero Wolfe 