As with many of the best Nero Wolfe mysteries, this story has the mammoth detective breaking his cherished custom of refusing
to budge from the security and comfort of his Manhattan brownstone office/home. Whereas in the book Some Buried Caesar , the reason for venturing forth was to win a prize for his orchids, this tale finds Wolfe abroad for more gastronomic motives.
A gathering of world-renowned chefs is underway at a
resort in West Virginia, and this group, known as the Fifteen Masters--or Les Quinze Maitres --has invited the famous gourmandizing sleuth to be their guest of honor for the gathering, which occurs every five years, and to give a keynote address on the topic of American contributions to fine dining. But there is yet another, more personal, reason for Wolfe's sojourn to the south. Curiously enough, it involves sausage. It seems a master chef named Jerome Berrain will be in attendance as one of the fifteen, and Berrain's masterpiece, saucisse minuit , will be on the menu. Wolfe, who tasted this work of art in his youth before Berrain became famous, is hoping to finagle the recipe out of the unsuspecting chef before the festival is over.
Wolfe's witty, sardonic sidekick Archie Goodwin is on hand to help engineer the task of getting his boss's vast poundage onto a train and safely to the resort and back. He is more than a bit irked at discovering Wolfe's willingness to put himself out in order to "lick the boots of a wild-eyed sausage cook." Especially when Wolfe's first attempt at extracting the coveted recipe is scorned, ridiculed and flatly denied by Berrain on the train. Wolfe and Archie also learn during this exchange that Berrain and at least two other master chefs at the gathering have it in for Phillip Lazio, chef de cuisine at New York's Hotel Churchill. One of the chefs who hate Lazio is Wolfe's lifelong friend Marco Vukcic, owner of Rusterman's restaurant, the only place Wolfe deigns to eat besides his own dining room. Lazio is, by all accounts, a scoundrel who "steals" his colleagues' best pupils, their jobs, their recipes--even their wives.
On the train, Archie also makes the acquaintance of Berrain's daughter Constanza, as well as the District Attorney of the county where Canawa Spa, the resort in question, is located, and he witnesses the seeds of romance being planted between the two of them. Once he arrives at the resort, he meets the house detective, Odell, as well as the rest of the master chefs and their guests. While shooting the breeze with Odell, he makes mention in passing the animosity many of the chefs have for each other, especially for Lazio, who is purportedly the highest-paid one of the bunch.
The culinary celebration progresses until there is a special taste-testing experiment the first evening. A savory concoction called
sauce printemps is prepared and served with roasted squabs. Nine dishes of the sauce are placed on the table, each dish lacking one different seasoning from all the others. Each chef, as well as Wolfe himself, is to enter the dining room one at a time, sample each dish only once, and write down which seasoning is missing from each dish of sauce. It is Lazio who prepares the sauces and supervises the tasting from the dishes.
At the end of the experiment, Wolfe discovers that Lazio has been killed with one of the knives from the table and his body hidden behind one of the decorative screens in the dining room. During the tasting, Berrain was taking his turn with the sauces while Wolfe's friend Vukcic danced with his ex-wife, now married to Lazio. Dina Lazio had turned on the radio for dance music and Vukcic lingered with her and had to be appealed to several times to take his turn for the tasting. Berrain commented about his discomfort at having to do the test under the watchful smirk of the hated Lazio, and Vukcic commented after his turn was over that Lazio hadn't been present at all in the dining room.
Had Berrain been lying about Lazio being in the room--had he murdered him while Vukcic was dancing? Or had Vukcic told them Lazio was missing to cover his own tracks? Or was there some unknown explanation for the murder?
Nero Wolfe, who has no interest in solving the crime, apart from assuring that his friend Vukcic wasn't suspected, becomes very interested when Berrain is arrested by the DA, Tolman, largely on the evidence of the chef's list of sauce-test answers, seven of which are incorrect, out of nine! It falls to Wolfe to find evidence to exhonerate Berrain, and, later on, to catch the murderer after he or she takes a pot-shot at Wolfe through an open window while he practices his speech!
As this Nero Wolfe mystery was written in the thirties, many racial and ethnic references are extant in Rex Stout's writing that will offend contemporary readers. This stylistic quirk is worsened by the fact that the story takes place in the pre-war south. Just something to be kept in mind by the sensitive reader.
In spite of this, Too Many Cooks is a wonderful, entertaining, and insightful story. Enjoy!