Plot Summary
Maria Maffei, a family friend of one of his sometime employees Fred Durkin, appeals to Wolfe to locate her missing brother Carlo, a metalworker. Wolfe, affected by the Depression, decides to take the job, although it is unappealing to him. Archie locates Anna Fiore, a girl who listened in on a phone call Carlo received at his boarding-house. Wolfe learns from her that Carlo had clipped a story from a copy of the New York Times about the sudden death (apparently by stroke) of Peter Oliver Barstow, president of Holland College. Before Wolfe makes any more progress, Carlo Maffei is found stabbed in the back in the countryside. His sister says she will pay Wolfe to find his killer, so he keeps working.
After consulting with a sports equipment dealer, Wolfe conjectures that Barstow had been murdered, that his own golf club had been the murder weapon, and that Carlo Maffei had been hired to construct it. He further speculates that whoever ordered the weapon killed Maffei to keep him silent.
Read more about this topic: Fer-de-Lance (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)