ALSO READ:
MISSING LAST CHAPTER FOUND!
In 2011 Random House (Viking) discovered that most paperback editions published after the first hardcover printing had omitted CHAPTER 17.
Here, at long last, is Chapter 17: https://www.nerowolfe.org/pdf/corpus/Base/Prisoners_Base_Chapter_17_Missing.pdf
Note that the A & E production of the book includes a final scene based on Chapter 17. So the deduction is that the A & E writers scanned hardcover editions when working on the scripts.
BACKGROUND ON THE BOOK'S ORIGINAL NAME:
The 1992 Bantam edition reprints Rex Stout's 1952 manuscript title page. The original title was Dare-Base. Dare-Base is a children's game, a variation on tag, also called prisoner's base. Archie, when Mrs. Jaffee's calls to let him know her keys are missing, reflects, "As I counted I remembered that I had told Wolfe, when he gave Priscilla Eads eleven hours to hide, that it was like run sheep run, but this was more like prisoner's base."
SYNOPSIS:
Nero Wolfe has represented some pretty unusual clients in his time, but in this one, his client - believe it or not - is the fast-talking, hard-hitting, skirt-chasing assistant and companion to Nero, Archie Goodwin himself.
We'll make three bets with you about Prisoner's Base: First - you won't solve it. Second - you'll agree that no author ever played more fair with his readers. Third - when you finish it, you will feel as if you have been on a forty-eight-hour, breathtaking, danger-filled chase up and down the avenues of New York, into some of Manhattan's darkest and more terror-filled alleys.
"'The whole performance," Nero Wolfe was saying, 'is based on an idiotic assumption, which was natural and indeed inevitable, since Mr. Rowcliff is your champion ass -- the assumption that Mr. Goodwin and I are both cretins.'" (p. 48)
REVIEW:
See this interesting blog review: http://mrs-bramley.livejournal.com/10677.html
