The Golden Spiders was published by Viking Press in 1953. A twelve-year-old boy named Pete Drossos comes to Wolfe’s office with a case: a woman wearing unusual golden spider earrings signaled to him from a car, apparently in distress. Pete wants Wolfe to help her. Before Wolfe can decide whether to take the case, Pete is killed in a hit-and-run accident. The woman with the golden spiders is also found dead.
The novel is unusual in the Wolfe canon because Wolfe takes the case without a paying client — motivated by anger at the murder of a child who came to him for help. This is one of the rare instances where Wolfe’s fundamental morality overrides his financial pragmatism: he feels responsible for Pete’s death (the boy was killed because he visited Wolfe) and pursues the case at his own expense.
The golden spider earrings prove to be the key to a ring of car thieves and human smugglers, but the mystery’s emotional weight comes from Pete Drossos — a brave, intelligent kid who did the right thing and was killed for it. Stout handles the child’s death with restraint and genuine feeling, and Wolfe’s cold fury at the perpetrators gives the resolution a satisfying moral weight.
Collecting The Golden Spiders
First edition (Viking Press, New York, 1953): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
- Very good: $75–$200