The Red Box was published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1937. At a fashion show in a Manhattan showroom, a young model named Molly Lauck reaches into a red leather box of candy and eats a piece that has been laced with potassium cyanide. She dies almost instantly. The box was a gift — but from whom, and was Molly the intended victim?
Wolfe is hired by the dead girl’s cousin, Llewellyn Frost, whose own father runs a rival fashion house. The investigation leads through the competitive, backbiting world of 1930s New York fashion — a world of jealousies, romantic entanglements, and financial pressures. When a second person dies — poisoned by the same method, in Archie’s presence — the case becomes urgent and personal.
The novel is notable for its setting: Stout renders the fashion industry with the same precision he brings to all milieus, presenting its vanities and cruelties without condescension. The mystery is well-constructed — the poisoner’s identity is concealed through misdirection rather than information-withholding — and the resolution depends on Wolfe’s ability to understand the psychology of jealousy within a tightly-knit professional world.
Collecting The Red Box
First edition (Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1937): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $1,500–$4,000
- Very good/good jacket: $400–$1,000
- Without jacket: $75–$150