Readers of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine over the last 16 years are likely already aware of Julius Katz, but I’d like to introduce my Boston-based detective to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine readers who are encountering Julius for the first time in Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush. Julius Katz, as the name implies, is a homage of sorts to Nero Wolfe, as is the name of his erstwhile assistant, Archie. So are the slightly twisted names of the three PIs Julius often makes use of: Tom Durkin, Saul Penzer, and Willie Cather, and the homicide detective Julius frequently butts heads with: Detective Mark Cramer. There are other similarities, such as Julius being brilliant but innately lazy, and frequently needing to be pestered by his assistant, Archie, to take jobs so he can continue to enjoy his desired lifestyle. Both men like fine food—although Julius frequently dines out at Boston’s finest restaurants, while Nero enjoys food prepared by either himself, Fritz, or the two of them in collaboration. Both are avid readers. There are also countless differences. Julius owns a townhouse in Boston’s Beacon Hill district, Nero Wolfe a brownstone in Manhattan. Julius is handsome, physically fit, holds a fifth-degree black belt in Kung fu, and spends two hours each morning engaged in an intensive martial arts workout, Nero Wolfe is famously one-seventh of a ton and tends to avoid all exercise except for potting orchids. Julius, at least until he meets Lily Rosten and is smitten by her, is a womanizer, Nero Wolfe is not. Nero has a staff including Fritz (his chef) and Theodore (his orchid nurse) living in his brownstone, Julius lives alone. Julius preferred activities (excluding women): poker (and occasionally horse races when he’s given a tip about a fixed race) and collecting expensive wine; Nero Wolfe: orchids, fine cuisine, and drinking beer.
About Julius and his wine—I’m more like Nero Wolfe on that regard. I prefer beer, although I prefer bourbon to either of those. When I occasionally order a glass of wine with dinner, I know just enough about wine to know that I like Malbec. The reasons I made Julius an oenophile (and, yes, I needed to look that up!) were (1) to draw yet another distinction between Julius and Nero Wolfe, (2) to give Julius an expensive hobby to provide impetus for him taking on a job. I wrote the first Julius Katz story in 2008, and if I realized then how expensive single-barrel bourbon could be (if it was that expensive in 2008??) I would have made Julius a bourbon drinker/collector. But I didn’t, and hence I’ve been needing to do a fair amount of wine research with most of my Julius Katz stories.
Where Julius Katz mysteries are most like Nero Wolfe’s are in the structure of the mysteries. A murder is committed, a group of suspects are interrogated, Archie gathers evidence, occasionally Julius hires one or more of his preferred PIs to perform a task of some sort, frequently Julius will butt heads with Cramer, and all the suspects will be gathered into Julius’s office where he’ll point out the guilty party. And of course, Julius will always be two or three steps ahead of Archie. Where they’re next most alike is that they’re both narrated by an Archie, and that’s also where they’re most different. Nero Wolfe’s Archie is Archie Goodwin, a wisecracking detective with the heart and soul of a hard-boiled PI. Julius’s Archie is a piece of AI that Julius wears as a tie clasp, although also with the heart and soul of a hard-boiled PI.
Below is how Archie describes himself in the first Julius Katz mystery titled aptly “Julius Katz”:
My name isn’t really “Archie”. During my time with Julius I’ve grown to think of myself as Archie, the same as I’ve grown to imagine myself as a five-foot-tall, heavyset man with thinning hair, but in reality I’m not five feet tall, nor do I have the bulk that I imagine myself having, and I certainly don’t have any hair, thinning or otherwise. I also don’t have a name, only a serial identification number. Julius calls me Archie, and for whatever reason it seems right; besides, it’s quicker to say than the eighty-four-digit serial identification number that has been burnt into me. You’ve probably already guessed that I’m not human, and certainly not anything organic. What I am is a one- by two-inch rectangular-shaped piece of space-aged computer technology that’s twenty years more advanced than what’s currently considered theoretically possible—at least aside from whatever lab created me. How Julius acquired me, I have no clue. Whenever I’ve tried asking him, he jokes around, telling me he won me in a poker game. It could be true—I wouldn’t know since I have no memory of my time before Julius.
Are my Julius Katz stories a Nero Wolfe pastiche? Merriam-Webster defines pastiche as:
“a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work,” and given that definition I’d say no. Julius Katz has clearly been inspired by Nero Wolfe, and is more of a nod to those great mysteries, but there has been no attempt on my part to imitate Rex Stout’s style. Are they a Nero Wolfe parody? Again, going to Merriam-Webster, we have the definition: “a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule,” and given that, I’d say definitely no. Again, there’s no imitation, and each story is as well-crafted a mystery story as I’m capable of writing. While I’ve heard from a number of Nero Wolfe fans about how much they enjoy these stories, I think it’s not because of any familiarity with the names, but that there’s a comfort in the world I’ve created for Julius and Archie, as well as in the interplay between the two of them, and ultimately in watching a genius detective solve a nearly impossible case.
Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush is what I’m calling the first of the “early” stories. After 19 Julius Katz mystery stories and one novel, the series reached a natural conclusion. But after a short break from Julius and Archie, I realized I missed spending time with the two of them and decided to write stories that take place before the first one (“Julius Katz”). In these stories, Julius hasn’t met Lily yet, and so there’s a slightly different Julius than what readers have so far experienced. While I recognize that this might blur the line between Julius and Nero Wolfe somewhat, especially after writing an article attempting to unblur that line, to try to make these early stories more fun for Nero Wolfe fans, each of them have a connection of some sort to a Nero Wolfe novel. In any case, this has made it more fun (and challenging) for me to write. It shouldn’t be too hard for Nero Wolfe fans to figure out the connection for this first one, but they do get harder to spot!
Trace Evidence 