Sometimes it feels like, every other week, I spotlight a gloriously famous detective I hadn’t heard of before this blog. The newest addition to the gallery is Nero Wolfe, a rotund and rather choleric private eye of Yugoslavian descent1 working in the New York of the thirties. He is the subject of a bunch of books, a movie, and a considerable list of television series. The one we will be talking about today is an Italian series that ran between 1969 and 1971 for a total of ten episodes. The penultimate one, Sfida al cioccolato,2 is based on a book with the promising title Gambit.
The plot is that a chess master is playing a blindfold simultaneous exhibition in the chess club Gambit. During the exhibition, he falls ill, then iller, then dead. Diagnosis: arsenic. Possibly administered via his hot chocolate. Could such a heavenly product really be at fault? The local super sleuth has to find out. As part of his investigation, he studies the scores of the abandoned games.
We can see his corpulent body hunched over a chess set, his assistant and his plant looking on passively. It’s a sad, sad spectacle:3
I feared for a moment that it would be even worse than this, because I was not wholly confident in the identities of the royal pieces. But no, it couldn’t possibly be worse than impossible. Admittedly, mister Wolfe seems to realise this: he thinks it highly suspicious that the master’s opponent, who’s supposed to be one of the club’s best, would play so badly. Indeed, I feel that the top players of any chess club should at least know how the pieces are set up.
He does have a point, though: they really have been playing terribly. Somehow, white has misplaced half his army. Naturally, one would think that black must have played quite well to achieve that result, but no. he must have de-developed4 his pieces, recklessly pushed his f-pawn, and generally find the worst possible positions for his men. Sadly, they didn’t both get poisoned.
Realism: 0/5 I can’t stand this. After years and years of sacrilege parading almost weekly on this blog I should be desensitised, but apparently I loathe this libel against poor, poor, innocent chocolate.
Probable winner: Black, obviously. With a queen and two rooks extra, victory will come easy.
1. [His public nose, on the other hand, is of Italian descent.] ↩
2. [Don’t trust the chocolate. If you hand it over, I’ll dispose of it safely.] ↩
3. [Like a diagram made by a different editor than this one.] ↩
4. [He veloped them, if you will.] ↩