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Rex Stout (1886-1975)

Creator of Detective
Nero Wolfe

Rex Stout

Rex Stout was an American writer best known as the creator of the fictional detective, Nero Wolfe. He introduced Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin in his first detective novel, Fer-de-Lance, published in 1934. Click Here

Nero Wolfe was a gourmet, connoisseur and orchid grower, who, with the help of his assistant, Archie Goodwin, could solve crimes without leaving his Manhattan brownstone. Stout continued writing at least one Wolfe adventure per year until his death in 1975.

He was one of many American writers closely watched by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Hoover considered Stout an enemy of the FBI and a Communist, someone whose novels and mail HAD to be watched.

In 1965 the FBI panicked and attempted to retaliate against him when his novel The Doorbell Rang was published. In this novel Nero Wolfe is hired to force the FBI to stop wiretapping, tailing and otherwise harassing a woman who had given away 10,000 copies of a book that was critical of the Bureau and its Director. Click Here

 

Here are some more Nero Wolfe novels:

• The League of Frightened Men (1935)

• The Rubber Band (1936)

• The Red Box (1937)

• Too Many Cooks (1938)

• Some Buried Caesar (1939)

• Over My Dead Body (1940)

• Where There's a Will (1940)

• Black Orchids (1942)

• Not Quite Dead Enough (1944)

• The Silent Speaker (1946)

• Too Many Women (1947)

• And Be a Villain (1948)

• Trouble in Triplicate (1949)

• The Second Confession (1949)

• Three Doors to Death (1950)

• In the Best Families (1950)

• Curtains for Three (1951)

• Murder by the Book (1951)

• Triple Jeopardy (1952)

• Prisoner's Base (1952)

• The Golden Spiders (1953)

• Three Men Out (1954)

• The Black Mountain (1954)

• Before Midnight (1955)

• Three Witnesses (1956)

• Might As Well Be Dead (1956)

• Three for the Chair (1957)

• If Death Ever Slept (1957)

• And Four to Go (1958)

• Champagne for One (1958)

• Plot It Yourself (1959)

• Three at Wolfe's Door (1960)

• Too Many Clients (1960)

• The Final Deduction (1961)

• Gambit (1962)

• The Mother Hunt (1963)

• Trio for Blunt Instruments (1964)

• A Right to Die (1964)

• Death of a Doxy (1966)

• The Father Hunt (1968)

• Death of a Dude (1969)

• Please Pass the Guilt (1973)

• A Family Affair (1975) - Rex Stout's final Nero Wolfe novel

For more information on this author click here Rex Stout.

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