Rex Stout (1886-1975)

 He received early encouragement in reading from his mother and his teacher father, and had read all 1,126 books in his father's library by the time he was eleven. He went on to become the state's spelling champion at the age of thirteen. 

  One of nine children, Stout was prevented from entering the University of Kansas due to his family's lack of money. He joined the U.S. Navy at the age of eighteen and served as a yeoman on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht for nearly two years. Some of his poems were published in Smart Set magazine, and he supported himself in a variety of jobs for four years after leaving the navy. For a time he returned to writing, publishing four serialized adventure novels in All-Story Magazine from 1913 to 1916, as well as more than thirty short stories in other magazines. Always a rapid calculator and bookkeeper, he achieved early success by founding the Educational Thrift Service with his brother Bob. Earnings from the school banking system enabled him to travel extensively in Europe with his first wife, Fay. 

 Stout returned to writing full time in 1927, leaving his job as president of Vanguard Press, a company he had helped found. In 1929 Vanguard published the first Stout novel to appear in book form, How Like a God. Though not usually listed with his crime and detective novels, the book contains a fair amount of suspense and culminates in a murder. 

 Stout's personal life changed in 1932 with his divorce from his first wife and marriage to Pola Hoffman. He was publishing literary and romance novels at this time, but he still remembered the hundreds of detective stories he'd read since his boyhood. In October 1933, the same month his daughter was born, he created Wolfe and Goodwin, and began work on the first Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance. Nero Wolfe, weighing in at some 270 pounds, was a gourmet who loved orchids and beer. (His first recorded sentence, on the second page of Fer-de-Lance, is, “Where's the beer?”) Like his creator he held firm, mainly liberal views on a variety of subjects. He rarely left his brownstone on New York's West 35th Street. In short, he was something new in American detective fiction. His relationship with confidential assistant Goodwin, with its interplay of clever conversation and flashes of wit, was the most successful pairing since Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson, and often compensated for some lapses in the plotting of later books.

 

 There can be little doubt that four of the first six Wolfe novels are among the best of the series. Fer-de-Lance (1934; Meet Nero Wolfe), with its deadly golf club and titular serpent, set the stage for all that followed. The character of Wolfe had mellowed a bit by the second book, The League of Frightened Men (1935), but its plot remains one of the strongest in the series. In the fifth and sixth books, Too Many Cooks and Some Buried Caesar (both 1938; The Red Bull), Wolfe makes two of his rare ventures outside New York City.

 After 1941 Stout abandoned most of his other detective characters such as Tecumseh Fox and Alphabet Hicks to concentrate on Wolfe, turning out a total of thirty-three novels and forty-one novellas about the rotund sleuth. Following the early high spots in the saga, Wolfe probably hit his peak with the Zeck trilogy consisting of And Be a Villain (1948; More Deaths Than One), The Second Confession (1949), and In the Best Families (1950; Even in the Best Families). Each of the novels is complete and clever in itself, and together they tell of Wolfe's duel of wits with master criminal Arnold Zeck, a man so powerful he finally drives Wolfe out of his home and into hiding. 

 Late in the series, Stout continued to communicate his social concerns. A Right to Die (1964) deals with the civil rights movement, while Wolfe battles the abuses of J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I. in The Doorbell Rang (1965). The final Wolfe novel, A Family Affair (1975), was published shortly before Stout's death. Despite some plot weakness it is a fitting conclusion to the saga, dealing as it does with those closest to the master sleuth.

  http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/7001/Rex-(Todhunter)-Stout.html

Selected works:

HER FORBIDDEN KNIGHT, in All-Story Magazine, 1913

UNDER THE ANDES, 1914

A PRIZE FOR THE PRINCES, 1914

THE GREAT LEGEND, 1916

HOW LIKE A GOD, 1929

SEED ON THE WIND, 1930

GOLDEN REMEDY, 1931

FOREST FIRE, 1933

FER-DER-LANCE, 1934

THE PRESIDENT VANISHES, 1934

O CARELESS LOVE! 1935

A QUESTION OF PROOF, 1935

THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN, 1935

THE RUBBER BAND, 1936

THE RED BOX, 1937

THE HAND IN THE GLOVE, 1937

MR. CINDERELLA, 1938

TOO MANY COOKS, 1938

MOUNTAIN CAT, 1939

DOUBLE FOR DEATH, 1939

RED THREADS, 1939

SOME BURIED CAESAR, 1939

BAD FOR BUSINESS, 1940

OVER MY DEAD BODY, 1940

WHERE THERE'S A WILL, 1940

BLACK ORCHIDS, 1944

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

MURDER BY THE BOOK, 1951

CURTAINS FOR THREE, 1951

PRISONER'S BASE, 1952

TRIPLE JEOPARDY, 1952

THE GOLDEN SPIDERS, 1953

THE BLACK MOUNTAIN, 1954

THREE MEN OUT, 1954

BEFORE MIDNIGHT, 1955

MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD, 1956

THREE WITNESSES, 1956

THREE FOR THE CHAIR, 1957

IF DEATH EVER SLEPT, 1957

CHAMPAGNE FOR ONE, 1959

PLOT IT YOURSELF, 1959

THREE AT WOLFE'S DOOR, 1960

TOO MANY CLIENTS, 1960

THE FINAL DEDUCTION, 1961

HOMICIDE TRINITY, 1962

GAMBIT, 1962

THE MOTHER HUNT, 1963

THE DOORBEL RANG, 1963

A RIGHT TO DIE, 1964

TRIO FOR BLUNT INSTRUMENTS, 1964

DEATH OF A DOXY, 1966

THE FATHER HUNT, 1968

DEATH OF A DUDE, 1969

PLEASE PASS THE GUILT, 1973

A FAMILY AFFAIR, 1975