Nero Wolfe

Nero Wolfe is a brilliant, obese and eccentric fictional armchair detective created in 1934 by American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe was born in Montenegro and keeps his past murky. He lives in a luxurious brownstone on West 35th Street in New York City, and he is loath to leave his home for business or anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or eating the gourmet meals prepared by his chef, Fritz Brenner. Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's sharp-witted, dapper young confidential assistant with an eye for attractive women, narrates the cases and does the legwork for the detective genius.

Stout published 33 novels and 41 novellas and short stories featuring Wolfe from 1934 to 1975, with most of them set in New York City. The stories have been adapted for film, radio, television and the stage. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated for Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was a nominee for Best Mystery Writer of the Century.

Title character

Although the Nero Wolfe stories take place contemporaneously with their writing and depict a changing landscape and society, the principal characters in the corpus do not age. According to a memo prepared by Rex Stout in 1949, Nero Wolfe's age is 56, although this is not directly stated in the stories.

"Those stories have ignored time for thirty-nine years," Stout told his authorized biographer, John McAleer. "Any reader who can't or won't do the same should skip them. I didn't age the characters because I didn't want to. That would have made it cumbersome and would seem to have centered attention on the characters rather than the stories."

According to the same memo, Wolfe's height is and his weight is . Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, frequently describes Wolfe as weighing "a seventh of a ton". This was intended to indicate unusual obesity at the time of the first book (1934), especially through the use of the word "ton" as the unit of measure. In a single short story written in 1947, Archie writes, "He weighs between 310 and 390, and he limits his physical movements to what he regards as the irreducible essentials."

"Wolfe's most extravagant distinction is his extreme antipathy to literal extravagance. He will not move," wrote J. Kenneth Van Dover in ''At Wolfe's Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout'':

Wolfe's most remarkable departure from the brownstone is due to personal reasons, not to business, and thus does not violate the rule regarding the conduct of business away from the office. That event occurs in '' The Black Mountain'', when he leaves not only the brownstone but the United States to avenge the murder of his oldest friend. He abandons his cherished daily habits for a time and, despite his physical bulk, engages in strenuous outdoor activity in mountain terrain.

Origins

The corpus implies or states that Nero Wolfe was born in Montenegro, with one exception. In the first chapter of '' Over My Dead Body'' (1939), Wolfe tells an FBI agent that he was born in the United States—a declaration at odds with all other references. Stout revealed the reason for the discrepancy in a 1940 letter cited by his authorized biographer, John McAleer: "In the original draft of ''Over My Dead Body'' Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from ''The American Magazine'', supported by Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles."

"I got the idea of making Wolfe a Montenegrin from Louis Adamic," Stout said, noting that everything he knew about Montenegrins he learned from Adamic's book, ''The Native's Return'' (1934), or from Adamic himself.

"Adamic describes the Montenegrin male as tall, commanding, dignified, courteous, hospitable," McAleer wrote. "He is reluctant to work, accustomed to isolation from women. He places women in a subordinate role. He is a romantic idealist, apt to go in for dashing effects to express his spirited nature. He is strong in family loyalties, has great pride, is impatient of restraint. Love of freedom is his outstanding trait. He is stubborn, fearless, unsubduable, capable of great self-denial to uphold his ideals. He is fatalistic toward death. In short, Rex had found for Wolfe a nationality that fitted him to perfection."

Wolfe is reticent about his youth, but apparently he was athletic, fit, and adventurous. Before World War I, he spied for the Austrian government's Evidenzbureau, but had a change of heart when the war began. He then joined the Serbian-Montenegrin army and fought against the Austrians and Germans. That means that he was likely to have been involved in the harrowing 1915 withdrawal of the defeated Serbian army, when thousands of soldiers died from disease, starvation, and sheer exhaustion—which might help to explain the comfort-loving habits that are such a conspicuous part of Wolfe's character. He joined the American Expeditionary Forces, and after a time in Europe and North Africa, he came to the United States.

Suppositions

In 1956, John D. Clark theorized in an article in ''The Baker Street Journal'' that Wolfe was the offspring of an affair between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler (a character from " A Scandal in Bohemia"). Clark suggested that the two had an affair in Montenegro in 1892, and that Nero Wolfe was the result. The idea was later co-opted by William S. Baring-Gould and implied in the novels of Nicholas Meyer and John Lescroart, but there is no evidence that Rex Stout had any such connection in mind. Certainly there is no mention of it in any of the stories, although a painting of Sherlock Holmes does hang over Archie Goodwin's desk in Nero Wolfe's office. Some commentators note both physical and psychological resemblances and suggest Sherlock's brother Mycroft Holmes as a more likely father for Wolfe. Commentators have noted a coincidence in the names "Sherlock Holmes" and "Nero Wolfe": the same vowels appear in the same order. In 1957, Ellery Queen called this "The Great O-E Theory" and suggested that it was derived from the father of mysteries, Edgar Allan Poe. The only mention of Wolfe's mother in Stout's stories is in the first novel, ''Fer-de-Lance'' (1935), in which it is stated that she lives in Budapest and Wolfe sends her a monthly check.

Some Wold Newton theorists have suggested the French thief Arsène Lupin as the father of Nero Wolfe. They note that in one story Lupin has an affair with the queen of a Balkan principality, which may be Montenegro by another name. Further, they note that the name Lupin resembles the French word for wolf, ''loup''.

Brownstone

Wolfe has expensive tastes, living in a comfortable and luxurious New York City brownstone on the south side of West 35th Street. The brownstone has three floors plus a large basement with living quarters, a rooftop greenhouse also with living quarters, and a small elevator, used almost exclusively by Wolfe. Other unique features include a timer-activated window-opening device that regulates the temperature in Wolfe's bedroom, an alarm system that sounds a gong in Archie's room if someone approaches Wolfe's bedroom door or windows, and climate-controlled plant rooms on the top floor. Wolfe is a well-known amateur orchid grower and has 10,000 plants in the brownstone's greenhouse. He employs three live-in staff to see to his needs: Archie Goodwin (assistant), Fritz Brenner (chef), and Theodore Horstmann (orchidist).

The front door is equipped with a chain bolt, a bell that can be shut off as needed, and a pane of one-way glass, which enables Archie to see who is on the stoop before deciding whether to open the door. The front room is used as a waiting area for visitors while Archie informs Wolfe of their arrival, and also as a place for Archie to hide one visitor from another.

Wolfe's bedroom is on the second floor of the brownstone, and Archie's is on the third. Each of these floors also includes one spare bedroom, used on occasion to house a variety of clients, witnesses, and sometimes even culprits. Wolfe takes pride in being able to offer such assistance and once remarked, "The guest is a jewel resting on the cushion of hospitality".

Wolfe's office becomes nearly soundproof when the doors connecting it to the front room and the hallway are closed. There is a small hole in the office wall covered by what Archie calls a "trick picture of a waterfall". A person in an alcove at the end of the hallway can open a sliding panel covering the hole, so as to see and hear conversations and other events in the office without being noticed. The chair behind Wolfe's desk is custom-built, with special springs to hold his weight; according to Archie, it is the only chair that Wolfe really enjoys sitting in. Near the desk is a large chair upholstered in red leather, which is usually reserved for Inspector Cramer, a current or prospective client, or the person whom Wolfe and Archie want to question. In the short story "The Squirt and the Monkey", Wolfe and Archie have a hidden tape recorder and microphone installed in the office, with controls in the kitchen. In the story "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo", the system is modified to transmit sound to a speaker in the front room.

The brownstone has a back entrance leading to a private garden, as noted in ''Champagne for One'' (chapter 10) and elsewhere, from which a passage leads to 34th Street—used to enter or leave Wolfe's home when it is necessary to evade surveillance. Archie says that Fritz tries to grow herbs such as chives in the garden.

"That readers have proved endlessly fascinated with the topography of Wolfe's brownstone temple should not be surprising", wrote J. Kenneth Van Dover in ''At Wolfe's Door'':

It is the center from which moral order emanates, and the details of its layout and its operations are signs of its stability. For forty years, Wolfe prepares menus with Fritz and pots orchids with Theodore. For forty years, Archie takes notes at his desk, the client sits in the red chair and the other principals distribute themselves in the yellow chairs, and Wolfe presides from his custom-made throne. For forty years, Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins ring the doorbell, enter the office, and explode with indignation at Wolfe's intractability. The front room, the elevator, the three-foot globe—all persist in place through forty years of American history. ... Like Holmes's 221B Baker Street, Wolfe's West Thirty-Fifth Street remains a fixed point in a turning world.

In the course of the books, ten different street addresses are given on West 35th Street:
* 506 in '' Over My Dead Body'', chapter 12
* 618 in '' Too Many Clients'', chapter 4
* 902 in ''Murder by the Book'', chapter 7
* 909 in "Before I Die", chapter 10
* 914 in '' Too Many Women'', chapter 24
* 918 in '' The Red Box'', chapter 3
* 919 in ''The Silent Speaker'', chapter 12
* 922 in ''The Silent Speaker,'' chapter 2
* 924 in " Man Alive", chapter 9
* 938 in '' Death of a Doxy'', chapter 4

"Curiously, the 900 block of West 35th Street would be in the Hudson River", wrote American writer Randy Cohen, who created a map of the literary stars' homes for ''The New York Times'' in 2005. "It's a non-address, the real estate equivalent of those 555 telephone numbers used in movies." Cohen settled on 922 West 35th Street—the address printed on Archie's business card in ''The Silent Speaker''—as Nero Wolfe's address. On the "Literary Map of Manhattan", the brownstone is numbered 58 and is placed in the middle of the Hudson River.

It is described in the opening chapter of '' The Second Confession'' as being on West Thirty-Fifth Street "nearly to 11th Avenue", which would put it in the 500 block.

Writing as Archie Goodwin, Ken Darby suggests that "the actual location was on East 22nd Street in the Gramercy Park District. ... Wolfe merely moved us, fictionally, from one place to the other in order to preserve his particular brand of privacy. As far as ''I'' can discover, there never ''were'' brownstone houses on West 35th Street."

The absence of brownstones in Wolfe's neighborhood sent television producers to the Upper West Side of Manhattan for an appropriate home and setting for select exterior shots, used in the A&E TV series ''A Nero Wolfe Mystery''. This Manhattan brownstone lacked some peculiarities of Wolfe's home, unlike the model specially constructed on the Toronto set where most of the series was filmed—for example, the correct number of steps leading up to the stoop. It was, therefore, shown from angles that would camouflage any slight discrepancies. The series settled on "914" for the brownstone's address. This number can be seen on the studio set representing the front door exterior in several episodes and on a closeup of Archie's paycheck in "Prisoner's Base".

Food

Good food is a keystone (along with reading) of Wolfe's mostly leisured existence. He is both a gourmand and a gourmet, enjoying generous helpings of Fritz's cuisine three times a day. Shad roe is a particular favorite, prepared in a number of different ways. Archie enjoys his food but lacks Wolfe's discerning palate, lamenting in ''The Final Deduction'' (chapter 9) that "Every spring I get so fed up with shad roe that I wish to heaven fish would figure out some other way. Whales have." Shad roe is frequently the first course, followed by roasted or braised duck, another Wolfe favorite.

Archie also complains that there is never corned beef or rye bread on Wolfe's table, and he sometimes ducks out to eat a corned beef sandwich at a nearby diner. Yet a young woman gives Wolfe a lesson in preparing corned beef hash in " Cordially Invited to Meet Death". Another contradiction is found in '' Plot It Yourself'' when Archie goes to a diner to eat "fried chicken like my Aunt Margie used to make it back in Ohio", since Fritz does not fry chicken. But in '' The Golden Spiders'', Fritz prepares fried chicken for Wolfe, Archie, Saul, Orrie, and Fred.

Wolfe displays an oenophile's knowledge of wine and brandy, but it is only implied that he drinks either. In '' And Be a Villain'' (chapter 17), he issues a dinner invitation and regrets doing so on short notice: "There will not be time to chambrer a claret properly, but we can have the chill off." Continuing the invitation, Wolfe says of a certain brandy, "I hope this won't shock you, but the way to do it is to sip it with bites of Fritz's apple pie."

On weekdays, Fritz serves Wolfe his breakfast in his bedroom. Archie eats his separately in the kitchen, although Wolfe might ask Fritz to send Archie upstairs if he has morning instructions for him. Regularly scheduled mealtimes for lunch and dinner are part of Wolfe's daily routine. In an early story, Wolfe tells a guest that luncheon is served daily at 1 p.m. and dinner at 8 p.m., although later stories suggest that lunchtime may have been changed to 1:15 or 1:30, at least on Fridays. Lunch and dinner are served in the dining room, on the opposite side of the first-floor hallway from the front room and the office. However, Archie will eat separately in the kitchen if he is in a rush due to pressing business or a social engagement, because Wolfe cannot bear to see a meal rushed. Wolfe also has a rule against discussing business at the table, sometimes bent but very rarely overtly broken.

In the earliest books, Archie reports that Wolfe is subject to what he terms a "relapse"—a period of several days during which Wolfe refuses to work or even to listen to Archie badger him about work. The cause is unknown. Wolfe either takes to bed and eats nothing but bread and onion soup, or else he consults with Fritz on menus and the preparation of nonstop meals. In '' Fer-de-Lance'' (chapter 6), Archie reports that, during a relapse, Wolfe once ate half a sheep in two days, different parts cooked in 20 different ways. The relapse also appears briefly in ''The League of Frightened Men'' (chapter 11), '' The Red Box'' (chapter 6), and '' Where There's a Will'' (chapter 12), but subsequently disappears from the corpus as a plot device—possibly because Archie eventually discovered how to shut down a relapse during its earliest stages, as chronicled in ''The Red Box''.

Wolfe views much of life through the prism of food and dining, going so far as to say that Voltaire "... wasn't a man at all, since he had no palate and a dried-up stomach." He knows enough about fine cuisine to lecture on American cooking to Les Quinze Maîtres (a group of the 15 finest chefs in the world) in '' Too Many Cooks'' and to dine with the Ten for Aristology (a group of epicures) in "Poison à la Carte". Wolfe does not, however, enjoy visiting restaurants (with the occasional exception of Rusterman's, owned for a time by Wolfe's best friend Marco Vukcic and later subject to Wolfe's trusteeship). In '' The Red Box'' (chapter 11), Wolfe states, "I know nothing of restaurants; short of compulsion, I would not eat in one were Vatel himself the chef."

Wolfe appears to know his way around the kitchen; in '' Too Many Cooks'' (chapter 17), he tells Jerome Berin, "I spend quite a little time in the kitchen myself." In '' The Doorbell Rang'', he offers to cook Yorkshire Buck and, in " Immune to Murder", the State Department asks him to prepare trout Montbarry for a visiting dignitary. In '' The Black Mountain'', Wolfe and Goodwin stay briefly in an unoccupied house in Italy on their way to Montenegro; Wolfe prepares a pasta dish using Romano cheese that, from "his memory of local custom", he finds in a hole in the ground. During the short story " Murder Is Corny", he lectures Inspector Cramer on the right and wrong ways to cook corn on the cob, insisting that it must be roasted rather than boiled in order to achieve the best flavor. (The 1940 story "Bitter End" suggests the contrary view that Wolfe was unable to prepare his own meals; Fritz's illness with the flu causes a household crisis and forces Wolfe to resort to canned liver pâté for his lunch.)

Wolfe's meals generally include an appetizer, a main course, a salad served after the entrée (with the salad dressing mixed at tableside and used immediately), and a dessert course with coffee. (After-dinner coffee, however, is often taken by Wolfe and Archie in the office rather than the dining room.)

Many of the dishes referred to in the various Nero Wolfe stories and novels were collected and published, complete with recipes, as ''The Nero Wolfe Cookbook'' by Rex Stout and the Editors of the Viking Press, published in 1973. All recipes are prefaced with a brief excerpt from the book or story that made reference to that particular dish.

Beer

Nero Wolfe's first recorded words are, "Where's the beer?"

The first novel, '' Fer-de-Lance'', introduces Wolfe as he prepares to change his habits. With Prohibition at an end, he can stop buying kegs of bootleg beer and purchase it legally in bottles. Fritz brings in samples of 49 different brands for him to evaluate, from which he ultimately selects Remmers as his favorite. Several times during the story, Wolfe announces his intention to reduce his beer intake from six quarts a day to five. "I grinned at that, for I didn't believe it", Archie Goodwin writes.

Like most other things in Wolfe's life, his beer drinking is bound by ritual. Seated at his desk, Wolfe presses the button twice to ring for beer, and Fritz delivers the bottles unopened; Wolfe uncaps the bottles himself, using an 18-karat gold bottle opener given to him by a satisfied client. He never drinks directly from the bottle, but instead pours the beer into a glass and lets the foam settle to an appropriate level before drinking. He keeps the gold opener in the center drawer of his desk, where he also keeps the bottlecaps as a means of tracking his daily/weekly consumption.

In '' Plot It Yourself'' (chapter 13), Wolfe makes an unprecedented vow after Archie tells him the killer they seek has killed again. Wolfe hits the desk with his fist, bellows in a language Archie does not understand, then coldly orders Fritz away when he enters with the beer: "Take it back. I shall drink no beer until I get my fingers around that creature's throat. And I shall eat no meat."

Reading

Reading is central to Nero Wolfe's life, and books are central to the plots of many of the stories. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining Wolfe's office contain some 1,200 books (''Gambit'', chapter 6)—the size of Stout's own library.

In the first paragraph of '' Plot It Yourself'', Archie relates his own method of grading what Wolfe is reading, on a scale from A to D. If Wolfe picks up a book before he rings for beer, and if he has marked his place with a thin strip of gold given to him by a grateful client, the book is an A. "I haven't kept score, but I would say that of the two hundred or so books he reads in a year not more than five or six get an A," Archie writes. In '' The Red Box'' (chapter 12), Wolfe uses a thin strip of ebony to mark his place as he re-reads ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom''. Archie indicates in various stories that Wolfe prefers to finish a paragraph before acknowledging an interruption in his reading. He often dog-ears a page to mark his place.

Select reading list

William S. Baring-Gould's summary of Wolfe's library was incorporated with contributions from others into an annotated reading list created by Winnifred Louis.

Orchids

Known for rigidly maintaining his personal schedule, Nero Wolfe is most inflexible when it comes to his routine in the rooftop plant rooms. From 9:00 to 11:00 in the morning, and from 4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon, he looks after his orchid collection with help from Theodore Horstmann.

"Wolfe spends four hours a day with his orchids. Clients must accommodate themselves to this schedule", wrote Rex Stout's biographer John J. McAleer. "Rex does not use the orchid schedule to gloss over gummy plotting. Like the disciplines the sonneteer is bound by, the schedule is part of the framework he is committed to work within. The orchids and the orchid rooms sometimes are focal points in the stories. They are never irrelevant. In forty years Wolfe has scarcely ever shortened an orchid schedule."

"A dilly it was, this greenhouse", wrote Dr. John H. Vandermeulen in the '' American Orchid Society Bulletin''.

Entering from the stairs via a vestibule, there were three main rooms—one for cattleyas, laelias, and hybrids; one for odontoglossums, oncidiums, miltonias, and their hybrids; and a tropical room (according to '' Fer-de-Lance''). It must have been quite a sight with the angle-iron staging gleaming in its silver paint and on the concrete benches and shelves 10,000 pots of orchids in glorious, exultant bloom.

"If Wolfe had a favorite orchid, it would be the genus Phalaenopsis", Robert M. Hamilton wrote in his article, "The Orchidology of Nero Wolfe", first printed in '' The Gazette: Journal of the Wolfe Pack'' (Volume 1, Spring 1979). Phalaenopsis is mentioned in 11 Wolfe stories, and Phalaenopsis Aphrodite is named in seven—more than any other species. Wolfe personally cuts his most treasured Phalaenopsis Aphrodite for the centerpiece at the dinner for the Ten for Aristology in "Poison à la Carte". In '' The Father Hunt'', after Dorothy Sebor provides the information that solves the case, Wolfe tells Archie, "We'll send her some sprays of Phalaenopsis Aphrodite. They have never been finer."

Wolfe rarely sells his orchids—but he does give them away. Four or five dozen are used to advance the investigation in ''Murder by the Book'', and Wolfe refuses to let Archie bill the client for them. In ''The Final Deduction'', Laelia purpurata and Dendrobium chrysotoxum are sent to Dr. Vollmer and his assistant, who shelter Wolfe and Archie when they have to flee the brownstone to avoid the police.

In '' The Second Confession'', the orchid rooms are torn apart by gunfire from across the street. The shooters are in the employ of crime boss Arnold Zeck, who wants Wolfe to drop a case that could lead back to him. Wolfe and Archie call men to take care of the plants and repair the windows before notifying the police.

Eccentricities

Wolfe has pronounced eccentricities, as well as strict rules concerning his way of life, and their occasional violation adds spice to many of the stories:
* Despite Wolfe's rule never to leave the brownstone on business, the stories find him leaving his home on several occasions. At times, Wolfe and Archie are on a personal errand when a murder occurs, and legal authorities require that they remain in the vicinity ('' Too Many Cooks'', ''Some Buried Caesar'', " Too Many Detectives" and " Immune to Murder", for example). In other instances, the requirements of the case force Wolfe from his house ('' In the Best Families'', '' The Second Confession'', '' The Doorbell Rang'', '' Plot It Yourself'', ''The Silent Speaker'', ''Death of a Dude''). Although he occasionally ventures by car into the suburbs of New York City, he is loath to travel, and clutches the safety strap continually on the occasions that Archie drives him somewhere. He does not trust trains to start or to stop. As Archie says of Wolfe in '' The Doorbell Rang,'' "he distrusted all machines more complicated than a wheelbarrow."
* Wolfe maintains a rigid schedule in the brownstone. He has breakfast in his bedroom while wearing yellow silk pajamas; he hates to discuss work during breakfast, and if forced to do so insists upon not uttering a word until he has finished his glass of orange juice (''Murder by the Book''). Afterwards, he is with Horstmann in the plant rooms from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Lunch is usually at 1:15 p.m. He returns to the plant rooms from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Dinner is generally at 7:15 or 7:30 p.m. (although in one book, Wolfe tells a guest that lunch is served at 1 o'clock and dinner at 8). The remaining hours, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., and after dinner, are available for business, or for reading if there is no pressing business (even if, by Archie's lights, there is). Sunday's schedule is more relaxed; Theodore, the orchid-keeper, usually goes out.

* Wolfe is loath to exercise, but in ''The Rubber Band'' he is sufficiently concerned about his weight that he adds a workout to his daily routine. From 3:45 to 4 p.m., he throws yellow-feathered darts (which he calls "javelins") at a poker-dart board that Fritz hangs in the office. Archie joins him, using red-feathered darts, but quits when he loses nearly $100 to Wolfe in the first two months; he resumes playing only after Wolfe agrees to raise his salary. "There was no chance of getting any real accuracy with it, it was mostly luck", Archie writes. Other surprising examples of Wolfe's athleticism occur in " Not Quite Dead Enough" and '' The Black Mountain''.
* Wolfe does not invite people to use his first name and addresses them by honorific and surname. Aside from his employees, one of the only two men whom Wolfe addresses by their first names is his oldest friend, Marko Vukčić; Marko calls him Nero. In '' Death of a Doxy'' Julie Jaquette refers to Wolfe as Nero in a letter to Archie; and Lily Rowan has addressed Wolfe using an assumed first name. But these are exceptions. In "The Rodeo Murder" Wolfe finds it objectionable when Wade Eisler addresses him as Nero; and in " Door to Death" Sybil Pitcairn's disdainful use of his first name makes Wolfe decide to solve the case. Men nearly always address him as Wolfe, and women as Mr. Wolfe.
* He is extremely fastidious about his clothing and hates to wear, even in private, anything that has been soiled. The short story "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" opens with an example of this habit, in which Wolfe removes his necktie and leaves it on his desk after dropping a bit of sauce on it during lunch. The tie is later used to commit a murder in his office. Beyond that, Wolfe has a marked preference for the color yellow, habitually wearing shirts and silk pajamas in this color and sleeping on yellow bedsheets.
* He restricts his visible reactions: as Archie puts it, "He shook his head, moving it a full half-inch right and left, which was for him a frenzy of negation."
* Wolfe states that "all music is a vestige of barbarism" and denies that music can have any intellectual content. He takes a dim view of television, but TV sets did find their way into the brownstone in the later stories. Archie notes in ''Before Midnight'', "It was Sunday evening, when he especially enjoyed turning the television off." Wolfe's attitude toward television notwithstanding, the TV set in Fritz's basement quarters proved handy in '' The Doorbell Rang'', when the volume was turned up to foil potential eavesdroppers.
* Wolfe displays a pronounced, almost pathological, dislike for the company of women. Although some readers interpret this attitude as simple misogyny, various details in the stories, particularly the early ones, suggest it has more to do with an unfortunate encounter in early life with a ''femme fatale''. It is not women themselves that he dislikes: rather, it is what he perceives as their frailties, especially a tendency to hysterics—to which he thinks every woman is prone. "In the all-male Wolfe household that is an apparent bulwark of men's-club solidarity, Wolfe's misogyny is part pose, part protection, but above all, a shrewd tool of detective strategy", wrote critic Molly Haskell. "Archie does the romancing while Wolfe prods and offends, winnowing out the traitorous and brattish women and allowing the cream, the really great women, to rise to the top. ... We deduce from the glow of those special women who do earn the detective's good will just how discriminating and interested an observer of womankind the author is." These women include Clara Fox (''The Rubber Band''), Lily Rowan (introduced in ''Some Buried Caesar''), Phoebe Gunther (''The Silent Speaker'') and Julie Jaquette ('' Death of a Doxy''). In ''The Rubber Band'', Wolfe says, "It has been many years since any woman has slept under this roof. Not that I disapprove of them, except when they attempt to function as domestic animals. When they stick to the vocations for which they are best adapted, such as chicanery, sophistry, self-adornment, cajolery, mystification and incubation, they are sometimes splendid creatures."
* That Wolfe disapproves of women is well established, but Archie claims that there are nuances: "The basic fact about a woman that seemed to irritate him was that she was a woman; the long record showed not a single exception; but from there on the documentation was cockeyed. If woman as woman grated on him you would suppose that the most womanly details would be the worst for him, but time and again I have known him to have a chair placed for a female so that his desk would not obstruct his view of her legs, and the answer can't be that his interest is professional and he reads character from legs, because the older and dumpier she is the less he cares where she sits. It is a very complex question and some day I'm going to take a whole chapter for it." (''The Silent Speaker'', chapter 30.)
* Wolfe has an aversion to physical contact, even shaking hands. Early in the first novel Archie explains why there is a gong under his bed that will ring upon any intrusion into or near Wolfe's own bedroom: "Wolfe told me once ... that he really had no cowardice in him, he only had an intense distaste for being touched by anyone ..."'' Fer-de-Lance'', chapter 3. When Jerome Berin, creator of ''saucisse minuit'', repeatedly taps Wolfe on the knee, Archie grins at "Wolfe, who didn't like being touched, concealing his squirm for the sake of sausages." In ''Prisoner's Base'', Wolfe speaks coldly as he tells the DA and Inspector Cramer that the despised Lieutenant Rowcliff "put a hand on me. ... I will not have a hand put on me, gentlemen. I like no man's hand on me, and one such as Mr. Rowcliff's, unmerited, I will not have." Wolfe's prejudices make it all the more surprising when, in " Cordially Invited to Meet Death", Archie finds Wolfe in the kitchen with a woman who has solved the problem of preparing corned beef hash: "Standing beside him, closer to him than I had ever seen any woman or girl of any age tolerated, with her hand slipped between his arm and his bulk, was Maryella."
* Wolfe likes to solve the crossword puzzle of British newspapers in preference to those of American papers, and hates to be interrupted while so engaged.
* Wolfe is very particular in his choice of words. He is a prescriptivist who hates to hear language being misused according to his lights, often chastising people who do so. One example is his dislike of the word "contact" being used as a verb; when Johnny Keems says that "contact" ''is'' a verb, transitive and intransitive, Wolfe replies "Contact is not a verb under this roof". One of his most severe reactions occurs in the first chapter of ''Gambit'', when he burns Webster's Third New International Dictionary in the front room fireplace because it states that the words "imply" and "infer" can be used interchangeably. Wolfe generally abhors slang (though in " Murder Is Corny" he says "There is good slang and bad slang") and expects Archie to avoid slang and other language he disapproves of when speaking to him. However, as with other worldly concerns, he sometimes relies on Archie's greater familiarity with slang when business demands it.
* In nearly every story, Wolfe solves the mystery by considering the facts brought to him by Archie and others, and the replies to questions he himself asks of suspects. Wolfe ponders with his eyes closed, leaning back in his chair, breathing deeply and steadily, and pushing his lips in and out. Archie says that during these trances Wolfe reacts to nothing that is going on around him. Archie seldom interrupts Wolfe's thought processes, he says, largely because it is the only time that he can be sure that Wolfe is working.

Fictional entities

The books frequently mention brands that do not exist: for instance, Wolfe owns a Heron automobile, which Archie drives, and Wethersill automobiles are also mentioned. A Marley revolver (also Carley, in "Die Like A Dog") is Archie's weapon of choice. A semi-fictional revolver brand is the Haskell (mentioned in ''A Right To Die''). The Rabson lock likewise does not exist; the name was borrowed by Lawrence Block and used in his Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries. Wolfe serves Remisier brandy or Follansbee's gin to guests and drinks Remmers' beer. Archie goes dancing at the Flamingo Club, which is now the name of more than one place in the New York City area, but the one in the books antedates them. Archie also frequently goes to Manhattan addresses that do not exist, for instance, 171 East 52nd Street in ''Might As Well Be Dead.'' Wolfe's address, as mentioned above, is also fictional.

On the other hand, real names and places also occur in the text, presumably for verisimilitude; Wolfe serves Bar-Le-Duc to a visitor on one occasion. The "Churchill Hotel" (officially the Hotel Churchill), mentioned many times, is a real hotel in Manhattan, and Sardi's is a real restaurant. Real people, for example, J. Edgar Hoover (notably in ''The Doorbell Rang''), Walter Winchell and Texas Guinan are also mentioned.

Narrator

Archie Goodwin is the narrator of all the Nero Wolfe stories and a central character in them. Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, critics and scholars of detective fiction, summarized the unique relationship between Wolfe and Archie:

First, Archie is not a friend but a paid employee, who acts as secretary, chauffeur, and legman to the mountainous and sedentary Wolfe. Then they differ in all important respects—age, background, physique, and education. Finally, it is impossible to say which is the more interesting and admirable of the two. They are complementary in the unheard-of ratio of 50–50. ... Archie has talents without which Wolfe would be lost: his remarkable memory, trained physical power, brash American humor, attractiveness to women, and ability to execute the most difficult errand virtually without instructions. Minus Archie, Wolfe would be a feckless recluse puttering in an old house on West 35th Street, New York.

Like Wolfe, Archie is a licensed private detective and handles all investigation that takes place outside the brownstone. He also takes care of routine tasks such as sorting the mail, taking dictation and answering the phone. At the time of the first novel, '' Fer-de-Lance,'' Archie had been working for Wolfe for seven years and had by then been trained by Wolfe in his preferred methods of investigation. Like Wolfe, he has developed an extraordinary memory and can recite verbatim conversations that go on for hours. But perhaps his most useful attribute is his ability to bring reluctant people to Wolfe for interrogation.

Archie's bedroom is one floor above Wolfe's, and his room and board at the brownstone are part of his compensation. On several occasions, he makes it a point to note that he owns his bedroom furniture. Except for breakfast (which chef Fritz Brenner generally serves him in the kitchen), Archie takes his meals at Wolfe's table, and has learned much about ''haute cuisine'' by listening to Wolfe and Fritz discuss food. While Archie has a cocktail on occasion, his beverage of choice is milk.

Archie has frequent reason to note that he needs at least eight hours' sleep each night, and prefers more. He reacts bitterly when his sleep is interrupted or otherwise shortened by events, such as late-night interrogations at Homicide headquarters or a precinct, or a 1:45 a.m. phone call from a client who has lost her keys, or driving a suspect to her home in Carmel and returning to Manhattan at 2:30 a.m.

Archie's initial rough edges become smoother across the decades, much as American norms evolved over the years. Noting Archie's colloquialisms in the first two Nero Wolfe novels, Rev. Frederick G. Gotwald wrote, "The crudeness of these references makes me suspect that Stout uses them in Archie to show their ugliness because he uses them unapologetically." In the first Wolfe novel, Archie uses a racially biased term, for which Wolfe chides him, but by the time that '' A Right to Die'' was published in 1964, racial epithets were mostly used by Stout's antagonistic characters.

Many reviewers and critics regard Archie Goodwin as the true protagonist of the Nero Wolfe corpus. Compared to Wolfe, Archie is the man of action, tough and street smart. His narrative style is breezy and vivid. Some commentators see this as a conscious device by Stout to fuse the hard school of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade with the urbanity of Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. But there is no doubt that Archie was an important addition to the genre of detective fiction. Previously, foils such as Dr. Watson or Arthur Hastings were employed as confidants and narrators, but none had such a fully developed personality or was such an integral part of the plot as Archie.

Supporting characters

Household

* Fritz Brenner – exceptionally talented Swiss cook who prepares and serves all of Wolfe's meals except those that Wolfe occasionally takes at Rusterman's Restaurant. Fritz also acts as the household's majordomo and butler.
* Theodore Horstmann – orchid expert who assists Wolfe in the plant rooms.

The 'Teers

* Saul Panzer – top-notch private detective who is frequently hired by Nero Wolfe either to assist Archie Goodwin, or to carry out assignments Wolfe prefers that Archie not know about. Archie often comments on Saul's exceptional memory, especially his talent for recalling people's faces.
* Fred Durkin – blue-collar investigator who is often hired for mundane tasks like surveillance.
* Orrie Cather – handsome, personable detective who thinks he would look just fine sitting at Archie's desk.

Law enforcement officials

* Inspector Cramer – head of Homicide in Manhattan. In some of the stories it is implied that his authority extends to other NYC boroughs.
* Sergeant Purley Stebbins – assistant to Cramer.
* Lieutenant George Rowcliff – obnoxious police lieutenant (who has been known to stutter when frustrated by Goodwin). Plays an integral part in '' Please Pass the Guilt''.
* Hombert – in some of the novels the New York police commissioner
* Skinner – New York County Manhattan District Attorney
* Mandelbaum (aka Mandel) – Manhattan Assistant District Attorney.
* Cleveland Archer – Westchester County district attorney
* Ben Dykes – head of Westchester County detectives
* Con Noonan – lieutenant with the New York State Police. He dislikes Wolfe and Goodwin and would lock them up on the feeblest excuse (see the novella " Door to Death").

Friends

* Lon Cohen – of the ''New York Gazette,'' Archie's pipeline to breaking crime news. Lon apparently has no official title at the ''Gazette'' but occupies a room just two doors down from the publisher's corner office. Archie frequently asks Lon for background information on current or prospective clients, and returns those favors by providing Lon exclusives, and occasional photos, concerning Wolfe's cases. Lon is also one of Archie's poker-playing pals.
* Lily Rowan – heiress and socialite, often appears as Archie's romantic companion, although both Lily and Archie are fiercely independent and have no intention of getting engaged or settling down. (It is implied that they enjoy an intimate, ongoing but nonexclusive relationship.) Lily was introduced in ''Some Buried Caesar'', appears in several stories (and is mentioned in passing in others), and assists in a couple of cases.
* Marko Vukčić – A fellow Montenegrin whom Wolfe has known since childhood, possibly a blood relative (since "vuk" means "wolf"). Vukčić owns the high-class Rusterman's Restaurant in Manhattan. According to '' In the Best Families'' (in which Wolfe gives him power of attorney), he is the only man in New York who calls Wolfe by his first name. Wolfe is executor of Vukčić's will and, following Vukčić's death, runs Rusterman's as a trustee for "a couple of years".
* Lewis Hewitt – well-heeled orchid fancier, for whom Wolfe did a favor (as told in "Black Orchids"). During a prolonged absence ('' In the Best Families''), Wolfe sends his orchids to Hewitt for care. Wolfe occasionally asks professional favors of Hewitt (as in '' The Doorbell Rang''), and Hewitt has sent at least one friend, Millard Bynoe, to ask Wolfe's assistance (" Easter Parade").
* Nathaniel Parker – Wolfe's lawyer (or occasionally a client's lawyer, on Wolfe's recommendation) when only a lawyer will do. The character name evolved from "Henry H. Barber"; in ''Prisoner's Base'' (1952) the lawyer's name is Nathaniel Parker, but in '' The Golden Spiders'' (1953) it's Henry Parker, and then reverts to Nathaniel Parker for the rest of the series. Parker is an old friend, and has a broad scope of interests: e.g., Parker converses with Wolfe in French, in " Immune to Murder".
* Doctor Vollmer – a medical doctor who is Wolfe's neighbor and friend. Wolfe calls upon Vollmer whenever a dead body is discovered, or medical attention is required, at the brownstone. In ''The Silent Speaker'', Vollmer contrives an illness severe enough that Wolfe cannot be questioned or even seen by anyone. Vollmer examines Louis Rony's corpse for Wolfe in '' The Second Confession'' and acts as a go-between for Cramer and Archie in '' The Doorbell Rang''. Vollmer's motivation, aside from friendship, is that Wolfe helped him out with a would-be blackmailer years ago. Vollmer's house (or perhaps Wolfe's) moves along 35th Street from time to time. In chapter 5 of ''Before Midnight'' the houses are said to be thirty yards apart; in chapter 6 of ''The Final Deduction'' the distance is sixty yards; and in chapter 2 of "Disguise for Murder" the distance is two hundred yards. " Cordially Invited to Meet Death" is less specific, placing the houses "on the same block".
* Carla Lovchen – Wolfe's adopted daughter, who appears in only two stories, '' Over My Dead Body'' and '' The Black Mountain''.

Other associates

* Bill Gore – freelance operative occasionally called in when Wolfe requires additional help in the field.
* Johnny Keems – freelance operative occasionally called in by Wolfe. He makes his last appearance in the novel '' Might as Well Be Dead''.
* Theodolinda (Dol) Bonner and Sally Corbett (aka Sally Colt) – female operatives whom Wolfe employs at need. They also play a major role in the novella " Too Many Detectives". Dol Bonner is the principal character in the novel '' The Hand in the Glove'', which is an early example of a woman private detective as the protagonist of a mystery novel. Dol Bonner and her agency operatives appear in a few Wolfe mysteries in places where female operatives are required, such as '' The Mother Hunt'' (also one of the few stories where Wolfe has to flee his home to escape arrest).
* Del Bascom – independent investigator who runs a large conventional detective agency in Manhattan. Wolfe sometimes subcontracts to Bascom when he needs a lot of men for something (as in ''The Silent Speaker'').
* Herb Aronson and Al Goller – friendly cabbies who make themselves available to Archie for mobile surveillance jobs.
* Ethelbert Hitchcock – Wolfe's contact in London who handles enquiries to be made in Europe. Although he is usually identified by only his surname, in ''The Rubber Band'' (chapter 10) Archie refers to him as Ethelbert Hitchcock, "which I consider the all-time low for a name for a snoop, even in England." Wolfe also identifies him by that full name when speaking to FBI investigator Stahl in ''Over My Dead Body'' (chapter 15). Some years later, in ''The Black Mountain'' (chapter 4), it is Geoffrey Hitchcock who meets Wolfe and Archie at the airport.
* Felix Courbet – Part owner and manager of Rusterman's Restaurant following the death of Marko Vukčić. Felix plays a major role in both "Poison à la Carte" and '' A Family Affair'', in which his surname is changed to Mauer. In '' The Black Mountain'' his surname is Martin.

Bibliography

Books by Rex Stout

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books (novels and novella/short story collections) are listed below in order of publication. For specific publication history, including original magazine appearances, see entries for individual titles. Years link to year-in-literature articles.
* 1934: '' Fer-de-Lance''
* 1935: ''The League of Frightened Men''
* 1936: ''The Rubber Band''
* 1937: '' The Red Box''
* 1938: '' Too Many Cooks''
* 1939: ''Some Buried Caesar''
* 1940: '' Over My Dead Body''
* 1940: '' Where There's a Will''
* 1942: ''Black Orchids'' (contains "Black Orchids" and " Cordially Invited to Meet Death")
* 1944: '' Not Quite Dead Enough'' (contains " Not Quite Dead Enough" and " Booby Trap")
* 1946: ''The Silent Speaker''
* 1947: '' Too Many Women''
* 1948: '' And Be a Villain'' (British title ''More Deaths Than One'')
* 1949: '' Trouble in Triplicate'' (contains "Before I Die", " Help Wanted, Male" and " Instead of Evidence")
* 1949: '' The Second Confession''
* 1950: '' Three Doors to Death'' (contains " Man Alive", " Omit Flowers" and " Door to Death")
* 1950: '' In the Best Families'' (British title ''Even in the Best Families'')
* 1951: '' Curtains for Three'' (contains " The Gun with Wings", " Bullet for One" and "Disguise for Murder")
* 1951: ''Murder by the Book''
* 1952: '' Triple Jeopardy'' (contains "Home to Roost", " The Cop-Killer" and "The Squirt and the Monkey")
* 1952: ''Prisoner's Base'' (British title ''Out Goes She'')
* 1953: '' The Golden Spiders''
* 1954: '' Three Men Out'' (contains " Invitation to Murder", " The Zero Clue" and " This Won't Kill You")
* 1954: '' The Black Mountain''
* 1955: ''Before Midnight''
* 1956: ''Three Witnesses'' (contains "The Next Witness", "When a Man Murders" and "Die Like a Dog")
* 1956: '' Might as Well Be Dead''
* 1957: '' Three for the Chair'' (contains " A Window for Death", " Immune to Murder" and " Too Many Detectives")
* 1957: '' If Death Ever Slept''
* 1958: '' And Four to Go'' (contains " Christmas Party", " Easter Parade", "Fourth of July Picnic" and "Murder Is No Joke")
* 1958: ''Champagne for One''
* 1959: '' Plot It Yourself'' (British title ''Murder in Style'')
* 1960: ''Three at Wolfe's Door'' (contains "Poison à la Carte", " Method Three for Murder" and "The Rodeo Murder")
* 1960: '' Too Many Clients''
* 1961: ''The Final Deduction''
* 1962: '' Homicide Trinity'' (contains "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo", "Death of a Demon" and "Counterfeit for Murder")
* 1962: ''Gambit''
* 1963: '' The Mother Hunt''
* 1964: ''Trio for Blunt Instruments'' (contains " Kill Now—Pay Later", " Murder Is Corny" and " Blood Will Tell")
* 1964: '' A Right to Die''
* 1965: '' The Doorbell Rang''
* 1966: '' Death of a Doxy''
* 1968: '' The Father Hunt''
* 1969: ''Death of a Dude''
* 1973: '' Please Pass the Guilt''
* 1975: '' A Family Affair''
* 1985: ''Death Times Three'' (posthumous; contains "Bitter End", "Frame-Up for Murder" and " Assault on a Brownstone")

Other authors of Nero Wolfe stories

Robert Goldsborough

After the death of Rex Stout's widow in October 1984, the Stout estate approved the continuation of the Nero Wolfe series. In 1986 journalist Robert Goldsborough published the first of seven Nero Wolfe mysteries issued by Bantam Books. Goldsborough's approach was faithful to the Rex Stout works, but he added his own touches, including an updated frame of reference (Archie now uses a personal computer to file Wolfe's germination records; Wolfe's ancient elevator is finally replaced by a more efficient model; etc.). Goldsborough's first effort, ''Murder in E Minor'', was published in 1986. Goldsborough often drew on his own background in advertising, education and journalism for color and detail.
* 1986: ''Murder in E Minor'' – Wolfe comes out of self-imposed retirement to investigate the death of a boyhood friend, who became a famous symphony conductor.
* 1987: ''Death on Deadline'' – Wolfe intervenes when his favorite newspaper is about to be taken over by a muck-raking publisher.
* 1988: ''The Bloodied Ivy'' – Murder on the college campus, mingled with the attractions and pitfalls of having dedicated groupies as graduate students.
* 1989: ''The Last Coincidence'' – The fallout of the alleged date rape of Lily Rowan's niece.
* 1990: '' Fade to Black'' – Dirty work at an advertising agency.
* 1992: ''Silver Spire'' – Behind-the-scenes intrigue at a successful televangelism ministry based in Staten Island.
* 1994: ''The Missing Chapter'' – In retrospect, the author's explicit farewell to Nero Wolfe: the story concerns the murder of a mediocre continuator of a popular detective series.

Goldsborough resumed the series in 2012 with ''Archie Meets Nero Wolfe'', a prequel to Stout's novels. The books are published by the Mysterious Press.
* 2012: ''Archie Meets Nero Wolfe'' – A prequel imagining how Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin met and became a team.
* 2014: ''Murder in the Ballpark'' – Nero and Archie investigate the murder of a state senator at a baseball game at the Polo Grounds.
* 2015: ''Archie in the Crosshairs''
* 2016: ''Stop the Presses!''
* 2017: ''Murder, Stage Left''
* 2018: ''The Battered Badge''
* 2019: ''Death of an Art Collector''
* 2020: ''Archie Goes Home''
* 2021: ''Trouble at the Brownstone''

Other pastiches

* Maurice Richardson's "The Last Detective Story in the World" (1946) is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in which Nero Wolfe appears along with many other detectives and villains from crime fiction history. First printed in the May 1946 issue of the British magazine '' Liliput'', the story was reprinted in ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'' (February 1947).
* Viola Brothers Shore wrote a parody titled "A Case of Facsimile" (1948) in which Nerissa Wolfe, Samantha Spade and Elsie Queen assist Shirley Holmes in solving a mystery. The story appeared in the October 1948 issue of ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine''.
* Thomas Narcejac included a pastiche of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe titled ''The Red Orchid'' (''L'orchidee rouge'') in his collection ''Faux et usage de Faux'' (Librairie des Champs-Elysées 1952). The story was translated by Lawrence G. Blochman for the January 1961 issue of ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine''.
* Marion Mainwaring's 1954 novel ''Murder in Pastiche'' parodies nine famous fictional detectives, including Nero Wolfe (as "Trajan Beare").
* Randall Garrett