Rex Stout

American novelist and short-story writer.

• Born: December 1, 1886
• Birthplace: Noblesville, Indiana
• Died: October 27, 1975
• Place of death: Danbury, Connecticut

Biography

Rex Todhunter Stout, perhaps the most prolific of American mystery authors, was born in Noblesville, Indiana, on December 1, 1886. The son of John Wallace Stout and Lucetta Todhunter Stout, he descended from five generations of Quakers and had an impressive legacy of ancestors, including Mary Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, and Joshua Hoopes, a member of the Pennsylvania Colonial Assembly. His father, known as a disciplined and exacting man, worked as a teacher and educational administrator as well as publisher and traveling salesman, never truly finding a vocation that could provide him a professional home. John Stout’s success was often marginal, causing numerous upheavals and moves during Rex Stout’s boyhood. His mother, one of nine children, completed college along with seven of her siblings, a rare accomplishment before the turn of the twentieth century. Lucetta Todhunter Stout encouraged her children to aspire to exceptional achievement and self-reliance.

In 1887 the Stout family relocated to Wakarusa, Kansas, where Stout would spend his early childhood years. His accomplishments during his early childhood made him known as a phenomenon throughout the state of Kansas, as he began to read at the age of eighteen months, had read the Bible in its entirety by the age of five, and by ten was touring the state of Kansas, giving mathematical demonstrations as a prodigy. The family later relocated to Topeka, Kansas, where Stout attended and graduated from Topeka High School at the age of sixteen. He considered and rejected the idea of attending college at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, before enlisting in the United States Navy, where he worked as a yeoman on President Theodore Roosevelt’s yacht.

Shortly thereafter, Stout began writing poetry and then short stories and novels, presented serially in magazines. By the age of twenty-six, he had already received respectable reviews as an author. In 1916 Stout met and married Fay Kennedy, the sister of a high school classmate. Concerned that his work as an author was hampered because of financial need, Stout teamed with his brother in developing a banking system designed for children. The development of this banking system gave Stout the financial freedom to allow for a period of European travel during which time he began his writing in earnest, no longer feeling compelled to write because of financial necessity.

After the stock market crash, Stout settled in Brewster, New York, and began the building of his estate, High Meadow. During this time, a change in lifestyle and personal direction undermined and eventually ended his first marriage. Shortly after his divorce in 1932, Stout married Pola Weinbach Hoffmann, a textile designer, a second marriage for both parties. They had two daughters, Barbara and Rebecca.

In 1934, after the birth of his first daughter, Stout published his book Fer-de-Lance, in which the often-quoted and illustrious detective genius, Nero Wolfe, and his irascible sidekick, Archie, are introduced. Criticism of Stout’s work frequently notes that by combining the more articulate and thinking man’s character of Wolfe, reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes and of the British school of mystery writing, with the detective Archie, based on the mostly American school of "hard-boiled" detective novels, that Stout was able to assimilate the best qualities of both genres of mystery fiction. The result is a fascinating and often humorous blend of two very different characters working together to solve crimes. Wolfe, the master genius who chose almost never to leave his house, was a connoisseur of fine beer, a gourmet cook, and an orchid aficionado. Archie, on the other hand, besides providing the locomotion by which Wolfe could gain access to locations outside of his own famous West Thirty-fifth Street brownstone walk-up, also provided the romantic entanglements and the "man about town" attitude that made him the sort of charming rogue who could infiltrate the best houses of the city, finding women eager to share information with him.

John McAleer notes in his 1977 biography, Rex Stout, that Stout may have been using the characters of Wolfe and Archie to work though relationship issues with his own dictatorial and perfectionist father. McAleer also states that both Wolfe and Archie serve as vehicles for Stout to reveal his true self, with Stout aligning himself more greatly with Archie during the beginning novels of the series and gradually completing the metamorphosis to Wolfe as an expression of his own author’s voice. Stout experimented with other detective characters in several novels, but these never gained the popular success or acceptance of the Wolfe mysteries.

Stout’s work style was remarkable; he rarely worked on any book more than forty days. He did very little rewriting and preferred to spend his leisure time pursuing a variety of hobbies and causes, both personal and political. He was an accomplished gardener and constructed the furniture for his home in Brewster. He twice served as the president of the Author’s Guild and continued throughout his life to champion a variety of causes; most notably he wrote United States propaganda materials during World War II as chairman of the War Writers’ Board.

Rex Stout’s contribution to the mystery novel may be second only to Doyle’s contribution of Sherlock Holmes. Stout’s death in 1975 at his estate in Danbury, Connecticut, silenced an important voice in American mystery writing.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Her Forbidden Knight, 1913

A Prize for Princes, 1914

Under the Andes, 1914

The Great Legend, 1916

How Like a God, 1929

Seed on the Wind, 1930

Golden Remedy, 1931

Forest Fire, 1933

Fer-de-Lance, 1934

The President Vanishes, 1934

O Careless Love, 1935

The League of Frightened Men, 1935

The Rubber Band, 1936

The Hand in the Glove, 1937

The Red Box, 1937

Mr. Cinderella, 1938

Too Many Cooks, 1938

Double for Death, 1939

Mountain Cat, 1939

Red Threads, 1939

Some Buried Caesar, 1939

Bad for Business, 1940

Bitter End, 1940 (novella)

Over My Dead Body, 1940

Where There’s a Will, 1940

Alphabet Hicks, 1941

The Broken Vase, 1941

Black Orchids, 1944 (2 novellas; includes Black Orchids and Cordially Invited to Meet Death)

Not Quite Dead Enough, 1944 (2 novellas; includes Not Quite Dead Enough and Booby Trap)

The Silent Speaker, 1946

Too Many Women, 1947

And Be a Villain, 1948

The Second Confession, 1949

Trouble in Triplicate, 1949 (3 novellas; includes Help Wanted, Male, Instead of Evidence, and Before I Die)

Curtains for Three, 1950 (3 novellas; includes Bullet for One, The Gun with Wings, and Disguise for Murder)

In the Best Families, 1950

Three Doors to Death, 1950 (3 novellas; includes Man Alive, Omit Flowers, and Door to Death)

Murder by the Book, 1951

Prisoner’s Base, 1952

Triple Jeopardy, 1952 (3 novellas; includes The Cop-Killer, The Squirt and the Monkey, and Home to Roost)

The Golden Spiders, 1953

The Black Mountain, 1954

Three Men Out, 1954 (3 novellas; includes This Won’t Kill You, Invitation to Murder, and The Zero Clue)

Before Midnight, 1955

Might as Well Be Dead, 1956

Three Witnesses, 1956 (3 novellas; includes When a Man Murders, Die Like a Dog, and The Next Witnesses)

If Death Ever Slept, 1957

Three for the Chair, 1957 (3 novellas; includes Immune to Murder, A Window for Death, and Too Many Detectives)

And Four to Go, 1958 (4 novellas; includes Christmas Party, Easter Parade, Fourth of July Picnic, and Murder Is No Joke)

Champagne for One, 1958

Plot It Yourself, 1959

Three at Wolfe’s Door, 1960 (3 novellas; includes Poison à la Carte, Method Three for Murder, and The Rodeo Murder)

Too Many Clients, 1960

The Final Deduction, 1961

Gambit, 1962

Homicide Trinity, 1962 (3 novellas; includes Death of a Demon, Eeny Meeny Murder Mo, and Counterfeit for Murder)

The Mother Hunt, 1963

A Right to Die, 1964

Trio for Blunt Instruments, 1964 (3 novellas; includes Kill Now—Pay Later, Murder Is Corny, and Blood Will Tell)

The Doorbell Rang, 1965

Death of a Doxy, 1966

The Father Hunt, 1968

Death of a Dude, 1969

Please Pass the Guilt, 1973

A Family Affair, 1975

Death Times Three, 1985 (3 novellas; includes Bitter End, Frame-Up for Murder, and Assault on a Brownstone)

Edited Texts:

The Illustrious Dunderheads, 1942

Rue Morgue No. 1, 1946 (with Louis Greenfield)

Eat, Drink, and Be Buried, 1956

The Nero Wolfe Cookbook, 1973 (with others)

Bibliography

Anderson, David R. Rex Stout. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984. Critical biography of the author and discussion of the Nero Wolfe series.

Baring-Gould, William S. Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street. New York: Viking Press, 1969. The result of Baring-Gould’s painstaking research of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series provides, in essence, a biography of Stout’s fictional characters.

Barzun, Jacques. "Rex Stout." In A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works, edited and with an introduction by Michael Murray. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Essay on Stout by a noted philosopher and social theorist.

Bester, Alfred. "Rex Stout." In Redemolished. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Essay on Stout and his famous detective by Bester, a skilled essayist in addition to being a successful science-fiction writer.

Darby, Ken. The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe, as Told by Archie Goodwin. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983. Similar to but more detailed than Baring-Gould’s effort, this book contains a detailed study of the world of Nero Wolfe, including a blueprint of his brownstone and case files on all of the mysteries he solved.

McAleer, John J. Rex Stout: A Biography. 1977. Reprint. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. McAleer’s authorized biography of Rex Stout is considered the definitive and inclusive information source regarding Stout’s life.

Murphy, Bruce. The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery. New York: Saint Martin’s Minotaur, 1999. Murphy’s short biographical section on Stout provides a crisply written and succinct look at the most important facts of the author’s life.

"Stout, Rex." In Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, edited by Robin W. Winks and Maureen Corrigan. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1998. Provides an overview of Stout and his contributions to mystery fiction.

Townsend, Guy M., John J. McAleer, and Boden Clarke, eds. The Works of Rex Stout: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide. 2d ed. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1995. Useful bibliography of Stout’s novels that provides descriptions and analysis of each one.

Van Dover, J. Kenneth. At Wolfe’s Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1991. A book-length study of the Nero Wolfe series, noting the development of the characters over successive novels and the importance of both novels and characters to the detective genre.