Rex Stout

Rex Stout (1886–1975) is a US writer of (not only) classic mysteries featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, published between 1934 and 1975. He is the creator of the famous and phenomenally fat armchair detective genius Nero Wolfe and his almost equally famous assistant Archie Goodwin. Wolfe is an updated version of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, while Archie is a modern, gritty, and wise-cracking Dr. Watson. Archie is just as much Wolfe’s as Dr. Watson’s antithesis.

Stout was born on 1st December 1886, in Noblesville, Indiana, to a Quaker family (the sixth of their nine children). A genius in his own right, he twice read the Bible cover to cover before he was 4 years old, and read all of Shakespeare’s plays and memorized all the sonnets between the ages of 7 and 12 (at 86, he could still quote the sonnets letter-perfect). Stout became the state spelling champion at the age of 13, and was early recognized as a prodigy in arithmetic. <read on>

The shortcut address of the webpage you are currently reading is stout.aboq.org.

Previous Version of this Webpage

Please see the previous version of this webpage that has been very popular among visitors from around the world in the former, non-wiki version of this quotations site. All the content from the previous version of the Rex Stout page will be transferred to this new page later on.

(In fact, go ahead and do so yourself if you can spare a minute... You may easily edit this very page you are reading right now; simply press the tab named edit at the top of this webpage.)

Collections of Rex Stout Quotations Already Available

Here is a list of collections of Rex Stout quotations already available in this Book of Quotations:

The League of Frightened Men   (1935)   discuss Too Many Cooks   (1938)   discuss Some Buried Caesar   (1939)   discuss Where There's a Will   (1940)   discuss The Black Mountain   (1954)   discuss Too Many Women   (1947)   discuss If Death Ever Slept   (1957)   discuss

Champagne for One   (1958)   discuss Plot It Yourself   (1959) a.k.a. Murder in Style   discuss Too Many Clients   (1960)   discuss Gambit   (1962)   discuss The Mother Hunt   (1963)   discuss The Doorbell Rang   (1965)   discuss Death of a Dude   (1969)   discuss

Additional Rex Stout Quotations Categories

Rex Stout’s Miscellaneous quotations Rex Stout’s Worst quotations

Quoted By Rex Stout Others About Rex Stout   discuss

Rex Stout Categories

Goodwingrad's book cover for Black Orchids. See below for more links to Nero Wolfe artwork, or view thumbnails.

• Rex Stout novels
• Rex Stout short stories

• Nero Wolfe mysteries
• Nero Wolfe novels
• Nero Wolfe short stories
• Nero Wolfe artwork

• Non-Wolfe Rex Stout works
• Non-Wolfe Rex Stout mysteries
• Non-Wolfe Rex Stout adventures
• Non-mystery, non-adventure Rex Stout works

• Non-Wolfe Rex Stout novels
• Non-Wolfe Rex Stout short stories

• Rex Stout non-fiction

Nero Wolfe Artwork

Danielle a.k.a. Goodwingrad, a student of graphic design, has produced some very nice Nero Wolfe artwork. Check it out (uploaded here with her permission):

• an advertisement for Champagne for One
• a book cover for Black Orchids
• graphic layout for Chapter 1 of Black Orchids: page 1, page 2

List of all Nero Wolfe & Archie Goodwin Mysteries

All 47 Nero Wolfe Volumes

Note: Nero Wolfe full-length novels are indicated by appearing in bold print italics in the list below. They are numbered using Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3...). In contrast, collections of Nero Wolfe novelettes (short novels, short stories) are numbered using Roman numerals (I, II, III...).

In total, there are 47 Nero Wolfe volumes, 1 of them posthumous (published 10 years after Rex Stout's death). Out of the 47 volumes, 33 are full-length Nero Wolfe novels. The remaining 14 volumes are collections of Nero Wolfe novelettes; there are, in total, 41 such novelettes.

This means that, in grand total, there are 74 Nero Wolfe stories available in 47 volumes. (Please note that the final posthumous volume contains two Wolfe stories that are substantially changed – and improved! – versions of Wolfe stories first published many years ago in other collections.)

1)   Fer-de-Lance   (1934) 2)   The League of Frightened Men   (1935)   DF 3)   The Rubber Band   (1936) 4)   The Red Box   (1937) 5)   Too Many Cooks   (1938)   DF 6)   Some Buried Caesar   (1939)   DF 7)   Over My Dead Body   (1940) 8)   Where There's a Will   (1940)   DF I)   Black Orchids   (1942)      •   Black Orchids   (1942)      •   Cordially Invited to Meet Death   (1942) II)   Not Quite Dead Enough   (1944)      •   Not Quite Dead Enough   (1942)      •   Booby Trap   (1944) 9)   The Silent Speaker   (1946) 10)   Too Many Women   (1947)   DF 11)   And Be a Villain   (1948) 12)   The Second Confession   (1949) III)   Trouble in Triplicate   (1949)      •   Before I Die   (1947)      •   Help Wanted, Male   (1945)      •   Instead of Evidence   (1946) 13)   In the Best Families   (1950) IV)   Three Doors to Death   (1950)      •   Door to Death   (1949)      •   Man Alive   (1947)      •   Omit Flowers   (1948) 14)   Murder by the Book   (1951) V)   Curtains for Three   (1951)      •   Bullet for One   (1948)      •   Disguise for Murder   (1950)      •   The Gun with Wings   (1949) 15)   Prisoner's Base   (1952) VI)   Triple Jeopardy   (1952)      •   The Cop-Killer   (1951)      •   Home to Roost   (1952)      •   The Squirt and the Monkey   (1951) 16)   The Golden Spiders   (1953) 17)   The Black Mountain   (1954)   DF VII)   Three Men Out   (1954)      •   Invitation to Murder   (1942)      •   This Won't Kill You   (1952)      •   The Zero Clue   (1953) 18)   Before Midnight   (1955)

19)   Might As Well Be Dead   (1956) VIII)   Three Witnesses   (1956)      •   Die Like a Dog   (1954)      •   The Next Witness   (1955)      •   When a Man Murders   (1954) 20)   If Death Ever Slept   (1957)   DF IX)   Three for the Chair   (1957)      •   Immune to Murder   (1955)      •   Too Many Detectives   (1956)      •   A Window for Death   (1956) 21)   Champagne for One   (1958)   DF X)   And Four to Go   (1958)      •   Christmas Party   (1957)      •   Easter Parade   (1957)      •   Fourth of July Picnic   (1957)      •   Murder Is No Joke   (1958) 22)   Plot It Yourself   (1959) a.k.a. Murder in Style   DF 23)   Too Many Clients   (1960)   DF XI)   Three at Wolfe's Door   (1960)      •   Method Three for Murder   (1960)      •   Poison a la Carte   (1960)      •   The Rodeo Murder   (1960) 24)   The Final Deduction   (1961) 25)   Gambit   (1962)   DF XII)   Homicide Trinity   (1962)      •   Counterfeit for Murder   (1959)      •   Death of a Demon   (1961)      •   Eeny Meeny Murder Mo   (1962) 26)   The Mother Hunt   (1963)   DF 27)   A Right to Die   (1964) XIII)   Trio for Blunt Instruments   (1964)      •   Kill Now – Pay Later   (1961)      •   Murder Is Corny   (1962)      •   Blood Will Tell   (1963) 28)   The Doorbell Rang   (1965)   DF 29)   Death of a Doxy   (1966) 30)   The Father Hunt   (1968) 31)   Death of a Dude   (1969)   DF 32)   Please Pass the Guilt   (1973) 33)   A Family Affair   (1975)   DF XIV)   [Death Times Three]   (1985)      •   Bitter End   (1940)      •   Frame-Up for Murder   (1958)      •   Assault on a Brownstone   [1959]

Rex Stout Discussion Forum

Visit this site's Rex Stout discussion forum at stout-forum.aboq.org. Every Nero Wolfe story (there are 74 of them, as listed above) will receive its own discussion thread in the forum.

Feel free to join the discussions at any time. You can do so fully anonymously, as no registration or log-in is required to contribute to the Rex Stout discussion forum.

Threads for some of the Rex Stout volumes have already been started. See the small DF links next to the book titles above. Simply click on any of these DF links to visit the discussion forum thread for that particular book.

However, discussing Rex Stout's biography or non-Wolfe, even non-mystery writings, or Rex Stout's political activism, is equally appropriate in the forum.

Plus, setting up highly specialized and dedicated Wolfean / Stoutean discussion threads is also possible. For instance, a thread dedicated solely to discussing the Archie/Lily relationship, or a thread dedicated to discussing Marko Vukcic, or Nero Wolfe TV/film adaptations, and there might even be – frightful as it may seem – dedicated threads for Theodore and Rowcliff!

Nero Wolfe Pastiche & Fan Fiction

The picture (a toy Archie Goodwin?) welcoming visitors on the homepage of Archie's Underwood.

• Glenn Dixon – (1995–1997?) Three Strikes
  • Kindle (MOBI) versions: ›Welcome to Death‹ / ›No Body‹ / ›Not With a Whimper‹
  • iPad/iPhone/Android (EPUB) versions: ›Welcome to Death‹ / ›No Body‹ / ›Not With a Whimper‹
• Alan Vanneman – (2008; revised in 2013) Three Bullets
  [comprises ›Invitation to a Shooting Party‹ / ›Fame Will Tell‹ / ›Politics Is Murder‹]
  • Kindle (MOBI) version — iPad/iPhone/Android (EPUB) version
  • review
  • quotations collection from Three Bullets
• Charles E. Burns – (1990) Firecrackers
  • Kindle (MOBI) version — iPad/iPhone/Android (EPUB) version
• “Adonis Guilfoyle” – (2007) ›Who Am I?‹ & (2008) ›Thanks for the Dance‹
• “Nancy” – (2003) ›Too Many Goodwins‹
• “Nancy” – (2003) ›Lost Boys‹
• “Parhelion” – (2002) ›Hunger‹   {slash!}
• (Halloween 2005) ›Omit Panic‹ – a Nero Wolfe novelette (round-robin by Nero Wolfe fans)
• collection of Nero Wolfe & Archie Goodwin pastiches   {Disclaimer: includes slash}

NW Fan Fiction Discussions

• Milk and Orchids mailing list
• Archie's Underwood mailing list
• discussion in this site's forum

Additional Resources

• previous, voluminous version of this webpage
• Rex Stout webpage at Wikipedia
• Rex Stout at Golden Age Detection Wiki

Shortcut Address of This Page

stout.aboq.org