Rex Stout's greater innovation lay in his attention to the realities of the larger world. Nero Wolfe might not know the streets of his city very well, but he knew his nation. There are, for examples, reference in Fer-de-Lance to national issues such as Prohibition, and the Depression, and the Lindbergh baby. A few others writers of Golden Age detective stories were inserting a few topical references of this sort, but none to the degree Stout did. The Wolfe series is probably the only major detective story series before the 1970s to make national affairs an essential part of the detective's world, and few of the post-1970 series are as explicit about historical events and figures. ... Stout does not feel obligated to invent a surrogate senator from a vaguely Midwestern state; Nero Wolfe despises Joseph R. McCarthy, and he says so. Archie may drive a Heron, but when it comes to J. Edgar Hoover or Richard M. Nixon, he names names.
--
J. Kenneth Van Dover, At Wolfe's Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout. Rockville, Maryland: James A. Rock & Co., 2003 (second edition), ISBN 0918736528 p. 94Rex Stout
Stout says to us, "Here are two friends. Here are two people sharing their lives. As you wish for friendship, share in theirs. As you seek companionship, share in theirs. As you search for love, share in theirs." Rex Stout invites us into the family and offers warmth and security and certainty. He affirms what we all seek on some primal level. If such disparate individuals as Wolfe and Goodwin can share friendship and love and caring and life, can not we? That’s the strength here. That’s the message and the feel-good inherent in the voice and character that Rex Stout has given to Archie Goodwin. In this cold world, it is a fire on which we may warm our hands.
Rex Stout
Rex Stout's witty, fast-moving prose hasn't dated a day, while Wolfe himself is one of the enduringly great eccentrics of popular fiction. I've spent the past four decades reading and re-reading Stout's novels for pleasure, and they have yet to lose their savor.
Rex Stout
I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are. There was no such conception of justice until after 1830. There was no such thing as a policeman or a detective in the world before 1830, because the modern conception of the policeman and detective, namely, a man whose only function is to find out who did it and then get the evidence that will punish him, did not exist. ... In Paris before the year 1800 — read the Dumas stories — there were gangs of people whose business was to go out and punish wrongdoers. But why? Because they had hurt De Marillac or Richelieu or the Duke or some Huguenot noble, not just because they had harmed society. It is only the modern policeman that is out to protect society.
Rex Stout
Rex Stout is one of the half-dozen major figures in the development of the American detective novel. With great wit and cunning, he devised a form which combined the traditional virtues of Sherlock Holmes and the English school with the fast-moving vernacular narrative of Dashiell Hammett.
Rex Stout
Wolfe talks in a way that no human being on the face of the earth has ever spoken, with the possible exception of Rex Stout after he had a gin and tonic.
Rex Stout
Stout, Rex
Stove, David
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z