When Stout is on top of his game, which is most of the time, his diabolically clever plotting and his storytelling ability exceed that of any other mystery writer you can name, including Agatha Christie, who invented her own eccentric genius detective, Hercule Poirot.
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Nancy Pearl, "Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe: Too Good to Miss," Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2003, p. 226Rex Stout
Stout was almost as witty as Raymond Chandler. His detective had splendid putdown lines almost as good as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And his mysteries were constructed a lot more smoothly than Agatha Christie's. But you do not expect Chandlerian wit from Conan Doyle, or Conan Doyle's superbly breathless sense of atmosphere and melodrama from Christie, or Christie's scathingly clear, unblinking vision of the monstrous crimes that average human nature is capable of all from the same pen. Stout gives you all of it. He is the Willie Mays or Derek Jeter of the mystery genre: a brilliant all-rounder more talented in each area than any single writer should ever dream of being.
Rex Stout
“You have been to the Riviera before, Georges?” said Poirot to his valet the following morning.
George was an intensely English, rather wooden-faced individual.
“Yes, sir. I was here two years ago when I was in the service of Lord Edward Frampton.”
“And to-day,” murmured his master, “you are here with Hercule Poirot. How one mounts in the world!”Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie? We go back years, me and Ag. She's a … she's just a … she's dead, isn't she?
Eddie Izzard
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.
Rex Stout
Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.
Raymond Chandler
Stout, Rex
Stove, David
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