Nero Wolfe

Nero Wolfe is a fictional detective created by the prolific American author Rex Stout in the 1930s and featured in dozens of books and short stories (many of them later collected into books). He is probably the best-known consulting detective after Sherlock Holmes. Wolfe was born in 1892 or 1893 in Trenton, New Jersey, but reared in Montenegro (according to one or two of the books, he was born there as well). He weighs about 285 pounds (and is 5'11" tall), raises orchids (in a rooftop greenhouse in his New York City brownstone rowhouse on West 35th Street, with the help of his employee Theodore Horstmann) as a hobby, drinks beer and is a gourmand (and so employs a live-in cook, Fritz Brenner), and almost never leaves his house (where his office is). His leg-work is done by another live-in employee, Archie Goodwin, who is also a licensed detective.

The idea that Nero Wolfe was the product of an affair between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler (whom Holmes always called "the Woman") in Montenegro in 1892, was published in the Baker Street Journal in 1956 by John D. Clark, and co-opted by William S. Baring-Gould. The creators of Wolfe and Holmes had no such connection in mind. Stout, who had the opportunity to accept or reject the suggestion, did neither. Others, noting physical resemblance, suggest Mycroft Holmes as Wolfe's father.

Contents

1 Bibliography 1.1 Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout 1.2 Nero Wolfe short stories by Rex Stout 1.3 Nero Wolfe books by Robert Goldsborough 1.4 Books about Nero Wolfe 2 Wolfe in other media 2.1 Cinema 2.2 Radio 2.3 Television 3 External links

Bibliography

Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout

• Fer-de-Lance (1934) — 1st Nero Wolfe mystery & 1936 movie: Meet Nero Wolfe
• The League of Frightened Men (1935) — 1937 movie: The League of Frightened Men
• Rubber Band (1936)
• Red Box (1937)
• Too Many Cooks (1938)
• Some Buried Caesar (1939)
• Over My Dead Body (1940)
• Where There's a Will (1940)
• Black Orchids (1942)
• Not Quite Dead Enough (1944)
• The Silent Speaker (1946)
• Too Many Women (1947)
• And Be a Villain (1948) (British: More Deaths than One)
• The Second Confession (1949)
• Trouble in Triplicate (1949)
• Curtains for Three (1950)
• In the Best Families (1950) (British: Even in the Best Families)
• Three Doors to Death (1950)
• Murder by the Book (1951)
• Prisoner's Base (1952) (British: Out Goes She)
• Triple Jeopardy (1952)
• The Golden Spiders (1953)
• The Black Mountain (1954)
• Three Men Out (1954)
• Before Midnight (1955)
• Might As Well Be Dead (1956)
• Three Witnesses (1956)
• If Death Ever Slept (1957)
• Three for the Chair (1957)
• And Four to Go (1958)
• Champagne for One (1958)
• Plot It Yourself (1959) (British: Murder in Style)
• Three at Wolfe's Door (1960)
• Too Many Clients (1960)
• The Final Deduction (1961)
• Gambit (1962)
• Homicide Trinity (1962)
• The Mother Hunt (1963)
• A Right to Die (1964)
• Trio for Blunt Instruments (1964)
• The Doorbell Rang (1965) — 1977 movie (pilot for tv series): Nero Wolfe
• Death of a Doxy (1966)
• The Father Hunt (1968)
• Death of a Dude (1969)
• Please Pass the Guilt (1973)
• Three Trumps (1973)
• A Family Affair (1975) — last Nero Wolfe novel by Rex Stout
• Death Times Three (1985)

Nero Wolfe short stories by Rex Stout

• "Bitter End" (1940)
• "Black Orchids" (1941)
• "Cordially Invited to Meet Death" (1942)
• "Not Quite Dead Enough" (1942)
• "Booby Trap" (1944)
• "Help Wanted, Male" (1945)
• "Instead of Evidence" (1946)
• "Before I Die" (1947)
• "Man Alive" (1947)
• "Bullet for One" (1948)
• "Omit Flowers" (1948)
• "Gun with Wings" (1949)
• "Disguise for Murder" (1950)
• "Door to Death" (1950)
• "Cop-Killer" (1951)
• "Home to Roost" (1951)
• "Invitation to Murder" (1952)
• "Squirt and the Monkey" (1952)
• "Zero Clue" (1952)
• "This Won't Kill You" (1953)
• "Next Witness" (1954)
• "When a Man Murders" (1954)
• "Die like a Dog" (1955)
• "Immune to Murder" (1955)
• "Window for Death" (1955)
• "Christmas Party" (1956)
• "Easter Parade" (1956)
• "Too Many Detectives" (1956)
• "Fourth of July Picnic" (1957)
• "Murder Is No Joke" (1957)
• "Frame-Up for Murder" (1958)
• "Method Three for Murder" (1960)
• "Poison a la Carte" (1960)
• "Rodeo Murder" (1960)
• "Assault on a Brownstone" (1961) — earlier version of "Counterfeit for Murder" (not actually published until 1985)
• "Counterfeit for Murder" (1961)
• "Death of a Demon" (1961)
• "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" (1961)
• "Kill Now—Pay Later" (1961)
• "Blood Will Tell" (1963)
• "Murder Is Corny" (1963)

Nero Wolfe books by Robert Goldsborough

• Murder in E-Minor (1986) — 1st Nero Wolfe novel by Robert Goldsborough
• Death on Deadline (1987)
• The Bloodied Ivy (1988)
• The Last Coincidence (1989)
• Fade to Black (1990)
• Silver Spire (1992)
• The Missing Chapter (1994)

Books about Nero Wolfe

• Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street (1969) (biography by William S. Baring-Gould)
• The Nero Wolfe Cookbook (1973) (by Rex Stout) (ISBN 1-888952-24-5)
• The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe, as Told by Archie Goodwin (1983) (full-length book by Ken Darby about Wolfe's house, including several very elaborate floor plans) (ISBN 0-316-17280-4)
• At Wolfe's Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout (1991; revised 2003) (bibliography, reviews, and essays, by J. Kenneth Van Dover) (Hardbound: ISBN 0-918736-51-X Paperback: ISBN 0-918736-52-8)

Wolfe in other media

Cinema

The Nero Wolfe mysteries have been turned into several movies, including Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), an adaptation of the first Wolfe novel starring Edward Arnold as Wolfe and Lionel Stander as Archie Goodwin, and The League of Frightened Men (1937), an adaptation of the second Wolfe novel starring Walter Connolly and Lionel Stander.

Radio

A number of radio series have been made based on the Nero Wolfe stories:

• 1943 starring Santos Ortega
• 1945 starring Francis X. Bushman
• 1950 starring Sidney Greenstreet
• 1982 starring Mavor Moore

Television

In 1977, Thayer David and Tom Mason starred in a telemovie based on "The Doorbell Rang", intended as the pilot episode for a television series that did not eventuate.

In 1981, William Conrad and Lee Horsley starred in a short-lived television series.

In 2001, Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton starred in The Golden Spiders, an telemovie adaptation of the 1953 story of the same name. This led to an ongoing series. The first season is available on DVD, and the second season and telemovie are due to be released on DVD in June 2004.

Between 1969 and 1971, the Italian network RAI broadcasted a successful series of black and white telemovies starring Tino Buazzelli (Nero Wolfe), Paolo Ferrari (Archie Goodwin), Pupo De Luca (Fritz Brenner) and Renzo Palmer (Inspector Cramer). Ten episodes of this series are currently (2004) available on DVD.

External links

• Nero Wolfe profile at thrillingdetective.com (http://www.thrillingdetective.com/wolfe.html)
• The Official Site of the Nero Wolfe Fan Club, The Wolfe Pack (http://www.nerowolfe.org)de:Nero_Wolfe

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