Rex Stout

Rex Stout 1886-1975, American writer, b. Noblesville, Ind. He served in the navy and worked in New York City as founder and director of the Vanguard Press. His best-known works are nearly 70 mystery stories featuring Nero Wolfe, a large gourmet detective who solves crimes from the comfort of his study. Stout's Nero Wolfe Cookbook appeared in 1973. After Stout's death, Robert Goldsborough wrote a successful series of new Nero Wolfe stories.

Bibliography: See study by W. S. Baring-Gould (1969) and D. R. Anderson (1984).

Stout, Rex [Todhunter] (1886–1975),novelist and publicist whose fiction includes such studies of contemporary character as How Like a God (1929), Seed on the Wind (1930), and Forest Fire (1933). He is best known for detective novels about Nero Wolfe, gourmet and connoisseur, who solves crimes without leaving his desk, including The League of Frightened Men (1935), The Hand in the Glove (1937), Too Many Cooks (1938), Some Buried Caesar (1939), Not Quite Dead Enough (1944), Murder by the Book (1951), If Death Ever Slept (1957), Death of a Doxy (1966), A Family Affair (1975), and others, for they appeared at the rate of one or two a year.