Rex Stout

And Four To Go

Introduction

WHEN IT WAS FIRST suggested that I write an introduction to one of the volumes in this edition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels, it never occurred to me that Bantam would come up with one I hadn’t even read. For one thing, I didn’t think there were any Nero Wolfe books I hadn’t read. Even if I hadn’t been married to one of the great Rex Stout fans of all time-and therefore living in a house more littered with Wolfian tributes than with cats-I would have been destined to encounter a good deal of the Wolfe canon in childhood. I was born and brought up in a small Connecticut town abutting the one in which Stout spent most of his life. My father’s law partner drew up Stout’s will and his estate, High Meadow, is legendary there. So is Stout himself, of course, and for more reasons than the simple fact that he produced a number of excellent light mysteries about the most eccentric master detective of them all. Like most other states, Connecticut prides herself on the accomplishments of the men and women she takes to be her own. Stout was an enormously successful banker long before he became a bestselling author. He was a respected public figure before he ever presented Nero Wolfe to the world. He was one of those people who seem to be successful by definition-not someone who tried but someone who accomplished, almost as a matter of course. These days, I know enough about writing to know that nothing about producing a successful book is “a matter of course,” but back then Stout seemed right up there with George Washington and Thomas Edison-one of those people so good at everything they simply couldn’t fail. After a while the images got confused. In my child’s mind, Rex Stout was perfect and Nero Wolfe was perfect and therefore Rex Stout was Nero Wolfe. (Even the names had similar rhythms and resonated against each other. Nero Wolfe was fat, and Rex’s last name was-well, Stout.) It came as quite a shock when, in my adulthood, I finally came across a good picture of the novelist himself. A man who looked less like his master detective could barely be imagined.