CRYING OUT TO BE A NETFLIX SERIES:

In July 1949, The New Yorker published a two-part profile of Rex Stout, "banker, barker, bookworm, bookkeeper, yeoman on the Presidential yacht Mayflower, boss of three thousand writers of propaganda in World War II, gentleman farmer and dirt farmer, big businessman, cigar salesman, pueblo guide, hotel manager, architect, cabinetmaker, pulp and slick magazine writer, propagandist for the world government, crow trainer, jumping-pig trainer, mammoth-pumpkin grower, conversationalist, politician, orator, potted-plant wizard, gastronome, musical amateur, president of the Authors Guild, usher, ostler, and pamphleteer."

Oh, and he wrote some damn fine books, too.

In 33 novels and 39 novellas between 1934 and 1975, Stout did something unique: he married the British Golden Age, puzzle-solving school of mystery fiction with the street-smart, hardboiled, thoroughly American detective novels of Chandler and Hammett to come up with a seamless blend of thought and action, narrated in a prose that was unfailingly literate, witty, and engaging.

His two heroes made the perfect odd couple: Nero Wolfe, in his late 50s, is fat, imperious, pedantic, brilliantly deductive, devoted to both his meals and his orchids, famously loath to leave his brownstone on West 35th Street, and upon occasion, capable of extraordinary nimbleness and passion. Archie Goodwin, in his 30s, is his smart-mouthed legman, tough, intuitive, tenacious, decent, possessed of a photographic memory, highly appreciative of the opposite sex, and the narrator of all the books, the voice that keeps us coming back for more.

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