In a conversation over at Facebook - don't ask! - a reader asked whether Nero Wolfe might in fact have been the son of Mycroft Holmes. He was going primarily on Mycroft's size.
Right idea, but wrong Holmes.
In "Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street: the Life and Times of America's Largest Private Detective," author William S. Baring-Gould cites a piece of scholarship by Dr. John D. Clark, appearing in the "Baker Street Journal" of the Baker Street Irregulars in January, 1956. Dr. Clark argues that Wolfe was, in fact, the son of Sherlock Holmes, and Irene Adler, always referred to by Holmes as THE woman. Clark and Baring-Gould say that Adler was later smuggled out of Eastern Europe, where her affair took place, and that her son, Nero Wolfe was born in Trenton, New Jersey (home of Adler's parents) in 1892 or early 1893.
Baring-Gould notes that this hypothesis was neither confirmed nor denied by Rex Stout.
The book is long out of print, but the link above will take you to Amazon.com's page showing a number of booksellers with second-hand copies for sale.
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