As I think I have made clear before, I am very much a fan of Rex Stout's marvelous Nero Wolfe novels and novellas. I don't think any other author has ever been so successful in combing the "man-of-action" genre with the cerebral armchair detective as Stout was with Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe.
I've reviewed a number of Stout books on this site and on the podcast, including "The Final Deduction," "The Doorbell Rang," and "The Father Hunt." But for those of you who have really developed a taste for Nero Wolfe, and the regular characters who surround him, may I recommend another book, now sadly out-of-print, though still available through a variety of second-hand mystery dealers. "Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street: The Life and Times of America's Largest Private Detective
," by William S. Baring-Gould is a delightful book, providing a full "biography" of Wolfe and his cases through the late 1960s - it is missing the last few Wolfe books/cases because it was published in 1969. It also contains some informed speculation on Wolfe's parentage (not to mention his relationship to his daughter), full details, including a floor plan, of Wolfe's house on West 35th Street in New York City, and a wealth of information about Fritz Brenner, Theodore Horstmann, Inspector Cramer, Saul Panzer, and the rest of the regular and irregular characters in Wolfe's household. Yes, Arnold Zeck is also there. Baring-Gould manages to do all this without using a single spoiler - the purpose is to intrigue you, not to give away plots and solutions.
Baring-Gould himself was a fascinating person. He was also the author of "The Annotated Sherlock Holmes," which looks in exhaustive, two-volume depth at the world's first consulting detective. And, for those who would go beyond mystery, there is also "The Annotated Mother Goose," an expanded and expansive treatise on nursery rhymes - and their sometimes bawdy cousins. All are out of print, alas, but there seem to be a fair number of good copies on the marketplace (including via these links to Amazon and its second-hand booksellers). If you're a fan of Wolfe - or Holmes, or Mother Goose - you might well enjoy these.
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