Rex Stout Quotes @ BrainyQuote

Rex Stout Quotes Interesting site.

Champagne For One – January 1996 – Bantam Reissue – 8th Printing

Champagne For One –Bantam Reissue - January 1996 - 8th Printing - Front Cover

Champagne For One –Bantam Reissue - January 1996 - 8th Printing - Rear Cover

A Bantam Book
Copyright 1958 By Rex Stout
Bantam Reissue Edition – January 1996
8th Printing

Contents:

Champagne For One

Rear Cover Intro:

CHAMPAGNE FOR ONE

Faith Usher had a decidedly morbid personality. She talked about taking her life, and kept cyanide in her purse. So when she collapses and dies from a lethal champagne cocktail in the middle of a high society dinner party, everyone calls it suicide – including the police. But Archie was watching it all, and suspects it was murder.  So does Nero Wolfe, especially after he’s warned by four men against taking the case.  For the world’s most formidable detective it is a tantalizing puzzle involving an unlikely combination of philanthropy, deception, blackmail, and an unrepentant killer who just may have committed the perfect crime.

Salvation Army mystery finds

Went to the local Salvation Army yesterday (Monday May 11, 2009) and came home with a pile of mysteries including 9 paperbacks by Rex Stout and one hardback by Goldsborough. Will get them scanned and up for view asap. For now here are a couple of pictures of the lot to drool over… 😉

Nero Wolfe and Red Threads Salvation Army finds

Assorted mysteries Salvation Army finds

Some of these will be put up for sale at Bonanza. When I get them up I’ll post the page links here for anyone interested.

Interesting Quote from Rex Stout at Pink Ink

Pink Ink: Mail Call

Pink Think: “If I’m home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.” – Rex Stout

Prisoner’s Base – 1952 – Book Club Edition

Prisoner's Base - 1952 - Book Club Edition - Dust Jacket Front Cover

Prisoner's Base - 1952 - Book Club Edition - Dust Jacket Rear Cover

Copyright 1952 By Rex Stout
The Viking Press
Jacket Design By Bill English

Rear Cover Intro:

When Nero Wolfe turned down the easiest ten-thousand-dollar fee ever offered him, he didn’t expect to get involved in a deadly game – a game that reminded Archie of a grim version of prisoner’s base.
Nor did Archie imagine that he would ever be working so closely with the New York Police.

Inside Front Cover:

Prisoner’s Base
A Nero Wolfe Novel
By Rex Stout

Readers who have long followed the adventures of Nero Wolfe will surely agree not only that this is one of the neatest murder puzzles ever set down by Rex Stout, but also that it is the most exciting, adventure-filled, and breathless story he ever told.
Nero Wolfe has represented some pretty unusual clients in his time, but in this one, his client – believe it or not – is the fast-talking, hard-hitting, skirt-chasing assistant and companion to Nero, Archie Goodwin himself.
We’ll make three bets with you abut Prisoner’s Base: First – you won’t solve it. Second – you’ll agree that no author ever played more fair with his readers. Third – when you finish it, you will feel as if you have been on a forty-eight-hour, breath-taking, danger-filled chase up and down the avenues of New York, into some of Manhattan’s darkest and more terror-filled alleys.

Inside Back Cover:

From The New Yorker
Profile of Rex Stout:

“Nero Wolfe, the fat detective of Rex Stout’s novels, towers over his rivals in one respect: he is a superman who talks like a superman. It is a very tough literary trick to make a mastermind sound like a mastermind. Most of the storybook detectives are to much like the new ultra-scientific calculating machines, which have gorgeous electronic brains for solving problems but no particular talent for dialogue. Genius is the curse of the mystery story. It tends to destroy individuality and drag everybody down to the same level. It is harder to tell intellectual giants apart than Hollywood blonds. Nero, however, is an exceptional character creation – a genius who rises above mediocrity.”

Homicide Trinity – 1962 – Book Club Edition

Copyright 1962 By Rex Stout
Published in 1962 by The Viking Press, Inc

Contents:
Eeny Meeny Murder Mo – appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystry Magazine
Death Of A Demon – appeared in the SATURDAY EVENING POST
Counterfeit For Murder – appeared in the SATURDAY EVENING POST under the title of The Counterfeiter’s Knife

Rear Cover Intro:

Eeny Meeny Murder Mo
It was preposterously inconvenient. The outer door was locked as usual, yet there she lay – on Nero Wolfe’s carpet, in Nero Wolfe’s office, strangled by Nero Wolfe’s own necktie!

Death of a Demon
“Here’s the gun I’m not going to use to kill my husband.” That’s what she said. But he was killed, and with that gun, or with one just like it… and Archie Goodwin had tampered with the gun himself.

Counterfeit for Murder
Under suspicion for murder and too angry to deny it, harried Hattie Annis offered 42 grand to Nero Wolfe to make the cops eat dirt. If she was innocent, you can ask her whether he earned his fee.

Inside Cover:

Homicide Trinity
A Nero Wolfe Threesome
By Rex Stout

On the reverse of this jacket you will find the bill of fare for this three-course feast of murder, mystification, and masterful deduction. As his large and loyal fan club will attest, Rex Stout’s famous threesomes are fully as delightful as his book-length novels, which is to say that they are peerless examples of mayhem de luxe.

Whether you read these stories purely for entertainment and relaxation, or enjoy the challenge of matching wits with Nero Wolfe and his factotum, Archie Goodwin, here once again is the creme de la creme of crime presented for your pleasure.

Jacket Design By Bill English

Three Aces – 1971 – Book Club Edition

The Viking Press
Copyright 1956, 1960, 1961 by Rex Stout

Contents:

Too Many Clients
Might As Well Be Dead
The Final Deduction

Inside Cover:

Three Aces
Happiness is a Nero Wolfe mystery for so many aficionados of civilized crime stories that the Omnibus has become a valued tradition; there have been five before this, each gathering a few previously published Rex Stouts in one volume. Three Aces is the first to include three complete full-length novels, and will prove a treat as special as a dish from the kitchen of Nero’s unique cook, Fritz.

In Too Many Clients, three different clients clamor for Nero’s help when a big businessman is murdered in his $81,000 love nest. Archie Goodwin must use some of his best talents to sort them out before Nero can even begin the case. Might as Well Be Dead involves, along with much mayhem and imperiled missing persons, a great national scandal. The Final Deduction puts Nero and Archie in the saddle in pursuit of a kidnap for half a million dollars, with murder on the side.

The team is in top form in all three of these, a prize for any fan who missed them before or who wants them on hand in one handsome superStout volume.

Rear Cover:

“Not two characters alone, but a palpable atmosphere exists in that brownstone house on West 35th Street. And what sinewy, pellucid, propelling prose tells those tales – allegories of the human pilgrimage, rather – in which there is little or no blood, but rather the play of the mind. . . . In this sublime duet of Don Quixote and a glamorized Sancho Panza who go tilting together against evil, there is no mystery, nothing but matter for admiration, edification, and (if desired) self-identification. the true mystery is in their inspired creator, Rex Stout.” -Jacques Barzun

Rex Stout – From Wikipedia

Rex Stout – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rex Todhunter Stout (December 1, 1886 – October 27, 1975) was an American writer best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as “that Falstaff of detectives.”

Another link to a Wikipedia article. This one on Rex Stout. Fairly extensive and has some information I haven’t seen before. Quite a few links to other articles, both on and off the Wikipedia site.

I especially like the “Stout and the FBI” section, one snippet taken from Herbert Mitgang’s book “Dangerous Dossiers” is quoted below:

J. Edgar Hoover himself and the FBI’s powerful publicity machine came down hard on Stout in 1965 when his novel, The Doorbell Rang, was published by the Viking Press. About one hundred pages in Stout’s file are devoted to this novel, the FBI’s panicky response to it, and the attempt to retaliate against the author for writing it.

Sounds a lot like the FBI that Stout wrote about in “The Doorbell Rang, doesn’t it? Good read!

Nero Wolfe – From Wikipedia

Nero Wolfe – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nero Wolfe is a fictional detective, created by the American mystery writer Rex Stout, who made his debut in 1934. Wolfe’s assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius in 33 novels and 39 short stories from the 1930s to the 1970s, with most of them set in New York City. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon 2000, the world’s largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century.

Just found this page on Wikipedia about Wolfe. Quite an extensive piece and well worth reading for anyone interested in the Nero Wolfe books or television series.

The Doorbell Rang – October 1971 – Third Printing

A Bantam Book
Copyright 1965 By Rex Stout
New Bantam Printing…October 1971
Third Printing

Contents
The Doorbell Rang

Rear Cover Intro:

No one intimidates Nero Wolfe –
Not even J. Edgar Hoover…
Retained with the unbelievable fee of
$100,000, the portly paragon of detection myst
get the FBI off his client’s back. Along comes
Murder adn the hottest water
the wizard of 35th street has ever been in.
—–
THE DOORBELL RANG
—–
Superb Suspense with masterly Nero Wolfe
and dapper Archie Goodwin