Rex Todhunter Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels, and 41 novellas and short stories, between 1934 and 1975.
Rex Stout on Our Secret Weapon (December 1942)
The Stout family at High Meadow, "The House That Nero Wolfe Built" (Look, February 13, 1940)
Rex Stout in 1973
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes examines a suspect's boots in an illustration to the 1891 story "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Wilkie Collins (1824–1889)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
