An Officer and a Lady: And Other Stories

Rex Stout

May 2012 · Open Road Media

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DIVA collection of early stories from the man who created Nero Wolfe/divDIV/divDIVBill Farden is an experienced burglar. He gains entry to the house without effort, and his ears tell him the inhabitants are asleep. He pockets the silver and moves to the kitchen, to fill his stomach with strawberry shortcake. When the cook tiptoes downstairs, Bill disables her with chloroform. Upstairs, he ties the man of the house to his bedframe. In the next room he finds a little girl, and is touched by her helplessness until she pulls a gun on him. The nine-year-old is Major Wentworth, of the Girls’ Military Auxiliary, and the revolver is as long as her arm./divDIV /divDIVIn these early stories, a young Rex Stout showed the talent for comic action that would make the Nero Wolfe novels enduring classics. In Stout’s world, there is no thug more dangerous than a determined little girl./div

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DIVRex Stout (1886–1975) was one of the most beloved mystery novelists of all time, best known for creating the corpulent genius Nero Wolfe. Born in Indiana, Stout was a child arithmetic prodigy who spent his leisure time reading every book in his father’s 1,200-volume library. After two years in the navy—which he passed playing whist on Theodore Roosevelt’s yacht—Stout began organizing children’s field trips to banks, where he was paid a commission for every student who opened a savings account. He made a fortune, and in the late 1920s retired to write serious fiction./divDIV /divDIVAfter the Depression wiped out his savings, Stout began writing detective stories. Fer-de-Lance (1934) introduced Nero Wolfe, master of deduction, and his indefatigable assistant, Archie Goodwin. Over the next four decades, Stout published dozens of stories and novels starring the quirky pair, earning him a place in the mystery novelist’s pantheon alongside Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner. He died in Connecticut in 1975./div