Bachelors at the Brownstone: Archie Goodwin & the Eccentric Culinary Florist, Detectives

If you’re a fan of Golden Age detective fiction, have ever perused the Rex Stout catalog, have heard of an eccentric fat detective who kept orchids, or watched American television in 1981, you might have an inkling of who I’m talking about when I say, “Nero Wolfe.”

From Stout’s first Nero Wolfe novel (Fer De Lance, published in 1934¹) to his last (A Family Affair, published in 1975), we are treated to 46 books filled with the combined (and successful) efforts of an obese genius and his legman to detect crime. For a hefty fee.

Nero Wolfe is a hefty man (Archie often categorizes his weight as one-seventh of a ton) who charges hefty fees to people whose troubles he’s asked to heft off of their shoulders. He grows orchids (and is unavailable every day between 9-11am and 4-6pm because he’s too busy tending to them to bother with any living being that is not be-petaled), dabbles in the culinary arts himself regardless of the fact that he employs a full-time chef named Fritz, drinks beer (once, 11 bottles in a sitting), dislikes women (or is afraid of them — you choose), is generally pertinacious, and is definitely agoraphobic.

He’s a genius, but in order to demonstrate his genius, he needs facts.

Enter Archie Goodwin.

Rex Stout never expounds on why, precisely, Archie ever went to work for Nero Wolfe². He does make clear, however — via Archie, as the narrator of Wolfe’s cases — that the two men hold one another in high enough esteem to work together over the course of 40+ years. (Neither of them ages much in that time, however, which makes reading the later novels a little strange. But this is the way Time^TM works in series fiction.) He also makes clear — again, via Archie as narrator — that Wolfe is a pompous, petulant man-child. (This is probably why he is a lifelong bachelor.)

Archie, though, is just an occasionally childish man. (Again: bachelor.)

A legman.

(And I don’t mean he admires women’s legs.) (Though he does.)

More than a Watson — even if less than a Wolfe (in deductive intellect but not in intelligence) — Archie goes out and gets. He gets clues. He gets put in jail. Sometimes he gets in fights. Often he gets affectionate with a female or two. He gets the ball rolling (Wolfe hates to work, so part of Archie’s job is to dig up cases for him to solve), he gets the pot stirred (particularly with the New York police department’s homicide detectives and the DA), he gets into tight spots, and he gets late-dawning ideas about whodunnit (the ‘who’ of which he never reveals to the reader directly).

And because of Archie, Wolfe gets. He gets the job done.

There is also a supporting cast of characters that recur throughout the series: four for-hire private detectives that Wolfe hires to do the legwork that Archie can’t accomplish alone, two of which do not survive the series (and the death of the second is an oddly satisfying surprise); one chef-in-residence (also a bachelor); one plant man (okay, he’s a horticulturalist — also a bachelor); a homicide detective named Cramer; two police lieutenants; and Archie’s main squeeze, Lily Rowan (bachelorette).

In all, a singularly (heh — see what I did there? 😉 ) delightful cast.

All of whom have made me — 89 years after the first Nero Wolfe book was published — a singularly delighted reader.

Are you a fan of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries?

What kinds of books or characters to you gravitate to?

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Letters: A B C D E F G

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For a more definitive overview of Nero Wolfe and company, this is a fantastic read.

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¹First edition for sale here. No, I’m not getting any kickbacks. Just showing you. Because, hello. That’d make a nice retirement fund.

²Robert Goldsborough, who continued the Nero Wolfe series after Rex Stout’s death, published Archie Meets Nero Wolfe (a prequel) in 2012. It’s on my TBR list.