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Nero Wolfe: Difference between revisions
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* [[FBI Agent]]: An unusually harsh treatment of the FBI for the time in ''The Doorbell Rang''.
* [[First-Person Smartass]]: Archie, who views witty repartee as an art form.
* [[Friend
* [[Genteel Interbellum Setting]]:The first six novels (from, roughly, ''Fer-de-Lance'' to ''Some Buried Caesar'') are set in this period.
* [[The Gimmick]]:
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** Archie will occasionally use the phrase "I got erect" to describe getting up from a supine position. It is perhaps fortunate that he never made any exclamations after getting up...
* [[He-Man Woman Hater]]: Nero Wolfe is openly one of these, but strangely enough his misogyny doesn't extend to sexism: Wolfe dislikes women but doesn't actually disrespect them. Archie, on the other hand, ''loves'' women but doesn't always respect them, and frequently pays for it. In one instance he calls a well-dressed feminist a "phony" and her ideas "stupid" -- because women dress well only to attract men and feminists hate men, so a real feminist wouldn't dress well. This, ah, ''fascinating'' theory gets his ass handed to him on a platter when she solves the mystery at the same time Wolfe does.
*** In-universe, Wolfe relates the time he had a rather nasty experience with a [[Femme Fatale]] who held a knife to his throat. He actually seems rather tolerant of those females who are at least blunt and to the point and who forsake the "weaker aspect" stereotype. It's worth pointing out that Rex Stout was convinced that there was nothing a woman could do that a man couldn't do better - until he read [[Jane Austen]]. The above was probably written to poke fun at ''himself'' for his earlier opinions. See [[Writer
** Wolfe's misogyny itself was a complicated example of [[Writer
* [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]: More like HLP polyamory; it's hard to imagine the four residents of Wolfe's house functioning well without each other. In fact, whenever they are separated -- most notably in 'The Second Confession' -- they kind of fall apart.
* [[Hidden Depths]]: Wolfe, as a general rule, is fat, sedentary, and lazy. However, some poor unfortunate criminals make the tragic mistake of {{spoiler|killing those close to him}} or {{spoiler|outright threatening to kill him.}} At that point, Wolfe decides [[Let's Get Dangerous]] and revives the past [[Badass|badassery]] that heretofore had only been hinted at. In the former, he {{spoiler|leaves the U.S. to infiltrate communist Montenegro, hikes through mountains, wins a freaking ''knife fight'', and tricks the murderer into returning to the USA}}. In the latter, he {{spoiler|drops off the face of the Earth, loses considerable weight, assumes a disguise so good even Archie can't recognize him, infiltrates his [[Arch Enemy]]'s gang, and then manipulates said [[Arch Enemy]] into receiving a self-inflicted [[Karmic Death]].}}
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* [[Multiple Choice Past]] A mild case. In the novel ''the Second Confession'' Wolfe gives prospective clients an exposition of his life, saying that he was born in the U.S. In every other story where he mentions his youth, he says he was born in Montenegro. (However, see [[Executive Meddling]] above for the real reason for this.)
* [[Narrative Profanity Filter]]: Archie routinely uses the second version (usually beginning with "He pronounced a word that...'). The stated reason is that he, in character as the 'author' of the books -- and hence probably acting as a mouthpiece for Stout's own reasoning -- knows that women and children are among his readership.
* [[Only in It For
* [[Outlived Its Creator]]: Following Stout's death in 1975, his estate gave Robert Goldsborough authorization to continue the series. Between 1986 and 1994 he wrote 7 more Nero Wolfe novels. Reception was mixed.
* [[Pet the Dog]]: All the time, but in one case, used literally. In the novella "Die Like a Dog," Archie brings a big black Labrador retriever home and announces he plans to keep it, as a ploy to annoy Wolfe into working. However, it backfires on him when Wolfe takes a liking to the dog - it turns out he used to own a similar dog in his youth. The ending implies that they wound up keeping him, renaming him from Bootsie to Jet. (Though it never actually appears again in-canon.)
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* [[Unlimited Wardrobe]]: Archie in the A&E series. Not only does he have more fabulously tailored suits and hats than many women have dresses, but he's also able to obtain any disguise he might need at a moment's notice.
* [[Verbal Tic]]: Wolfe's dismissive "Pfui". Archie sometimes retorts with "Phooey."
* [[Writer
** Stout loathed J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and for good reason: he was investigated during the [[Red Scare]] and came very close to being blacklisted, as his strident anti-Communism wasn't enough to defer Hoover's suspicion that any prominent liberal must be a fellow traveller. Stout eventually published an enormous [[Take That]] against Hoover in ''The Doorbell Rang''.
** He was as strongly anti-Communist as he was anti-Hoover. ''The Second Confession'' and the short story "Home to Roost" show Communists as not just dangerous and violent but also stupid and willfully ignorant.
** The entire oeuvre is full of [[Writer
** Wolfe is often shown reading real-world books that Stout himself had read, including "The FBI Nobody Knows" in ''The Doorbell Rang'' and "Mathematics for the Million" in ''The Zero Clue''. [[Word of God]] is that he likewise shares his creator's reverence for Jane Austen.
* [[X Meets Y]]: A [[Hardboiled Detective]] works for a [[Great Detective]]; [[They Fight Crime]].
* [[You Keep Using That Word]]: A literal [[In
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