10/18/1933 Nero Wolfe begins to appear

October 18, 1933.  This is a sacred day for many mystery fans.  Rex Stout brought his wife and newborn first daughter home from the hospital and began work on a book he hoped would pay the family bills better than the psychological fiction he had been producing for years.

The result was Fer-de-lance,  the first book to feature Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, two of the greatest characters in mystery fiction.  Over the next forty-one years Stout wrote almost eighty novels and novellas about the fat man and the leg man.