He lives in a luxurious brownstone on West 35th Street in New York City, and he is loath to leave his home for business or anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or eating the gourmet meals prepared by his chef, Fritz Brenner.

Instead of spreading the principles of order and justice throughout his society, Wolfe imposes them dogmatically and absolutely within the walls of his house—the brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street—and he invites those who are troubled by an incomprehensible and threatening environment to enter the controlled economy of the house and to discover there the source of disorder in their own lives.

Stout revealed the reason for the discrepancy in a 1940 letter cited by his authorized biographer, John McAleer: "In the original draft of Over My Dead Body Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from The American Magazine, supported by Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles.

That means that he was likely to have been involved in the harrowing 1915 withdrawal of the defeated Serbian army, when thousands of soldiers died from disease, starvation, and sheer exhaustion[d] – which might help to explain the comfort-loving habits that are such a conspicuous part of Wolfe's character.

Other than Adee, Rex Stout's maternal grandmother, Emily Todhunter, who was obese requiring a special chair and was addicted to atlases, dictionaries & flowers and also an omnivorous reader, served as a model.

[1] In 1956, J. D. Clark theorized in an article in The Baker Street Journal that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler (a character from "A Scandal in Bohemia") had an affair in Montenegro in 1892, and that Nero Wolfe was the result.

I would be an idiot to leave this chair, made to fit me —Wolfe has expensive tastes, living in a comfortable and luxurious New York City brownstone on the south side of West 35th Street.

[f] Near the desk is a large chair upholstered in red leather, which is usually reserved for Inspector Cramer, a current or prospective client, or the person whom Wolfe and Archie want to question.

This Manhattan brownstone lacked some peculiarities of Wolfe's home, unlike the model specially constructed on the Toronto set where most of the series was filmed[i]—for example, the correct number of steps leading up to the stoop.

Archie enjoys his food but lacks Wolfe's discerning palate, lamenting in The Final Deduction (chapter 9) that "Every spring I get so fed up with shad roe that I wish to heaven fish would figure out some other way.

In The Doorbell Rang, he offers to cook Yorkshire Buck and, in "Immune to Murder", the State Department asks him to prepare trout Montbarry for a visiting dignitary.

During the short story "Murder Is Corny", he lectures Inspector Cramer on the right and wrong ways to cook corn on the cob, insisting that it must be roasted rather than boiled in order to achieve the best flavor.

He brought them, in their diverse forms and colors, to the limits of their perfection, and then gave them away; he had never sold one.Known for rigidly maintaining his personal schedule, Nero Wolfe is most inflexible when it comes to his routine in the rooftop plant rooms.

Nevertheless, Wolfe is usually able to justify the travel associated with these cases as still being within the limits of his self-imposed "no leaving the house on business" rule, often by noting that there was a personal non-business related reason to make the journey.

The short story "Eeny Meeny Murder Mo" opens with an example of this habit, in which Wolfe removes his necktie and leaves it on his desk after dropping a bit of sauce on it during lunch.

Wolfe's attitude toward television notwithstanding, the TV set in Fritz's basement quarters proved handy in The Doorbell Rang, when the volume was turned up to foil potential eavesdroppers.

"[35] These women include Clara Fox (The Rubber Band), Lily Rowan (introduced in Some Buried Caesar), Phoebe Gunther (The Silent Speaker) and Julie Jaquette (Death of a Doxy).

One of his most severe reactions occurs in the first chapter of Gambit, when he burns Webster's Third New International Dictionary in the front room fireplace because it states that the words "imply" and "infer" can be used interchangeably.

... Archie has talents without which Wolfe would be lost: his remarkable memory, trained physical power, brash American humor, attractiveness to women, and ability to execute the most difficult errand virtually without instructions.

He reacts bitterly when his sleep is interrupted or otherwise shortened by events, such as late-night interrogations at Homicide headquarters or a precinct, or a 1:45 a.m. phone call from a client who has lost her keys,[43] or driving a suspect to her home in Carmel and returning to Manhattan at 2:30 a.m.[44] Archie's initial rough edges become smoother across the decades, much as American norms evolved over the years.

Some commentators see this as a conscious device by Stout to fuse the hard school of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade with the urbanity of Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot.

Hosted by Alistair Cooke and directed by Paul Bogart, "The Fine Art of Murder" was a 40-minute segment described by Time magazine as "a homicide as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe [and] Rex Stout would variously present it".

[81] The author is credited as appearing along with Gene Reynolds (Archie Goodwin), Robert Eckles (Nero Wolfe), James Daly (narrator), Dennis Hoey (Arthur Conan Doyle), Felix Munro (Edgar Allan Poe), Herbert Voland (M. Dupin) and Jack Sydow.

Written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, the made-for-TV movie was produced as a pilot for a possible upcoming series[109]—but the film had not yet aired at the time of Thayer David's death in July 1978.

Warner Bros. wanted to adapt the Zeck trilogy for a feature film and approached Henry Jaffe, who traveled to New York to negotiate with the agent for Rex Stout's estate but lost out to Paramount Television.

In a practice reminiscent of the mystery movie series of the 1930s and 1940s, the show rarely used guest stars in the roles of victims, killers and suspects, but instead used the same ensemble of supporting actors each week.

The successful series of black-and-white telemovies star Tino Buazzelli (Nero Wolfe), Paolo Ferrari (Archie Goodwin), Pupo De Luca (Fritz Brenner), Renzo Palmer (Inspector Cramer), Roberto Pistone (Saul Panzer), Mario Righetti (Orrie Cather) and Gianfranco Varetto (Fred Durkin).

Produced by Casanova Multimedia and Rai Fiction, the eight-episode series, which ran for a single season, began with "La traccia del serpente", an adaptation of Fer-de-Lance set in 1959 in Rome, where Wolfe and Archie reside after leaving the United States.

[120][121][122] Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota, commissioned a world-premiere stage adaption of The Red Box, presented June 6 – July 13, 2014 (previews beginning May 30).

"[127] Park Square Theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota, commissioned a world-premiere stage adaptation of the Wolfe novel Might as Well Be Dead to be presented June 16 – July 30, 2017.