Credited largely with being the creator of Wolfe and Archie, Rex Stout was also a pioneer in legal fiction.

In his book Common Law, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes-who, shortly after reading Fer de Lance stated in a margin note: "This fellow is the best of them all"-held that the "Life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience." Experience and reason were present in just about any task Rex undertook, his writing no exception.

At age nineteen he managed the accounts aboard Theodore Roosevelt's presidential yacht Mayflower, he worked as a cigar salesman, dock worker, hotel manager, ran a multi-million dollar banking business, and many other jobs. But in early adulthood Rex thought he might like to be a lawyer and we see the influence the legal field had on him in many of the Wolfe stories. Additionally, more than a decade before Erle Stanley Gardner's, Perry Mason appeared on the scene, Rex began writing legal mysteries such as Justice Ends at Home, (All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1915) and, "Warner & Wife" (All-Story Cavalier Weekly, February 27, 1915.) It was around this same period that Arthur Train began publishing the Mr. Tutt stories, which Stout held in high regard.

Rex died on October 27, 1975. More than a quarter of a century after his death mystery fans all over the world still take delight in his craft - one which combined toil and intellect. I think the following answers Rex gives to my questions provides some insight into the development of his legal mind as he discusses the great jurist Samuel Johnson and Aristotle's concept of the "rational man."
[First appeared in Crimestalker Casebook V.3, N.1, 2001]

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