Read this exclusive guest post from Max Allan Collins, author of Better Dead, comparing his own Nate Heller series to finishing Mickey Spillane's posthumous Mike Hammer manuscripts, and then make sure you're signed in and comment for a chance to win a copy of his newest Nate Heller thriller! I have been… Read more
Rex Stout’s beer-drinking, reclusive, genius detective, Nero Wolfe, was introduced to the world in 1934 to immediate and overwhelming acclaim. During the next 41 years, Mr. Stout wrote 33 Nero Wolfe books and 39 novellas. The stories, which might properly be classified as soft-boiled detective fiction, are narrated by Mr…. Read more
In the late 1960s, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, the most popular science fiction writers in Russia, decided to write a mystery novel. The Dead Mountaineer's Inn was published in 1970, and its creation may have been motivated in part by the weariness they felt struggling with the Soviet authorities. Once writers… Read more
To Lily and Sally and all Rex Stout’s Gals who try to do the right thing. This is the 75th anniversary of the publication of Rex Stout’s Some Buried Caesar, the first time we meet Lily Rowan, one of the great hottie-totties in crime fiction literature. Lily is Archie’s main… Read more
Mystery author Rex Stout was, by all reports, a flirt. He loved beautiful women, and to him, most women were beautiful. According to his daughter, shortly before he died at age 87, Mr. Stout engaged in some charming repartee with his hospital nurse—he flirted with her and she flirted back…. Read more
Crime fiction is cheerfully described as an addiction by many of its fans, including such diverse personalities as Sigmund Freud and Woodrow Wilson. Just as neurochemical addicts have an endless menu of obsessions to gorge on (alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, gambling, chocolate, sex…), crimefic addicts have an ever-growing and ever-mutating variety… Read more
Philip Marlowe might not have had a secretary, but Sam Spade knew better. Who else do you trust to bring you the dingus but your loyal secretary? Who else can you depend on to fend off inconvenient lovers or nasty cops, and deal with dead ship captains? Dashiell Hammett’s Effine… Read more
The Wolfe Pack has announced its shortlist for the annual Nero Wolfe Award, bestowed during its Black Orchid festivities in December. The award was designed to recognize new tales of criminal detection in the spirit of Rex Stout’s eminent and world-famous Nero Wolfe (and his associate Archie Goodwin, of course)…. Read more
Auctorial influence is a tricky thing, even for those writers whose style or choice of subject is consciously patterned (admittedly or otherwise) after another writer’s work. When confronted with the question of influence, I usually mention Nelson DeMille, because it was his John Corey novels, beginning with Plum Island, that… Read more
The late Dr. Isaac Asimov was nothing if not prolific. By most estimates he turned out more than 500 books on a wide variety of topics in a working lifetime that apparently spanned about a half century. Asimov became a household name with his popular works of science fiction, including… Read more
