Rex Stout was the creator Nero Wolfe, one of the most popular detectives ever.
Rex Stout was born in Indiana in 1886 to Quaker parents and raised in Kansas and by most accounts was quite the precocious child, reading the Bible cover to cover (twice!) before he was four, and becoming state spelling champion at the age of thirteen. After a brief time at Kansas University, he joined the navy, and served on President Roosevelt's yacht from 1906 to 1908. He worked as a bookkeeper, a salesman, a hotel manager and a store clerk, while trying to crack the burgeoning pulp market, cranking out tales of science fiction, romance and adventure. Ever practical, Stout teamed up with his brother, and established a business whose success would enable him to continue with his writing.
The first of his forty-seven Nero Wolfe books, Fer-de-Lance was published in 1934, to much popular and critical acclaim, and by the start of World War II, Stout was a full-time writer.