Rex Stout (1886-1975) was the sixth of nine children born of Quaker parents. He was educated in a country school and, later, briefly attended the University of Kansas before enlisting in the Navy where he served for two years. After he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began writing freelance articles, but made his fortune devising and implementing a school banking system that was adopted in four hundred cities and towns throughout the country. In 1927 he retired from the world of finance and, with the proceeds, left for Paris to write serious fiction. Before turning to detective fiction, he wrote three novels that received favorable reviews, but it was writing detective fiction, and as creator of the Nero Wolfe character, that he become famous as a writer. The first Nero Wolfe novel, "Fer-de-Lance", appeared In 1934. It was followed by many others, which established Nero Wolfe on a par with Erle Stanley Gardners famous Perry Mason.