Nero Wolfe supporting characters
The Nero Wolfe stories are populated by a cast of supporting characters who help sustain the sense that each story takes place in familiar surroundings. The main characters are Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.
Household
Fritz Brenner
Fritz Brenner is an exceptionally talented Swiss cook who prepares and serves all of Wolfe's meals except those that Wolfe occasionally takes at Rusterman's Restaurant. Though both his first and last names are of German origin, Fritz himself was born in a French part of Switzerland, speaks French and English, and subscribes to a French-language newspaper. Fritz also acts as the household's majordomo and butler. Initially, in Fer-de-Lance, Fritz is said to live on the third floor of Wolfe's house, opposite the plant rooms. Later, the plant rooms are said to take up the entire third floor, and Fritz's living quarters are in the basement of Wolfe's brownstone; here he keeps 294 cookbooks on 11 shelves, the head of a wild boar he shot in the Vosges, and busts of Escoffier and Brillat-Savarin as well as a cooking vessel thought to have been used by Julius Caesar's chef. A reference to a war wound in 1935's The League of Frightened Men implies that Fritz fought in World War I.Archie and Fritz have an easygoing working relationship, and Archie often spends time in the kitchen, as he puts it, "chinning" with Fritz. Fritz's relationship with Wolfe is one of mutual respect, admiration and devotion, excepting the times when they quarrel over a recipe. The notoriously finicky Wolfe has even gone so far as to refuse to eat one of Fritz's dishes when he used tarragon and saffron instead of sage to season starlings.
In Champagne for One it is noted that Fritz is very interested in Wolfe getting new clients, since the fees they pay Wolfe are the source from which Fritz's own salary is derived. Fritz can become anxious when a long time passes without a new paying client appearing. However, when the new client does arrive, Fritz is singularly uninterested in the details of the mystery, being supremely confident that Wolfe will solve it and duly collect his fee. When Archie is unavailable Fritz fields phone calls and follows Wolfe's instructions regarding callers at the front door, but his involvement in business is limited to taking messages. When Wolfe does not want his own and Archie's movements to be known, he arranges for Fritz to be able to claim truthfully that he does not know where they are or when they will return.
In the Columbia Pictures feature film Meet Nero Wolfe, the character of Fritz was transformed into a Scandinavian cook named Olaf, played by John Qualen.
In the ABC-TV movie Nero Wolfe, Fritz is portrayed by David Hurst. In the NBC TV series Nero Wolfe, Fritz Brenner is played by George Voskovec. In the A&E TV original series A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Fritz is played by Colin Fox.
Theodore Horstmann
Theodore Horstmann is a world-class orchid expert who assists Wolfe in the plant rooms. His living arrangements are one of the more glaring inconsistencies in the series. Horstmann's living quarters in 1934's Fer-de-Lance are adjacent to the plant rooms on the top floor of the brownstone. Later, the plant rooms are said to take up the entire top floor, and by the time of 1946's The Silent Speaker, Archie's commentary flatly states that Theodore has separate living arrangements outside the house, noting that Wolfe is not letting Horstmann in on a complex deception he has orchestrated because Horstmann might accidentally let slip the truth when away from Wolfe's home. But then, in the 1949 short story "Door To Death", Horstmann is most unambiguously said to be a live-in resident of the brownstone. Later, the arrangement changes again, and in Gambit and The Doorbell Rang, it is made very clear that Horstmann is not a live-in resident of the brownstone.In the first Wolfe book, Fer-de-Lance, Archie remarks that he sometimes hears "old Horstmann" yelling at Wolfe, who "seemed to have the same effect on Horstmann that an umpire had on John J. McGraw," though he is sure that Theodore does not dislike Wolfe.
Though not an entirely offstage character, Horstmann very seldom appears in person in the narratives, and rarely has an impact on the story. In "Door to Death", he provides a plot device, as his extended absence forces Wolfe to find another orchid tender. In "Black Orchids", though, Theodore's actions are central to the denouement, and in chapter five of The Second Confession, Wolfe becomes concerned for Theodore's safety after the plant rooms are badly damaged by gunfire.
In spite of the great emphasis on food and eating throughout the series, little mention is made of where, when, or what Horstmann eats, except that in Plot It Yourself he is said to eat in the kitchen with Fritz, although this is never seen or otherwise mentioned. He is also never depicted as eating at the table with Wolfe, Archie, or Wolfe's guests. Theodore has a sister in New Jersey and sometimes spends his Sundays there. In "Door to Death," he travels to Illinois by train, to visit his mother, who has taken ill.
Theodore is portrayed by Robert Coote in the NBC TV series Nero Wolfe. In the A&E TV original series A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Theodore is an unseen character. He is regularly mentioned as being present in the brownstone, and Wolfe is seen speaking to him on the house phone on occasion, but the character himself is never seen or heard on screen. In one episode, Inspector Cramer demands to speak to him.
The 'teers
Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather are collectively known as the 'teers, the three freelance detectives who make up the extended professional family. Though Wolfe hired a range of freelance operators, after the first few novels the 'teers were always Wolfe's first choices when extra manpower was needed. If only one extra detective was needed, Saul Panzer was the automatic first choice."They were the three 'teers because once at a conference Orrie had said they were the three musketeers and we had tried to change it to fit," Archie writes in The Father Hunt. "We tried snoopeteers, privateers, dicketeers, wolfeteers, hawketeers, and others, and ended up by deciding that none of them was good enough and settling for the three 'teers."
Although he possesses a formidable memory, Archie begins chapter 7 of A Family Affair reporting a meeting of Saul, Fred, and Orrie in Wolfe's office by writing, "I forget who once called them the Three Musketeers." In the short story "Counterfeit for Murder," he expresses his respective opinions of the three by commenting on their hourly rates and relative worth: " rate is ten dollars an hour and he is worth twenty. Fred Durkin's rate is seven dollars and he is worth seven-fifty. Orrie Cather's rate is also seven dollars and he is worth six-fifty."
Saul Panzer
Saul Panzer is a top-notch private detective who is frequently hired by Wolfe either to assist Archie or to carry out assignments that Wolfe prefers that Archie not know about or for which Archie cannot be spared. Panzer is not an impressive-looking character; he dresses sloppily, has a big nose, and almost always needs a shave. In "Counterfeit for Murder", he is "undersized and wiry" and looks like he "could be a hackie." Archie and Wolfe respect Saul immensely. He charges much higher fees than other New York detectives, but Archie insists that he is worth it. "With an office and a staff, he could have cleaned up," Archie writes in chapter 6 of Champagne for One, "but that wouldn't have left him enough time for playing the piano or playing pinochle or keeping up with his reading, so he preferred to free-lance at seventy bucks a day" – equivalent to more than $600 today.Saul has an eidetic memory, which Archie frequently comments is better than his own, and an uncanny ability to connect people's names and identities permanently with their faces in his mind, even with only a glance. When a character in the 1947 novel Too Many Women insists that Saul must have mistakenly identified someone else as her, Archie comments to Wolfe, "… with Saul, you know how good that is. Even if she has a twin, it was her." Wolfe emphatically agrees.
Saul's marital status is one of the inconsistencies in the corpus. "He is himself a bachelor," Wolfe tells Hilda Lindquist in The Rubber Band. A change is indicated in the 1948 novella "Bullet for One", when Wolfe asks Saul about his family. In "Door to Death", Archie leaves a phone message with Saul's wife in Brooklyn. Saul has a wife and children in Brooklyn in The Second Confession ; he has a wife and children in In the Best Families.
No mention is made of Saul's wife or children after 1950, though, and readers are left to decide whether the marriage ended, or Saul's family was simply retconned out of existence. In "The Next Witness", first published in May 1955, Saul has an apartment in Manhattan to himself. He lives alone on the fifth floor of a remodeled house on 38th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues. In chapter 4, Archie describes Saul's living room, which Wolfe deems "a good room" when he sees it for the first time:
It was a big room, lighted with two floor lamps and two table lamps. One wall had windows, another was solid with books, and the other two had pictures and shelves that were cluttered with everything from chunks of minerals to walrus tusks. In the far corner was a grand piano.
The role of Saul Panzer is played by George Wyner in the NBC TV series Nero Wolfe ; by Saul Rubinek in the A&E original film The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery ; and by Conrad Dunn in the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery.
Fred Durkin
Fred Durkin is a blue-collar investigator who is often hired for mundane tasks such as surveillance. In "Counterfeit for Murder", he is described as "broad and burly and bald" and might be mistaken for "a piano mover."In his earliest appearances, Archie is very dismissive of Durkin, calling him "dumb". However, over the course of the series, Archie gradually comes to appreciate Fred more; though not prone to flashes of insight, Fred Durkin is reliably hard-working and stubborn about getting details right. In the novella "Kill Now—Pay Later," Archie opines that Fred "wasn't in Saul's class but was way above average."
Married with several children, Fred is honest and likable, but unsophisticated. He is often nervous around Wolfe, whom he once offended by stirring vinegar into a roux for squab at Wolfe's table. To curry favor with Wolfe, he sometimes accepts Wolfe's offer of beer, though Archie has heard Fred call beer "slop".
In later works, Archie Goodwin notes that Fred is "worth at least half as much as Saul – which was his price," and also approvingly notes that, unlike some other detectives, Fred knows his limitations and works extremely well within them. Likewise, in The Golden Spiders, Wolfe is willing to disburse more than twice as much expense money to Fred than to Orrie and Saul, remarking that Fred never goes over budget when given cash.
In the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery and the series pilot, The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery, the role of Fred Durkin is played by Fulvio Cecere.