Rex Stout and J. Edgar Hoover

[John Simkin]

J.Edgar Hoover was collecting information on Rex Stout from the 1930s. He was very much involved in left-wing organisations and in 1940, as an agent for British Security Coordination helped to form the Fight for Freedom organization. Hoover was also suspicious of his leadership of the Authors League of America that was a target of Joseph McCarthy.

It has been pointed out that about a third of Stout's FBI file is devoted to his 1965 novel, The Doorbell Rang. The novel concerns the publication of The FBI Nobody Knows (1964) by Fred J. Cook. In the novel, the wealthy Mrs. Rachel Bruner buys 10,000 copies of Cook's book and sends them to persons of influence, including cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and heads of corporations. Bruner believes that as a result of her actions she is being persecuted by the FBI and employs Stout's fictional detective Nero Wolfe, to investigate the organization.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAstout.htm