Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance, A Nero Wolfe Mystery, New York, Pocket Books, 1941

The  first ten Nero Wolfe books were published by Farrar & Rinehart, a New York publishing company founded in 1929. Fer-de-Lance, published in 1934, was the first of the ten. It was published in abridged form in  The American Magazine,  in November 1934. By 1941, Howard Haycraft, writing in Murder for Pleasure, considered it to be one of the most influential Mysteries.

Dust jacket of the first edition  (hardback) ,  Farrar & Rinehart, 1934