A-Z Characters & Transformation: Nero Wolfe, The Untransforming Detective

My latest A-Z List is characters who transform. I also address characters who don't transform: what constitutes transformation; what doesn't. 

One of the most amusing of non-transformation is book detectives who remain the same age over several decades. It's rather like TV detectives who never retire (though Murdoch, who begins his career in the series at approximately 35 is still believably working 18 years later, and the series does move forward in time, so every season is the next year). 

Miss Marple, Poirot, Nero Wolfe--they all remind me of my left-brain father getting frustrated when my mother began to lose her memory and talk about her parents as still being alive. He would growl, "They would be 130 years old!" 

Rex Stout reputedly stated, about Nero Wolfe, "I didn't age the characters because I didn't want to." I LOVE that. Some authors get apologetic. Others, like Sayers, intend to age their characters from the beginning (Wimsey marries when he is 45). But Rex Stout apparently perceived his mystery stories the way I perceive sci-fi: put THIS character into a situation; see how he handles it, whether the situation is pre-World War II or a 1960s bohemian neighborhood--

Which may explain why Nero Wolfe has proved so "translatable"!