Cast of Characters
- Nero Wolfe — The private investigator
- Archie Goodwin — Wolfe's assistant, and the narrator of all Wolfe stories
- Carlo Maffei — Italian-American metalworker whose disappearance forces Wolfe to begin working
- Maria Maffei — Sister of Carlo Maffei and friend of Fred Durkin's wife
- Peter Oliver Barstow — President of Holland University (fictional), whose bizarre death on a golf course is the key to the mystery
- Lawrence Barstow — Peter Barstow's son, who was with him when he died
- Ellen Barstow — Widow of Peter Barstow
- Sarah Barstow — Peter Barstow's daughter who graduated from Smith College
- E.J. Kimball — Grain broker who was one of the foursome when Barstow died
- Manuel Kimball — E.J. Kimball's son who was also one of the foursome, and also an aviator
- Dr. Nathaniel Bradford — Family physician of the Barstows and friend of Peter since childhood
- Anna Fiore — Cleaning girl at Carlo Maffei's boarding house
- Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, Orrie Cather and Bill Gore — Freelance detectives employed by Wolfe
Read more about this topic: Fer-de-Lance (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words cast of, cast and/or characters:
“He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleas’d he could whistle them back.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
“Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“The major men
That is different. They are characters beyond
Reality, composed thereof. They are
The fictive man created out of men.
They are men but artificial men.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)