Purley Stebbins
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Sergeant Purley Stebbins of the New York Police Department is Inspector Cramer's assistant in the Nero Wolfe series of mysteries by Rex Stout. Stebbins is in many ways the archetypal good cop: tough, brave and dedicated, but also gruff, unpolished, and by no means brilliant.
Stebbins has a peculiar love-hate relationship with Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's right-hand man and the first-person narrator of the Wolfe stories. Stebbins has an intense innate dislike of private detectives -- feeling that they encroach on police responsibilities and duties -- and perhaps especially of Archie, owing among other things to the money Archie makes compared to Stebbins's meager official salary. On the other hand, Stebbins recognizes in Archie a kindred soul, a man whose expertise is detective work and who lives to exercise his excellence. Stebbins has at times remarked, in a soft grumble, to the effect that Archie might have made a good cop (high praise from Stebbins) if someone had gotten to him early enough. [1]
At times, Purley and Archie almost come to blows, while at other times -- usually in the press of a case -- they are virtually comrades in arms.[2]
Stebbins is a recurring character in the series, much like the three 'Teers (Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather), freelance private operatives whom Wolfe almost invariably will call on in the recorded cases. As with many popular series, in detective fiction and elsewhere, it is the reliable recurrence of a known cast of familiar regulars that adds depth and continuity, and makes its readers feel they are visiting with old friends.
Stebbins (like Cramer, and many New York policemen) is presumably of Irish descent, but in one of the television versions, he was portrayed by a black actor, an interesting turn.
In the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001-2002), the role of Purley Stebbins is played by R.D. Reid.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Wolfe on the other hand is not a kindred spirit at all, and not just because of cases the Wolfe in he and the NYPD collide. No, Wolfe is a (naturalized) foreign national who was once as spy for a foreign government. Wolfe has paid his dues, just as Stebbins has, but on the streets of Cetinje, Zagreb, Podgorica, Vienna, and Belgrade
- ^ Archie is indeed briefly deputized by the NYPD on an urgent manhunt -- taking orders from Cramer instead of Wolfe for a day or two, making Stebbins and Goodwin unconditional allies for that brief period.
