call beer "slop". In later works, Archie Goodwin notes that Fred is "worth at least half as much as Saul – which was his price," and also approvingly notes that, unlike some other detectives, Fred knows his limitations and works extremely well within them. Likewise, in The Golden Spiders, Wolfe is willing to disburse more than twice as much expense money to Fred than to Orrie and Saul, remarking that Fred never goes over budget when given cash. In the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001–2002) and the series pilot, The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2000), the role of Fred Durkin is played by Fulvio Cecere. Orrie Cather Orrie Cather is a handsome, personable detective, someone people want to tell thingsbut he can be too full of himself. In The Mother Hunt (chapter 9), after Wolfe leaves it to Saul to teach Orrie better manners, Archie warns Wolfe, "You know, if you pile it on enough to give Orrie an inferiority complex, it will be a lulu, and a damn good op will be ruined." But Archie, too, has an occasional run-in with Orrie, who thinks he would look just fine sitting at Archie's desk. Orrie's talents as a professional operative are much narrower than Archie's. He has neither Saul Panzer's genius for tailing nor Fred Durkin's bulldog tenacity, and he is more willing than the others to take less-than-legal shortcuts. He is more than competent, and Stout furnishes him more complex motives than he does Saul or Fred. Ambiguities in Orrie's character are introduced as early as The League of Frightened Men (1935). In 1966's Death of a Doxy, in which he is accused of murder, the state of his character forces Wolfe and his associate to debate whether or not he is capable of the crime; Wolfe himself states "You must know that I have no affection for him." In Champagne for One Orrie pulls a major coup, breaking into a suspect's apartment and finding a key document on which the solution of the book's mystery largely hinges – a document which he insists upon handing to Wolfe personally rather than through Goodwin (who reluctantly admits that that was Orrie's due). Orrie also plays a key role in the last Nero Wolfe novel, A Family Affair. Orrie's full first name is one of the inconsistencies in the corpus. In chapter 16 of The Golden