McAleer was granted a sabbatical from teaching for the first semester of 1974. He would complete a draft of the manuscript in this time, while new information continued to flow in. McAleer needed some way to organize the ponderous amount of research he had. In January, he wrote to Stout:

Of course, organizing Stout’s life by themes and theses would necessarily shape how a man with such a diverse life was portrayed and understood by readers of the biography. What McAleer chose to include and exclude, how much, and where he lay the emphasis, were serious considerations, with the potential for distortion. Also: mightn’t his close relationship with Stout influence McAleer’s objectivity? With these thoughts surely in his mind, McAleer began writing. On July 4th he wrote to Stout:

Stout was writing, too. In November 1974, he began what would be his last novel, and in January 1975 he finished it. The interest in Stout’s fiction had not declined: The first printing of twenty-thousand copies of A Family Affair sold out before publication day.³⁶

But the writing had taken its toll. McAleer wrote to a fellow Stout fan and frequent correspondent, Judson Council Sapp,

During 1975, McAleer’s letters increased in frequency; it was as if he was trying to buoy the ailing Stout through the correspondence, and through the biographical project. He certainly hoped Stout would live to see the final product. The effort was showing its physical toll on McAleer: he developed an infection from eyestrain, but ignored it.³⁸ In August, McAleer brought the final pages of the manuscript to Stout. The next month, Stout was in the hospital. McAleer kept writing letters, but that month the questionnaires stopped. There had been 187. On 26 October, McAleer wrote a one-page letter, which was shorter than his usual. He listed the completion of 640 emendations to the manuscript, a 19-page bibliography, the addition of forty more facts, 20 more letters sent out, footnotes prepared. He said he expected to have the manuscript for Little, Brown, by the next week. Then he wrote,

It’s doubtful McAleer was thinking only of the completion of the manuscript. Those words also seem to carry a new awareness of Stout’s fragile mortality. And they were apt. Stout died two days later. At his death, the writer had fifty-one novels and numerous other publications to his name, and the distinction of having more books in print than any living American writer.

McAleer spent the rest of the year revising the book to incorporate Stout’s death; he still ignored the eye infection. By the year’s end, McAleer had a manuscript for Little, Brown, and was finally able to ease up his exhausting routine.

Little, Brown predicted a September publication.³⁹ The Company also wanted McAleer to do an edition of previously uncollected Stout stories to accompany the biography. A circulating memo at Little, Brown called it a “major publishing event.”

Rex Stout: An American Original was published in September 1977. The book had grown out the research now held in 1280 folders in five filing cabinets. McAleer had three hundred hours of taped interview with Stout.⁴¹ The list of names in the Acknowledgements covered three and a half pages, separated only by commas, in condensed typescript. Stout had answered 7,500 questions from McAleer.⁴² The writing of the book, from the day McAleer declared his intent to the manuscript draft, had been a little over 3 years—what he had originally estimated. The biography projected to be 400 pages, was fifty percent longer, standing at 621.

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