( Q ) Books

The Hollywood Murders: Three Mysteries: The Devil to Pay, The Four of Hearts, The Origin of Evil

Ellery Queen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hollywood from Ellery Queen's Perspective 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The Devil to Pay (1937), The Four of Hearts (1938), and The Origin of Evil (1951) roughly fall in Ellery Queen's middle period and are unique in that the setting is Hollywood. Four Walls Eight Windows published these three mysteries in 2000 under the title The Hollywood Murders.

Ellery's deductions are dazzling as usual, despite that Ellery himself sometimes seems out of place, even stranded, in the unorthodox milieu of Hollywood. Ellery encounters classic Hollywood stereotypes from movie stars to film producers to gossip columnists. The plots offer humor, some snappy dialogue, and a few extravagant Hollywood effects (e.g., a murderous pilot commandeers a small plane). I commend Four Walls Eight Windows for printing this collection.

The Devil to Pay (1937): Ellery Queen has been persuaded to rush to Hollywood to assist in writing a major production only to find that the producer is unavailable. Ellery becomes increasingly frustrated as he waits and waits for his first assignment. Fortuitously, he becomes involved in solving a bizarre murder of a hard-hearted, unethical financier. The murder weapon is an Italian dueling sword of the seventeenth century; its tip is coated with molasses and cyanide.

Ellery's remarkable reputation on the eastern seaboard is of little value in Los Angeles. Ejected from a crime scene, he subsequently masquerades as Hilary "Scoop" King, a colorful investigative reporter, to gain access to crime sites and confidential information. While somewhat farcical, this device allows the story to proceed.

The Four of Hearts (1938): In this sequel Ellery finally meets the young Jacques Butcher, colloquially known as Boy Wonder, executive vice-president of production at Magna Studios, and Ellery begins his work on a screen play. Unfortunately, an elaborate publicity stunt for the new production is derailed by a double murder. While the portrayal of the Hollywood film industry may not be entirely accurate, the plot is entertaining.

The Origin of Evil (1951): Thirteen years have elapsed and Ellery returns to a Hollywood that is reeling from the advent of television. However, as Ellery observes, Hollywood's post-mortem may be premature. This third Hollywood mystery reveals a growing list of surrealistic clues, including a dead dog, dead frogs, a poisoned sandwich, and a mutilated leather bound book of Aristophanes. The solution within a solution offered by Ellery is quite ingenious.

If you cannot find a copy of The Hollywood Murders, you might look for paperback editions from the 1970s and 1980s published by Ballantine Books, Signet Classics, and the Signet Double Mystery series. They are all inexpensive. The Origin of Evil is easiest to locate - look for a 1992 reprint edition by Harper Perennial.

Editorial Review:

New York's crime-solving genius is adrift in Tinseltown until a series of fatal finales revives him. With ambitious starlets, idols, and majordomos, The Hollywood Murders offers witty proof that the nature of evil is a bit gaudier on the West Coast. "A grand mystery, lightly handled and expertly solved." - The New Yorker

The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries

Ellery Queen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

THE ELLERY QUEEN-TENNIAL!!!!! Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who wrote under the pseudonym “Ellery Queen,” and whose fictional sleuth was also named “Ellery Queen,” were probably the most important American mystery writers from 1929 until the early 1970's. “Ellery Queen is the American detective story,” wrote Anthony Boucher – and he meant not only their detective novels, but also their critical writings, their editing, and their appearance on television and the radio. From 1939 until 1948, Lee and Dannay wrote a hugely popular radio mystery show, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, which like the EQ books stopped the action toward the end and challenged the audience to deduce whodunit. From the more than 350 surviving scripts, we have chosen fourteen of the most challenging: • The case of the Tontine whose members die off one by one • The disappearance of Napoleon’s Razor on a cross-country railroad train • The case that Sherlock Holmes failed to solve • The strangling in a haunted cave with only the victim’s footprints leading to the corpse • A dying message which seems to name all the suspects • The clue of the dead moth • and 8 other extraordinary mysteries This book is published in honor of the centennial of the births of Lee and Dannay, and (n the fictional world of EQ), the centennial of Ellery himself. The publisher: Founded in 1994 as the only publishing house to specialize in mystery short story collections, Crippen & Landru has been described as “a monument in the making” (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine) and “the best edited, most attractively packaged line of mystery books introduced in this decade” (Mystery Scene), and even “God bless Crippen & Landru” (The Strand). In many ways, however, in introducing completely unknown EQ detections to a new generation of readers, The Adventure of the Murdered Moths may be our most important book.

Ellery Queen Omnibus

Ellery Queen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

All the early short stories 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

All of Queen's early short stories, from the Adventures and New Adventures of Ellery Queen. Most are excellent. A must for the pure-puzzle mystery fan.

Best Impossible Crime Story ever 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This omnibus includes most of the short early Ellery Queen stories. But the real reason to own it is the short (under 100 pages) novel, "The Lamp of God," which may be the best (and fairest) "impossible crime" story ever written. An entire house - one which may contain a hidden treasure - simply vanishes overnight - no house, no ruins, nothing. It's a fair puzzle, and the reader is given all the clues needed to solve the mystery, although I suspect few will. A truly great book!

Ellery Queen: 5 Complete Novels

Ellery Queen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Spread across Ellery-the-character's career 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Consists of AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY, CAT OF MANY TAILS, DOUBLE, DOUBLE, INSPECTOR QUEEN'S OWN CASE: NOVEMBER SONG, and THE PLAYER ON THE OTHER SIDE.

AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY (1964) is set during 1944. Ellery, driving across the desert (in those days, he worked in Hollywood as well as his native New York City), encounters by chance an obscure community settled by a religion that doesn't exist outside that community. (The title is a play on words, following the structure of the KJV of Genesis.) It's virtually another world, created anew by its founders - and the isolated community is now dealing with its first murder.

CAT OF MANY TAILS (1949) picks up where TEN DAYS' WONDER left off, so it would have made more sense to include that rather than DOUBLE, DOUBLE (below) as the token Wrightsville story. After the TEN DAYS' WONDER case, in which one character played Ellery like a violin, Ellery resolved to give up detection, feeling that he'd played God once too often and others had suffered for his arrogant confidence in his own cleverness. His father, who hadn't been involved since that had been a case in Wrightsville's jurisdiction, had been unable to persuade Ellery to help with any other cases, until the Cat - a serial killer with few discernable patterns - began stalking New York, and Inspector Queen was put in charge of the task force hunting the murderer down. What really frightens the city's law enforcement and politicians is that a combination of factors - including public hysteria whipped up by the media - seem bound to result in massive panic-stricken riots if the killings continue much longer.

DOUBLE, DOUBLE (1950) is set in Wrightsville, where another serial killer appears to be following the nursery rhyme 'rich man, poor man, beggarman...' Given that this is Ellery Queen, this could be *either* a psychopath *or* a cover for a murder for sane motives - the Queen team has done both, in their time.

INSPECTOR QUEEN'S OWN CASE: NOVEMBER SONG (1956) is a favorite of mine, more than the sequel HOUSE OF BRASS that I happened to read first (don't let that happen to you, this is the stronger book). Inspector Richard Queen has finally reached mandatory retirement, and he has too much pride to let Ellery hover over him - when the story opens, Richard is staying with an old friend, who retired only to take up a much quieter police chief job in a sleepy New England seacoast town. The 3rd-person viewpoint is mainly split between Richard - who's privately depressed, feeling he's outlived his usefulness - and Jessie Sherwood, a professional nurse looking after a newly-adopted baby for a childless rich couple in the area. The story opens, though, with some up-close details of what turns out to have been an illegal adoption - the rich couple would've been too old for an adoption-through-channels, so they essentially bought the child. (The birth mother, an unwed nightclub singer, is actually a decent person - the slimy go-between only persuaded her to go through with it by selling her the idea that the wealthy adoptive parents could give the kid a better life than she could.)

Unfortunately, the flaw in that theory is that various parties - the ne'er-do-well nephew, for one - find it inconvenient to see a sizeable fortune suddenly redirected to an unexpected small baby. After Jessie and Richard meet casually on the beach while she's out with the baby, he insists on coming along with the chief when there's a report of an attempted kidnapping on the estate. When tragedy finally strikes, Richard and Jessie join forces in some unofficial investigating.

THE PLAYER ON THE OTHER SIDE (1963) Title quote is from Huxley, speaking of the universe as the chessboard and natural law as the rules, with the 'player on the other side' metaphorically being God - all-powerful, all-knowing. All the chapters are named for chess moves, though somewhat informally.

In this book, the gameboard is York Square, its corners featuring the four rook-like towers in which the four heirs to the York fortune while away the time until a former heir, missing and presumed dead for many years, finally has to be bypassed under the terms of his father's will. The unseen 'player on the other side' who knows too much about York Square for comfort, however, bypasses all four would-be heirs in going to work directly on Walt, the seemingly insignificant handyman who looks after the Square, and is so starved for human contact that mysterious, flattering notes from the unknown 'Y' carry a lot of weight with him. From Walt's point of view, we see a few of Y's messages before the first murder brings us around to the usual Ellery-and-Inspector-Queen viewpoint.

Their problem, of course, is to find out who might be trying to make Walt a fall guy, and there are far more than 4 suspects. Emily York, for instance, is absorbed in good works; many people, from her assistant Ann to a lot of desperate cases, have a stake in seeing her get funding for her more grandiose philanthropic schemes. Percival's redistribution of wealth would be more personal, involving his fellow woman rather than fellow man. Myra, jilted years ago, seems disconnected from reality, and Robert almost equally so in a different way (he's a fanatic stamp collector).

The Siamese Twin Mystery (Otto Penzler's Classic American Mystery Library)

Ellery Queen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Classic Ellery Queen - Among His Best Stories 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

We join Ellery and his father, Inspector Richard Queen, in an unfamiliar habitat, a remote rugged road in a forested mountainous area in upstate New York. Tired, somewhat uncertain of their directions, with night falling, the situation suddenly worsens as they find themselves cutoff by a forest fire. Following a barely visible rutted road upward, they find temporary safety at a sprawling lodge nestled on the top of Arrow mountain. As the fire below slowly encircles them, the Queens find themselves involved in a bizarre murder mystery.

Certainly, the situation is contrived. Dr. Xavier's work on Siamese twins in an isolated mountain lodge is a bit fantastic. The clues are supremely subtle. And yet this mystery is highly effective. Under the stress of the approaching fire, Ellery too hurriedly offers solutions, seemingly masterful examples of pure logic, but flawed nonetheless. (The reader may be reminded of another remarkable Ellery Queen story, The Greek Coffin Mystery.)

Ellery and Inspector Queen refuse to let the relentless forest fire dissuade them from continuing their investigation. The drama and suspense shifts back and forth between the danger posed by the ever advancing fire and the more immediate threat, the likelihood that the unknown killer will murder again.

The Siamese Twin Mystery (October, 1933) is a good example of the deductive mystery genre that was especially popular in 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. To assist the reader in unraveling the mystery, it comes complete with a playful description of the cast of characters and a floor plan of the ground level of Dr. Xavier's lodge. Surprisingly, it is missing Ellery's trademark, a pause generally found at the beginning of the last chapter, in which the author challenges the reader to solve the mystery before reading further, as all clues have now been revealed.

The Siamese Twin Mystery makes a good introduction to Ellery Queen. It has all of the elements that characterize a classic Ellery Queen mystery. It is among the best of Ellery Queen stories, comparing favorably with The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Spanish Cape Mystery, and The Tragedy of X.

Editorial Review:

THE SIAMESE TWIN MYSTERY finds Ellery and his father, the irascible Inspector Queen, trapped in a mountain retreat by a raging forest fire. The members of the household are a strange lot, and the mysterious murder of the retreat's host indicates to the Queens that not only are they isolated with an odd assortment of characters, but a dangerous killer as well!

The Player on Other Side

Ellery Queen

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There was an old woman (A Signet book)

Ellery Queen

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The Chinese Orange Mystery and Wife or Death

Ellery Queen, Richard Deming

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A shotgun divorce and a jealous DA 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Signet used to have an annoying habit of publishing 2-in-1 volumes of Ellery Queen - the annoyance being that while one would be a *real* Ellery Queen (featuring the eponymous character), the other usually wouldn't, as in this case. However, as my range has expanded somewhat, these "other" novels have started looking pretty good. Here I'll only review _Wife or Death_, since the system doesn't seem to have any entries for its appearances as a stand-alone book - this review's rating is for that book alone.

Jim Denton, as editor of his hometown's only newspaper, may have all the news that's fit to print, but he's well aware that the local gossips have all the rest, true or not, especially about his wife, Angel. Although her face is as childishly innocent as her name, she likes putting her gorgeous body on display during the country club costume party - not that it holds any secrets for most of the men there. What innocence she has is that of a girl from the wrong side of the tracks - believing that she's kept the whole town from knowing about her promiscuity, and even making herself believe in the great career in show business she left for Denton (only he knows that she was a stripper). The only surprise when the conversation turns to divorce on the way home from the party is that *Angel* wants out - her boredom with life in a small town would hardly lead her to another man in Denton's circle, and she's got nowhere to go if she doesn't go with someone. (The real mystery to the reader might well be why Denton didn't kick her out long ago, but it's believable from what we see of his character - he's the viewpoint character, though not in first person).

So when Denton wakes up the next morning to find her gone with a farewell note, he's only annoyed that they didn't finish thrashing out the details - and mildly surprised that her Lothario told her only to bring a small suitcase: most of her stuff was left behind. Rather than make the breakup public property, he covers her departure by saying she left on a visit - which backfires spectacularly when she's found shot dead some time later in the woods. Worse, Denton doesn't know who her most recent conquest was - the man she left him for, who killed her. And if life wasn't tough enough, the last-but-one was the District Attorney, who's so fixated on Denton as a killer that if Denton doesn't solve the murder himself, he's going to be in *real* trouble.

This is actually a pretty good novel, and almost spends more time on how Denton is coping with the murder, the town's conviction that he did it, and which of his friends are fair-weather than with the murder itself. (When the mortician asks him for the names of intimates of the deceased as pallbearers, he's human enough to indulge in a little revenge, for instance.)

The Tragedy of Errors and Others

Ellery Queen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

“ELLERY QUEEN IS THE AMERICAN DETECTIVE STORY” So wrote the great critic Anthony Boucher about the contributions of Ellery Queen to the mystery story. Queen appeared in novels and short stories, in the movies and on television, on the radio and even in comic books.

In honor of the seventieth anniversary of the first Ellery Queen novel, Crippen & Landru is proud to publish the first completely new Ellery Queen book in almost thirty years. “The Tragedy of Errors” is the lengthy and detailed plot outline for the final, but never published EQ novel, containing all the hallmarks of the greatest Queen novels—the dying message, the succession of false solutions before the astonishing truth is revealed, and scrupulous fairplay to the reader. And the theme is one that Queen had been developing for many years: the manipulation of events in a world going mad by people who aspire to the power of gods.

The Tragedy of Errors and Others also contains the six hitherto uncollected Ellery Queen short stories, and a section of essays, tributes, and reminiscences of Ellery Queen, written by family members, friends, and some of the finest current mystery writers.

There Was an Old Woman

Ellery Queen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Cool! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I read it at bed time every night. I awaited every moment to find out what happens next. It's a great mystery and you don't know til the very end what will happen.

tantalising 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the best Ellery Queen's books I have ever read. It just kept you guessing as to who is the killer. I have read a number of mystery books and Ellery Queen is by far the best. When the identity of the killer was finally revealed in the end I can only shake my head and say 'now why didn't I think of that?'

Editorial Review:

MysteryLarge Print EditionOne of the very best of the Ellery Queen mysteries. New York TimesCornelia Potts is a wicked old witch of a woman with millions of dollars, a henpecked husband, and six miserable children. When, one by one, the inhabitants of the Potts household are visited by death, Cornelia watches with delight. During a visit, Ellery Queen finds himself supervising a duel between Thurlow Potts and his half brother Robert, so he makes sure the guns are loaded with blanks. But when one of the brothers really dies, Ellery realizes hes up against a very cunning murderer.