When reading books that were, at one time, influential or popular it is often difficult for someone now to get what appealed to people then. I have written elsewhere about my frustrations on reading Ellery Queen. Although I had similar issues reading Philo Vance as I did Ellery Queen the two are notably different in that S. S. Van Dine’s popularity dropped precipitously several decades after he was first published while Queen, on the other hand, not only continued to be popular but went on to be very influential within the world of mystery writing. In this series of reviews I am trying to understand what made these books so popular at the time they were published, why the trajectories of their popularity were so different and why the modern reader receives them so differently than did their initial audience.Two authorial choices unite these series are the nature of the New Yorks in which they were set and the structures used by the authors allow the detective access to sites, evidence and witnesses and the reader access to the thoughts and actions of the detective.First, the nature of their New Yorks:It is difficult to keep in mind while reading the early works of Queen and Vance that they were published within a few years of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Stout’s Fer-de-Lance. The former was published in 1930 and the latter, the first Nero Wolfe novel, was published in 1934. Those two books seem to have been written in a different universe than either that of Philo Vance or these Ellery Queen novels.One of the first things that strike one on reading either Vance or Queen is that they seem to be set in a world that is a strange amalgam of England and the United States. Both detectives work in New York City and both encounter the rather stereotypical individuals of New York -- the cops with the broad accents and apparently little education. Cab drivers and waiters have broad accents and cheerfully know their places. The rich, the upper classes, live with the same “different set” of rules as to members of the upper class in Ngaio Marsh’s. It is a New York without anything near the broad ethnic diversity one sees in Rex Stout and with a degree of deference from police officers towards “their betters" that no one shows in his books. Compare, if you will, Inspector Queen, with Inspector Cramer. Cramer doesn’t always get his man, true, but Cramer would not have put up with the affected manners and sense of privilege of either Vance or Queen.Reviewers and analysts of murder/detective mysteries refer to a type of novel as a ‘cozy.’ Cozies seem to be set in an alternative universe where all the nice things about the past continue to exist without any of its more unpleasant elements. In some the detectives themselves are an element of that sanitized nostalgia. Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn is the son and brother of members of the aristocracy. He is a card carrying gentleman who interviews the upstairs folks while one of his men (often Inspector Fox) interviews the maids, the butler and the rest of the downstairs staff. Not only do servants defer but often the greatest supporters of the class system are members of the “peasantry” whose adherence to an outdated caste system allows for others (their betters) to be protected against that system being breached while presenting themselves as enlightened and even egalitarian. S. S. Van Dine and Ellery Queen can be argued to have been writing the American equivalent of the cozy, although in their cases this is masked by the fact that they set their murders in New York and present their detectives as world traveled and erudite. Make no mistake, though, these are cozies. In the world of Van Dine and Queen there is an attempt to transpose what the authors believe to be the English class system into the world of New York. The run-of-the-mill police officer in Queen treat Ellery with such a degree of respect that one imagines them tugging their forelocks when reporting to him. The idea that any of the monied and well-connected witnesses in the early Queen books would not have called their lawyers immediately upon being detained and questioned by a man whose only authority is a “pass” written out for him by his father is laughable. The idea that no one in the police force or at city hall would direct charges of nepotism and incompetence toward Inspector Queen is similarly ludicrous. However in these books the reader is assured that in a United States much changed over the last few decades, by immigration as well as the farm boys who returned from war duty overseas only to see their families wiped out by the crash of 1929.The New York of these American urban cozies seems far more like the moderate sized towns than many readers lived or grew up in. There are important families and, without doubt, those important families can exert pressure on the police. But this pressure isn’t presented as a form of corruption rather as the natural consequence of people being important and monied. The daughter of a rich man may be a “drug fiend”* but it isn’t portrayed as a form of inappropriate wielding of power and influence for the police to treat her differently than they would the daughter of a working class man.Second, the structural issues of both Van Dine and Queen:The further frustrating thing about the Ellery Queen novels arose from their very structure. The original conceit is that they are written, years after the actual occurrences by a friend who had not witnessed the actual cases. The manuscripts are supposedly based on the notes that Ellery kept of the cases and from the clippings he and his father kept from contemporary coverage. It thus makes no sense for the writer to not “open up” the mind of Queen throughout the book. Why is the reader kept ignorant of Ellery’s deductions and even some of the information he has until the final unfolding of the criminal? The authors may have felt that if the reader was aware of everything Ellery thought and witnessed the reader would not be attempting to solve the problem themselves they would be witnessing Ellery solving it. The books themselves are set up with the premise that at a certain point the reader has all the information necessary to deduce who “did it” and they are invited to work it out for themselves before turning the page. From that point on the reader is supposed to have a front row seat as Ellery demonstrates his superior abilities to deduce.This particular mystery demonstrates the problem with that format. The identity of the murderer and accomplice in the case of the first murder are actually quite obvious from the beginning if one ignores the author’s attempts to make Ellery’s questions and comments important and looks merely at the physical evidence. The authors make this difficult by having the behaviour of the police subsequent to the crime so unorganized and scattered that it is difficult to put together a coherent picture of the scene. In the case of the second murder the only person who could have committed it would have been immediately obvious if a major character had not changed the nature of the crime scene and if all the people who walked in and out of it had not been oblivious to the absence of key piece of furniture that they had either every reason to believe should be there and/or that they had actually seen themselves many times.This structure/conceit will be dropped over time. The problem that the authors face, the difficulty of presented someone as having an outstanding deductive brain and giving that person reasonable access to the information, sites and people necessary to solve the crime remained. Reading these books underlines the brilliance of the formula that Rex Stout devised for his Nero Wolfe books where it is Archie Goodwin’s POV that is presented to the reader and where much of the setup of many books involves giving Wolfe and Goodwin a reason to have the type of access given so unquestioningly to Ellery Queen and Philo Vance.If you want to amuse yourself imagine the field day any defense lawyer would have with evidence collected by and witnesses interviewed by someone who was not a sworn officer of the court and not a member of the police force. Of course these books were written long before the birth of the CSI franchise and it is likely that few readers would have heard of the concept of “chain of custody” but certainly any adequate lawyer would be able to call into question evidence and information gathered by the son of the man whose job would be in question if someone was not arrested with due speed. S. S. Van Dine’s alternative to access through nepotism is scarcely more palatable since his detective gains access to persons and places because of a private relationship with the DA. One imagines that defense lawyers would enjoy the opportunities this irregular relationship would give them to undermine any evidence Vance might have had access to and any statements made to witnesses in response to Vance’s questions. In summary, both the Philo Vance and Ellery Queen series provided for their readers the same type of reassuring universe that the English cozies did for theirs and neither solve the problem of how to entwine a private detective into the world of the police procedural. It will be interesting to see whether in future books the coziness continues and if the practical problems are handled more believably.* Drug Fiend is the authors term not mine. The demonization of drug taking, including misleading descriptions of its symptoms has a long history in American crime fiction.
It seems I'm forever criticizing books which begin with great promise, but do not follow through with the qualities they began with. The reason: most books are like this, and most particularly, those of the mystery genre. While in the midst of The Dutch Shoe Mystery, I thought that perhaps this would be among the select books I keep in my library because they're so good . . . that this was the kind of story that justified being a mystery fan. Ellery Queen builds a deliciously enticing puzzle, and succeeds in breathing life into his characters (of which he is one). Though I usually disparage trying to solve the mystery in a detective novel, I was moved to read parts of the novel over again, looking for evidence to support a pet theory. But in his solution, Mr. Queen comes too close to committing one of the fatal blunders of fictional ratiocination. And here I must insert aS P O I L E R A L E R T!I've forgotten whether this is one of Ronald Knox's ten rules for detective story writers; if not, it should be. The culprit must be a substantial character in the story so that the reader has some basis for inferring culpability based on personality and motive. In this case, the killer is barely more than a cardboard functionary; we learn nothing of this person's character, and the deductions which lead to the solution are purely physical. Thus, after intriguing investigations into various interesting characters, the plot dwindles to the status of a crossword puzzle. For better Queens, try Cat of Many Tails and The Origin of Evil.
What do You think about The Dutch Shoe Mystery (1983)?
The patient is wheeled into the operating room only to be found she is already dead. The prime suspect, the surgeon, is also murdered.The plot was good, the investigation needed some concentration and even then the murderer turned out to be a complete surprise and was for me not ever in the running. Thankfully the final chapter is titled Explanation because one was definitely needed. It revealed a very clever plot and modus operandi. The clues were there all along but so very subtle. Such a clever amateur sleuth is Ellery Queen.
—Ella's Gran
I really liked this mystery. I very well know that there is a conspicuous absence of development of the protagonist and the other characters but the wonderful logical deductional chain is such a beauty that I forget about the other shortcomings. It reminds me of Dupin that by cold logical analysis, there is no mystery that cannot be unravelled. Ellery Queen have perfected this principle to an extent that till now I couldnt have thought it possible. In 'American Gun Mystery'too, they have excelled in once again designing an intricate puzzle and then unravelling it with an exceptional skill, bit by bit, leaving no loose strings lying anywhere.Some may say, that reading the book is more of a chore than pleasure and to them I answer that its the definition of pleasure that's in question here. For me, pleasure is all about exercising my brain and following the trails of logic. For others, who prefer easy reading, it may sound like a chore. So I recommend them to read one of the thousands of Agatha Christie's as she has no dearth of cheap, low brow stuff where you can easily go through the story without calling your brain to attention. But for the rest like me who marvel at a seemingly insoluble puzzle and in the beauty of its resolution, Ellery Queen is a MUST READ!!!
—Nisha Singh
Ogni volta che leggo un giallo di Ellery Queen faccio fatica (anzi, non voglio) a non avere davanti l’immagine di Jim Hutton nella serie anni ’70. Quindi ogni volta che mi imbatto nel investigatore dandy e con pince-nez (e l’ispettore Richard Queen con i baffoni) mi par che sia un personaggio completamente diverso. Rispetto all’ultimo romanzo letto (Bentornato, Ellery!) questo è senz’altro migliore. La trama è plausibile, la rosa dei sospettati è abbastanza amplia per cui il lettore può divertirsi a legare ai vari personaggi gli indizi sparsi qua e là. Manca la grande scena finale in cui tutti gli indagati vengono raccolti in una stanza per poi svelare il colpevole come si confà ad ogni mystery che si rispetti. In questo caso il finale, di solito sinfonico, diventa un sonatina da camera e chiude un po’ sottotono il libro.Il rischio con Ellery Queen è che il delitto, e quindi la soluzione, sia eccessivamente arzigogolata e complicata. Pur non mancando un certo gusto per una studiata progettazione degli omicidi, tutta la trama è credibile e mantiene piacevole la lettura.Every time I read a book by Ellery Queen I struggle (or rather I do not want) to not have in front of me the image of Jim Hutton in the 70’s TV serie . So every time I run into the investigator and dandy with pince- nez ( and Inspector Richard Queen with a mustache!) it seems to me to be a completely different character.Compared with the last novel read (The Player on the Other Side) this is definitely better. The plot is plausible, the list of the suspects is fairly wide so that the reader can play to link the various characters to the clues scattered here and there. In this novel we miss the big finale when all the suspects are gathered in a room to reveal the culprit . In this case the ending, usually symphonic , sounds like a short sonata played by a chamber quartet.The risk with Ellery Queen is that the crime , and then the solution, is excessively complicated and convoluted. While not lacking a certain taste to a studied design of the murders, the whole plot is believable and the reading is pleasant
—Paologa
