The French Powder Mystery (1995) - Plot & Excerpts
Come with me to the heyday of the early portion of the twentieth century. Walk with me through the streets of New York, and stop, if you will, at one of the grand old department stores that I have never seen but only read about in books.I am talking about a store of many floors, full of salespeople and lunch counters, mattress departments, book departments, fabric departments, and store detectives roaming about. The store is run by its owner, who has a luxurious apartment on the top floor, accessible only by those with one of five special keys.On this particular day, a woman goes to set up a new window display. It consists of a brand new apparatus, imported from France: a bed that folds up into the wall. She readies the window display and opens the curtains to the expectant crowd outside. The crowd watches to see the show of the new luxury hide-away bed from France being opened. The woman turns the lever that opens the machine. As the bed gradually opens from its vertical position, a murdered woman's bloody body is revealed in its interior.So begins The French Powder Mystery. Like the other Ellery Queen mystery I've read, this book is a great lot of fun and relatively unimportant in terms of any deep philosophical meaning. As a kind of logic puzzle, the mystery is well-set up. Being a rather inferior reader, I had no idea at all of the culprit until Ellery revealed it at the end. I imagine that the readers of ages past must have been much more sharp than today's audience, because though clues are revealed left and right, and Ellery, at each new clue, seems to be really learning something and coming to new and grand conclusions, I myself was in the dark. I suppose I've gotten used to the CSI-like device where one person discovers evidence and then turns to their partner and explains, very carefully, what exactly it means. CHARACTER 1: "Wait! This is McPhearson's shoe. And it has the same DNA as the chew toy we found at the park!"CHARACTER 2: "Hold on! Doesn't that mean..."CHARACTER 1: "That's right. Because this DNA matches the other DNA we've already found, that means that the alibi Donald gave us can't be true. And if Donald wasn't at the drive-in like he said he was, he must have been somewhere else."CHARACTER 2: "You're right. We should find Donald and question him again. It's a good thing our science has given us a new lead with which to solve this mystery."[Show graphic blow-up of computer-generated double-helix DNA strand with accompanying whooshing sound.:]In contrast, in the quiet of the murdered woman's empty apartment, Ellery Queen examines each object with care and thought. "The books on this bookshelf," he says, thoughtfully, "don't seem to fit with the personality of the owner." Later, after interviewing a certain woman, he asks her to return a piece of evidence (a woman's hat) to the closet from whence it came. After she does so, he absurdly removes the hat from the closet and asks a man to put it away. Watching, he observes the differences in the way that the man and the woman put the hat back. And from these kinds of observations, observations about evidence and personality, he comes to conclusions.Reading this book was like taking a trip into a foreign land: America in the 1920's. We find racism, sexism, gangsters smuggling opium, men in hats and suits, store detectives, anti-vice leagues, tough police lieutenants, wily politicians and, last but not least, people fainting all over the place every time they get a "shock." We also find, as we always do with good mysteries, the mystery as metaphor. In this case, the lovely facade of a department store window stricken with the grim decay and horror of death is a metaphor for the problems of those who own the department store, themselves putting on a show for all society, themselves living with something bad on the inside. Paradoxically, the mystery serves (by its solving) to reveal to the public something which was hidden about the people in the story.Unlike the mystery television shows of today, this mystery is an exercise in personality, logic, and judgment. It is written as a kind of mind game with no goal except entertainment. The people of the past were sexist, racist, insulated, and a little silly but, whatever else they were, they were not stupid.
The French Powder Mystery was the second of the Ellery Queen mysteries by Manfred Bennington Lee (Manford Lepofsky) and Frederic Dannay (Daniel Nathan). It appeared in 1930.The book certainly gets off to a stylish start. French’s Department Store in New York has a window exhibition of modernist furniture. Every day at the same time an employee of the store stages a demonstration of the features of this furniture, including in this case a foldaway bed. On this particular day when the employee presses the button to unfold the bed a corpse is revealed. It belongs to the wife of the owner of the store.As you expect in an Ellery Queen novel there are plenty of suspects and plenty of clues. But which clues are the ones that matter? The murder could have been committed by almost any member of the French household as Mr French has private apartments on the top floor. There are seven keys to this private apartment, and those keys will assume considerable importance. The murder could also have been committed by any one of several employees of the store, including all the members of the board of directors (a meeting of the board took place in Mr French’s private rooms on the morning of the murder).The murder might also be linked to a drug ring - the murdered woman’s daughter is a drug addict.Inspector Richard Queen is frankly baffled, but his son Ellery (an enthusiastic amateur sleuth) is not dismayed by this puzzling case.As with most of the early Ellery Queens this book contains their famous challenge to the reader - towards the end of the book the reader is informed that he now has possession of all the facts necessary to solve the case for himself, and (as was usual in the Ellery Queen mysteries) the plot is so ingenious that the murderer turns out to be the only person who could possibly have committed the crime.There’s certainly no disputing the authors’ ability to construct a plot that is like a piece of precision machinery, with each part fitting together so as to produce one and only one solution.Ellery Queen himself is not the most colourful of fictional detectives but he’s likeable enough. The father-and-son crime-solving team, with the father a professional detective who employs all the conventional methods of a good police officer while the son is a gifted amateur who relies more on pure reasoning, is an effective combination.The French Powder Mystery is unlikely to disappoint fans of the golden age detective story.
What do You think about The French Powder Mystery (1995)?
It's been a long time since I've read any Ellery Queen. I always loved them when I was younger. Although it was written in the 1930s I didn't notice it being particularly dated. Sure there were a few things, but nothing that affected my enjoyment of the story. Actually a lot of the plot points are still very relevant today. The plot very briefly is the wife of the owner of a major department store in New York City is murdered. Her body is found when a model in a store window display, as part of a furniture advertisement, opens a wall bed and the bed rolls out onto the floor. All signs point to the murder having taken place elsewhere. Also, it is soon learned that her daughter is missing. Ellery and his father, inspector McQueen are called in to investigate a whole store full of suspects.
—John
Whenever I read an Ellery Queen book, I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with the critics. Yes, the Ellery Queen books are formulaic and they are dated. This book from 1930 describes a world in which all the power, all the wealth, was in the hands of older white males. There is sexism, racism, ageism. A certain amount of corruption in the police department of New York City was expected, even tolerated. Yes, all that is true. But I find these books interesting because, not despite of these flaws. It is ...illuminating.. to realize how financially dependent married woman were on their husband's goodwill. How a black landlord could be summoned, intimidated and then dismissed in a manner that would never have been used with a white man. Many of the smaller details of daily life, which enter largely into the detection process, are interesting to me as well. Wealthy women had monogrammed golden lipsticks and had their cigarettes made and perfumed to taste (violet-scented cigarettes?!). Hats, and the way they are put back into hatboxes after use, play a major role in the solution of the problem. Women of a certain social class spend their time going on visits, shopping, perhaps taking in a concert in the afternoon. A bed that can be folded into a wall is a major new development in interior decorating, a novelty that deserves its own shop window in Manhattan's most luxurious department store, and which will ultimately become a crime scene. The department store had its own book department - I haven't seen books being sold in department stores in decades! Ellery Queen lives with his father, and with an unobtrusive servant who takes care of all the practical details of life. This type of book is a much better window into how people lived in the 1920s and 1930s than any history book. The mystery itself is a typical Ellery Queen puzzler : the wife of a department store magnate is found dead, crushed in a fold-up bed in the display window of her husband's store. It turns out she had left her home the night before, as did her daughter. Had she decided to spend the night in the apartment her family kept on the top floor of the department store? Where had the daughter gone? Who had after-hours access to the store, and to the apartment? Why had the light reading matter between the onyx bookends on the library table been replaced by completely disparate selection? Why did one bookend have a felt cushion of a lighter color than the other? Why did the dead woman have not her own lipstick, but that of her daughter, in her purse?The other thing that I like in these books is the obvious affection between Commissioner Queen of the Manhattan Police Department, and his son. The practical cop doesn't always understand the musings and enthousiasms of his dilettante son, but they both look out for each other with genuine love. So there is nothing "noir" about that relationship, no matter how sordid the crimes they are investigating.
—Ann
I have read many Ellery Quenn books and seldom been disappointed but this one left me cold. It was very slowly paced and written without the intent of keeping the reader interested in the story. As the complete book title suggests the book is presented as a problem in deduction and so very slowly and methodically it builds up an enormous pile of facts and information and assumptions upon which when logic is applied the correct solution to the mystery can be reached. In the grandest tradition of Ellery Queen just before the solution is revealed the reader is challenged to reflect back upon all that he is read being assured that everything the reader knows to solve the case has been clearly and openly presented in a manner not intended to confound or confuse. And the truth is that is quite so. In fact the mystery can easily be solved less than halfway through the book by simply ignoring the clues and overwhelming piles of facts and details that are presented and simply taking a short cut by thinking bout the cast of characters...enough...yawn...said
—Dadoo
