The two authors who have taken the pen name of Ellery Queen are many things, but great writers they are not. By great I mean - maybe - humanizing. To see someone solve a rubik cube in record time inspires nothing but awe; I don't mean that in a good way by the way. They do not know how to make the journey to the final solution of the mystery memorable. But such is the force with which the authors have created this story that even an average minded person like me followed most of the ongoing developments without trouble. I learned by pure chance today that in the past a series of Ellery Queen on television lasted only for one season in the US. It was replaced by Murder She Wrote. That one went on for many seasons, and garnered pretty much every award. The detective called Ellery Queen is not distinctive in appearance. He is not fleshed out. He is far from being despicable, or mundane, but he is not relatable. As time went by, and slowly as we are nearing the 100 year anniversary of the first Ellery Queen book, the appeal of Ellery becomes less and less fetching. Despite all this the books remain on my imaginary book shelf. The Queens books are much better, despite the limitations I chalked up regarding the authors' abilities, than most of the modern fluff being sold currently. It's difficult to have unanimous reviews that sort the wheat from the chaff. There's so many contemporary books to choose from and most of them will be subpar. The burnt hand teaches best and I've been burnt several times by inferior literature. But I digress. The tour de force which the authors accomplished and which earned a perfect score from me lay in the deconstruction of a complex plot so that I could follow most of it. The book never got boring. It has a big cast. One of them is the murderer. There's no lengthy questioning of any select group of them. But I feel that if the authors were in another category of writing, say text books, they would have been immensely successful. They know how to make a complex idea go within reach of the masses. I am very impressed. I had one or two suspects in my mind, but I could never guess the solution here. The authors don't show their hand blatantly. Agatha Christie shows us a lot daringly, that's why I could guess some of her mysteries. But the Queen mysteries are very delicately logical, like a puzzle. What most impressed me here was -spoilers!- the apprehension of the false murderer and the amazing, step by step dismantling of what supposedly happened. To fool the reader and leave none the wiser with such an in depth analysis of a false trail is genius work. The Queen authors were very confident of their case. I hope, however, that they don't use this device more than twice or thrice, as it would lose its novelty. Once is enough.
There are certain books--mostly older mysteries--that maintain my interest but also help me nod off to sleep after several pages. I usually read these on my iPad, using a sepia setting that also encourages sleep (vs. the default blue light of digital screens), especially when I have a hard time returning to sleep in the middle of the night. This might not be the highest praise for a book, of course, but nevertheless, they're books I did not give up on.This was the first Ellery Queen mystery I'd ever read, though I vaguely remember there was also TV show version in the 1970s. There were some odd, almost off-putting racial and sexist references as well as a surprising comment: "Looks like they've got us by the short hairs." (Ah...the Urban Dictionary notes that while now it means pubic hairs, in 1932 it meant neck hairs.)Ellery is certainly a pompous ass, but nowhere as fascinating as that other well-known pompous ass Sherlock Holmes. Still: a twisting mystery related to a missing painting by Leonardo made reading The Greek Coffin Mystery worthwhile.
What do You think about The Greek Coffin Mystery (1983)?
The detective hero, Ellery Queen, is a know-it-all unofficial detective who summons the mighty forces of logic to solve the cases. The author expects the reader to, at some point, be able to figure out who did it by all the clues being dropped.The mystery was intriguing, with lots of false trails and a large cast of suspects, but the writing is somewhat shallow (the case is what you read it), and Ellery Queen pretentious in an old-fashioned way, repeatedly resorting to quotes in french, latin, or german. Of course the entire book is quite old, which excuses it many of its faults, but doesn't fix them.Probably well worth reading if you want to sink into the feel of 1930s/1940s mysteries.
—Brian Palmer
A wealthy art collector and gallery owner in a midtown Manhattan mansion in the 1930s (I think) is found dead, apparently of a heart attack. No mystery there. But the will, which is known to have been changed the day before is death, is missing. The presumptive heir is able to call in the US District Attorney! Well, so it happens in Ellery Queen's privileged world. The first mystery, then, is to find the will and this Ellery attempts to do by eliminating every possible place except the coffin itself. Exhumation follows, and lo and behold, our man has company in his casket! So it goes. One mystery is solved, that leads to another, which Ellery solves, leading to a further mystery. This is my first taste of Ellery Queen. The puzzle aspect of the mystery is very satisfying. The writing itself is OK. I lost my copy on the bus and I'm not motivated enough to take it out from the library. Does that give you a clue?
—Mary
One of the joys of reading Ellery Queen novels is that moment toward the end of the book when the narrator steps out of character and challenges the reader to solve the mystery. I’ve read four of them now and I haven’t come close to getting the solution right. This time I caught one of the red herrings with a fair degree of accuracy—which means I was wrong, but not as clueless as I sometimes feel when I reach this point.This novel is a slow read but well worth your time. (It’s slow because you will want to take the time to consider each event as it occurs and try to decide what, if anything, it tells you about who committed the crime.) I’m reluctant to say too much about the plot lest I give something away, but this one has it all—missing wills, multiple deaths and a plethora of possible criminal masterminds. Four stars.
—Gilbert M.
