Ellery Queen: 5 Complete Novels

"Ellery Queen" is a title that represents the 'Golden Age' detective stories & novels that we have missed by several generations. With almost all those adventures getting out-of-print, it appeared as if we would be losing that sleuth as well as those two authors permanently to the abyss of time. Then there was a welcome break in the form of a couple of Crippen and Landru Classics short story collections that broke out last year. After reading these short stories I scanned the net and found this book which appeared attractive because of the cross-section of phases in Ellery's life that these stories represented. I got the book from Barnes and Noble, since their 'Used & Out-of-Print' section also caters to orders from India, unlike Amazon. It was a perfect value for money, but more importantly, it was refreshingly reveling to find out how, under the veneer of fair-play with the readers/listeners wherein the authors provided them every single clue that was being gathered by Ellery at the same time through his methods, immensely complex social relaities were being handled and discussed with pragmatic delicacy. This can be seen from each of the novels included in this omnibus collection, namely:

1. "And On The Eighth Day" is a fable disguised as a Crime story, that addresses the basic issues of dilemma and choice: what can be done, and what should be done.
2. "The Player On The Other Side" is a quest for a killer, as well as an exploration of the issues of identity and personality.
3. "Inspector Queen's Own Case" is a complex story of murder and deception, overcast by the grim realities underlining men-women relationship.
4. "Cat Of Many Tails" is about the simultaneous murder-spree of a serial killer and hunt to find him before the next kill takes place. This story once again made me feel that Ellery Queen, with his emotional vulnerability coupled with astute observations and tenacity, would have been more likely to catch Jack The Ripper, than Sherlock Holmes, had the killings taken place in New York of 1940-s rather than in Victorian London.
5. "Double, Double" is a Wrightsville murder case with the anticipated twists and pathos, but it is undoubtedly another gripping yarn.

All in all, I would like to recommend this collection to every lover of mystery and detection, since this novels are not likely to be reprinted shortly and yet their non-reading would be depriving yourselves.

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).

Cat of many Tails is excellent. The rest mostly show Queen in decline. 4 or 5 stars for that one novel, the rest 2 or 3.