Calamity Town – Ellery Queen (1942)

Before I ever started actually reading Ellery Queen, I had read a lot about him.  Err…them…and him?  If you’re reading this then you’re likely aware that “Ellery Queen” refers to both the detective character and the pseudonym used by the Dannay/Lee cousins who wrote the series.  And quite a series it was, stretching well over 30 novels.  Two of my favorite blogs – Noah’s Archive and Ah Sweet Mystery – have excellent posts breaking that career down into a set of periods.  From the very beginning, the third period – Wrightsville – has stood out as a destination I very much wanted to get too.

My experience with Ellery Queen hasn’t exactly been great so far.  The first period books were dry slogs.  I dragged myself through four of them before abandoning my mission to read the series in order.  I skipped ahead to the so called Hollywood period, and had much better luck with The Four of Hearts, even if it did feel a little…well, Hollywood.

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The Quintessence of Queen – Edited by Anthony Boucher (1962)

I acquired a substantial portion of my Ellery Queen library through bulk purchases of 15-30 books at a time.  Swept up in the tide were several “associated by name only” compilations such as The Quintessence of Queen – assortments of short stories published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and probably tossed into the bundles by some seller who didn’t know much better.

I’m admit I’m a fan of the short story.  As a child I read a fair amount of Ray Bradbury and similar authors who walked the tightrope between science fiction, mystery, and horror.  As an adult, I found my way into the locked room genre via the short story form.  Since going full in with my reading of John Dickson Carr, I’ve stuck to novels based on the knowledge that authors such as him recycled story ideas occasionally – The Gilded Man being a well known example to appear in both short and long form.  Better to ruin a twenty page read than a two hundred page one…

The Tragedy of Y – Barnaby Ross (1932)

Ok Ellery Queen, you finally won me over.  I’ve been your critic up to now, but from this day forward, some part of me will always be your fan.  The Tragedy of Y did something for me that none of your books have ever accomplished – it kept me engaged from cover to cover.  More importantly, this is the one that’s sticking with me for a long time to come.

I recently abandoned my attempt to read Ellery Queen in order because it was just plain boring.  The four first period stories that I made it through were dry, overly long, and never really paid off in the end.  The same could be said for The Tragedy of X – my one encounter with Queen writers’ alter-ego Barnaby Ross.  Published in 1932 (the same year as The Greek Coffin Mystery and The Egyptian Cross Mystery), The Tragedy of X was a marathon of exhaustive police work and… weirdness.  You see, the amateur detective of the series, Drury Lane, is an odd character.  An actor residing in a storybook castle situated on the Hudson river, Lane exists somewhat outside of the realm of standard Golden Age reality.  His gnome-like servants, his positioning as a 60 year old adonis,… I really have no clue what the authors were going for.

The Four of Hearts – Ellery Queen (1938)

I absolutely love reading about Ellery Queen.  When I read posts at Ah Sweet Mystery or Noah’s Archive detailing the various phases of the detective/author’s career, I get completely sucked in.  There’s a myth I create in my mind about these unread books and it’s amplified by the sheer number of them.  They may simply be titles and cover art to me at this point, but my imagination fills in those gaps with the promise of something legendary.

Unfortunately, I don’t actually enjoy reading Ellery Queen.  At least, I haven’t so far.  The first phase of his career, known for its puzzles and logical deduction, sounded right up my alley.  It wasn’t.  Attacking the books in order, starting with The Roman Hat Mystery and clawing my way through to The Greek Coffin Mystery simply wasn’t much fun.  These weren’t stories – they were painstaking descriptions of crime scenes followed by crossword puzzle-esque contortions of logic at the end.  There were some pleasurable moments mixed in there – the denouncement in The French Powder Mystery was a heart pounding moment; The Dutch Shoe Mystery had a clever bit of misdirection; The Greek Coffin Mystery wasn’t nearly as tedious as its predecessors – although somebody should have carved about 80 pages off that one.

The Greek Coffin Mystery – Ellery Queen (1932)

At long last, I’ve made it…I think.  I’ve survived the brutal intrigue-barren plains of the first three Ellery Queen novels with a grim determination to make it to an oasis – The Greek Coffin Mystery.  With the promise of a nearly unanimously regarded top five Ellery Queen novel, I’ve maintained a steady yet bleary eye on the horizon as I trudged through hundreds of pages of mind-numbingly detailed suspect interviews and crime scene searches.  Now that I’ve arrived at the goal, would it be a GAD paradise or merely a mirage?

I started my journey reading Queen in publishing-order with burning excitement.  Here was one of the big name golden age authors – a true master of the craft – with a library of almost forty novels to look forward to.  I’ll never forget those first few chapters of The Roman Hat Mystery.  Mesmerized by crime scene maps, dramatis personæ, and a false forward, I waded into the chaos of those exciting first few chapters as the New York police struggled to contain a crime scene in a crowded theatre.  It took a while, but as I slowly realized that I was going to have to sit through the police interviewing every damn person in the theatre, I found my startled eyes contemplating just how many pages there were in the book.

The Dutch Shoe Mystery – Ellery Queen (1931)

It’s been six months since I set out on a mission to approach the Ellery Queen books in order…. and it’s been six months since I read one.  My initial experiences with The Roman Hat Mystery and The French Powder Mystery were a true let down.  Although both books started somewhat strong, they descended into the monotony of one-dimensional investigation.

We all love a little investigation though, don’t we?  Well, not when it’s the only thing you get over the course of a 250 page novel.  Page after page of interviews followed by more interviews, then a review of the facts, then more interviews, then more reviews of the facts.  Without a touch of comedy, atmosphere, or really anything else, it gets to be a little much.

The Tragedy of X – Barnaby Ross (1932)

Is it possible to fall in love with a book?  No, not the novel contained within, but the physical object itself.  I have two copies of The Tragedy of X, and if I were to go purely by cover, I’d have read my Avon copy (the publishing year of which I haven’t been able to figure out).  This time though, I was lured beyond the cover by the pure beauty of the corpus itself.  My Pocket Book edition is the seventh printing (from October of 1942), and it is a beauty to behold.  The pages are the very definition of paper thin – the writing, and in some cases the imprint of the printing itself, is clearly visible through each page.  The feeling is incomparable to any other book I possess – the most desperate analogy that I can conjure is that of silk.  In that sense, this has been a pure joy to hold, and I’ve savored the mere turn of each page.

Ah, but as to what those pages hold…