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"Golden Age" Detective Fiction


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By the way, another book I had on hold --  "The Egyptian Cross Mystery" by Ellery Queen -- came through yesterday and I decided to tackle it before the others recently mentioned.  I just get a real kick out of those stories; they are so earnestly camp.  

R

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And this time “The Egyptian Cross Mystery” took me past 11:30 pm almost to midnight while I finished the final pages.  
 

At least on this one I had an inkling of who the culprit might be, although far from a complete solution at the point where the book stopped and challenged the reader to work out the solution based on what had been discovered at that point.  As it turns out, there was nothing Egyptian involved — this was an erroneous theory of Ellery’s at the outset, but quickly put to rest. He announces at the end, however, that he is going to use that term in the title for the book he writes about this investigation (I.e,, the book we have just finished reading).  Wheels within wheels. 
 

Now back to “Final Curtain.”

R

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On 10/27/2021 at 6:42 PM, Cole Parker said:

Wasn't it the Algonquin Table?  With Dorothy Parker and James Thurber and Robert Benchley and those guys.  Oh, wait: the Algonquin Round Table.  A little before my time, but way before yours.

I don't think they twerked back then.  But they did drink a lot.

C

It referred to a group that met at the Algonquin Hotel on 44th Street.
 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Now I have completed "The American Gun Mystery" by Ellery Queen.  Sensibly, I did not try to keep reading this one late into the night; I finished it first thing in the morning!  It certainly lived up to the tradition of Ellery Queen mysteries technically complying with the "you know everything I know at this point" challenge to solve the mystery, although the actual solution is anything but obvious.  My only real complaint is that the exposition-laden opening chapter was pretty heavy-handed in dumping all sorts of character information on the reader in advance of the story getting underway. 

I have not decided what to do about the Ngaio Marsh mystery, "Final Curtain," that I started a short while back.  It's due in a few days.  I just have not really gotten into it for some reason.  I confess also that I have been doing a lot of reading in some non-fiction titles that have distracted me from the mystery world.  I may just let the Ngaio Marsh loan expire . . . we'll see.  

But I will also look for the next Ellery Queen title in the series. 😁

R

 

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On 11/10/2021 at 7:11 AM, Merkin said:

Soon, R,  you will be able to hang out your own shingle as a Private Eye.

Any client engaging me would have to be desperate!

Meanwhile, just finished "The Chinese Orange Mystery" by Ellery Queen.  I actually skipped over the previous book, "The Siamese Twin Mystery," because that one was checked out (I placed a hold) and this one was available.  

As always, "Orange" had a Challenge to the Reader about 80% of the way in, claiming that we readers now had all the info Ellery had and how could we possibly not see the obvious solution.  Trust me, the solution was not obvious.  The ending was also kind of sad, but overall it was unquestionably an engaging mystery.

Gonna let "Final Curtain," the Ngaio Marsh/Roderick Alleyn book, expire.  Just not getting into it.

R

P.S.:  I’m still waiting for “Siamese Twin” to come off hold, but the book after “Chinese Orange,” entitled “The Spanish Cape Mystery,” was available to borrow, so I will continue down the series  

 

 

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And . . . I have finished "The Spanish Cape Mystery" by Ellery Queen.  The "Spanish Cape" reference is geographical, although there is also a clothing-type cape that plays a role in the mystery.  Definitely kept me guessing.  The "challenge to the reader" point was not to be taken seriously, in my view . . . the analysis required some pretty serious stretches.  Still, it kept me glued to the story for several days (and into several nights).   Interestingly, a central feature of this book involves the clothing of the victim, which was also a prominent feature of the last book ("Chinese Orange").  

Still waiting for "The Siamese Twin" mystery.  It appears that after this last book, the titles stopped following the formula of having a geographic/nationality term in the title.  The next volume in the series is simply called "Halfway House."  

R

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Now I am partway into "Halfway House" (not to be confused with "halfway into 'Partway House'") and I am really disappointed.  It is pretty clear that this volume, although attributed to Ellery Queen as author, is written by someone different from the previous books.  And this new author lacks the taste and skill of his or her predecessors (the cousins who originated the Ellery Queen series).  The writing is very clunky and unimaginative, with none of the charm or sophistication seen in the previous books.  And the new Ellery has no real personality (indeed, none of the characters do) and has lost all the quirks (like quoting in French or Latin) and playfulness of the earlier books.  Honestly, this volume would barely meet the standards for publication on awesomedude.com.

I will finish this one, because I am curious whodunit, and I will read "The Siamese Twin Mystery" (still part of the original run) when it comes off of the library hold, but I think this will mark the end of the line for me and Ellery Queen.

R

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Finished "Halfway House" about 11:00 PM, so didn't miss too much sleep.

This book, like the earlier ones, has a "challenge to the reader" point about 80% or so into the book, where it is stated that the reader now has all the information Ellery has and therefore should be able to solve the mystery.  (Apparently this is the last EQ book with such a challenge.)  Curiously, once I stopped and thought about it, the solution was fairly obvious, and I correctly deduced who the culprit was.  My solution was not as elaborate as Ellery's, but it was correct.  

The author of the "Passing Tramp" blog, which discusses mystery stories, noticed some of the same issues with this book that I did, in a post entitled "Half Full: Halfway House."  He writes:

The tenth Ellery Queen detective novel published since 1929 (fourteenth if you count the "Barnaby Ross" tales), Halfway House is classified as the first of "Period Two" Ellery Queen, where the author began moving away from the ultra-formal, extremely dense clue structure of his period one mysteries.

I think one might argue that Queen began this transition in The Spanish Cape Mystery, but one can certainly see in Halfway House an attempt by the author to focus more on emotional situations and less on pure puzzle plotting.  While there is some typically ingenious EQ clueing here, there also is emotional melodrama that is less successful, in my view.  If the world divides into people who prefer different periods of Ellery Queen writing (there are four, according to EQ expert Francis M. Nevins), put me down as a Period One man.

I have to concur.  The level of craft in the so-called Period One pieces is simply superior, and this one falls short.  I think the author(s) were trying to fashion something they were ill-equipped to fashion, and it fell flat.  Handling emotion in fiction writing takes some skill, and the author(s) here had not developed it.

So, again, I am still interested in reading "The Siamese Twin Mystery" but after that I will move on to another sleuth (or two or three).

R

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finished "The Siamese Twin Mystery" last night (half past midnight).  Of course I could not get to sleep once I was down to the last 30 pages or so.  

This story genuinely includes a pair of Siamese twins, who turn out to be 16-year-old boys.  While this tale hews closely to the Period One style referred to above, it has a somewhat different flavor in that the two Queens (father and son) are on vacation, rather than in New York City with its many resources, and while confronted with the need to solve not one but two murders, are simultaneously in personal peril from nasty forces of nature right to the end.  This lends an undercurrent of tension to the story that is not generally present in earlier books.  Also, this book does NOT have the trademark moment when Ellery breaks the fourth wall and challenges the reader to solve the mystery.  Moments of this kind are implicit in a number of places throughout the story, without need for the reader to be specifically prompted.  

Overall a decent yarn with some very surprising twists and turns.  But, as mentioned above, I feel it is time for me to move on to some other series after reading the first of the Period Two books discussed earlier.  

R

P.S.:  The best part is that I finished the book while still having four days left on the library loan.

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  • 7 months later...

"Dead Men's Money" is a 1920 mystery by J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher.  I ran across it quite by accident, having never heard of this author.  It's full of mystery and intrigue, not to mention foreshadowing that makes the reader want to shout out a warning . . . similar to the feeling when the young protagonists in a horror movie go into the dark and deserted house.

It is now in the public domain in the U.S. (and probably everywhere else), and free copies in various formats are available here.  

R

 

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  • 3 months later...

Just thought I'd check in and mention that I have been working my way, as chronologically as possible, through Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" novels and short-story collections.  The L.A. Public Library seems to have virtually all of them available to borrow electronically.  I started with the first novel, "Fer de Lance," from 1934.  I'm about to wrap up with "A Family Affair," which I believe is the last Nero Wolfe novel published during Stout's lifetime.  I know I read it many years ago, so I already know a big piece of the story that comes as a shock on first reading, but I am sure I will still enjoy reading it again.  

R

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Finished “Family Affair” and have now exhausted the entire Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe collection at the Los Angeles Public Library.  Based on the listing of other titles at the back of each volume, I’m fairly confident I have now read the whole series because I think the library has all the titles in its collection. 

Having lived briefly in New York City myself, it’s interesting to correlate the locations mentioned in the books with my own memories. Wolfe’s brownstone would have been just east of the Javits Center on West 35th Street, though I’m not sure when the Center was built.  Archie seemingly never used the subway system, but he would have benefited from being on the west side where the tunnels are wider and the cars more modern. 

I’ll miss those characters. 

R

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My recollection from the books (they're all returned so I can't go back and check) is that Wolfe's brownstone was at 318 W 35th Street in Manhattan.  That's between 8th Avenue and 9th Avenue, close to Penn Station and definitely not in the East River.  And if there ever was a brownstone at that address, it's long gone today.  Here's what that block looks like now:

35th-2022-11-14-171220.jpg

 

R

 

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