Status
Available
Call number
Series
Genres
Publication
Penguin Books (2014), 384 pages
Description
Fiction. Mystery. HTML:The "intensely logical" master sleuth discovers a crowded coffin in one of his earliest and most puzzling cases (The New York Times). The scion of a famous New York art-dealing family, Georg Khalkis spent his final years housebound with blindness until he died of a heart attack. After his funeral, his will mysteriously vanishes. Following a thorough search, Inspector Richard Queen's son, Ellery, suggests checking the coffin, where they discover not one, but two corpses. When the second body is identified as an ex-convict, it becomes clear they have a murder case on their hands with links to the art world and a da Vinci forgery. It's up to young Ellery Queen to solve the case in "a lively and well-constructed yarn containing unusual setting, ingenuity of plot, a surprise solution and legitimate use of the analytico-deductive method" (New York Herald Tribune Book Review).… (more)
Media reviews
Whoever [the author] may be, he knows how to write a first-rate detective story.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Bobnitefan
This is the first EQ book I read. The story is very engaging and is full of plot twists. The final answer was totally unexpected. I found the explanations of why the character must be the correct answer a little confusing, but this is perhaps standard EQ fair.
LibraryThing member mmyoung
Ellery Queen [1] and S. S. Van Dine each began to write and publish a successful detective series in the late 1920s/early 1930s. The lead character in each was a young man who had a personal relationship with members of the law enforcement community in New York City (close friends with the DA in
The first Philo Vance book, The Benson Murder Case, is about the first murder investigation Vance is involved with therefore the reader sees over the course of several books the development of Vance's relationship with different members of the police force. In the first Ellery Queen book, The Roman Hat Mystery, Ellery has already worked with his father and other police officers investigating crimes. However in both cases the amateur detective around whom the series revolves has already developed their method of thinking, their deductive principles, and thus the reader gets no sense of how they came to be. Since both detectives are markedly different from the “regular” police officers in terms of their syntax, vocabulary and mannerisms their superior abilities seem to arise from differences of education and cultural exposure rather from innate intellectual abilities. To put it more starkly, one learns not to expect incisive and logical thinking from members of the working class or lower middle class. In S. S. Van Dine one learns to expect brutish and unimaginative thinking and actions from anyone who is a regular member of the police force or, indeed, who works for a living.
The fourth Ellery Queen book, The Greek Coffin Mystery, begins with a departure from the formula used in the first three books. The first mystery we encounter is not a murder but rather the disappearance of a strong box and the will it contains. The murder is discovered only in the course of the attempt of the police, including Inspector Queen and his son Ellery, to find the missing will. This is a younger Ellery than the detective the reader met in previous books since The Green Coffin Mystery is a prequel rather than a sequel to the already published books. When Ellery Queen first appears on the scene we are told, “It was a younger and cockier Ellery, and, since his connexion [sic] with the policing of New York City was not so firmly established at this time, he was still considered something of an interloper despite his unique position as the son of Inspector Richard Queen. (p. 37)”
The Ellery Queen the reader has come to know in earlier books is still recognizable but he is, as the author points out, noticeably more cocky in his behaviour towards officials and witnesses.
As happened so often in the earlier books Ellery makes comments so vague that none can follow, makes people do things that are silly (why have everyone drink tea when all you need to demonstrate is how much water is in the percolator) and archly hints that he knows more than anyone else. What is different than in previous books is what happens when Ellery lays out, in painstaking detail, his deductions. It is clear that Ellery believes that they are inarguable and yet immediately two people punch holes in his theories -- one with a fact that he had been unaware of and the other with demonstrable proof that was of his deductions was factually incorrect.
"Years later Ellery Queen was to go back in memory to this moment with the sad remark: 'I date my maturity from Knox’s revelation. It changed my entire conception of myself and my faculties.’
“ The whole delicate structure of his reasoning, so glibly outlined, toppled and shivered into fragments at his feet. This in itself would not have been so disastrous to his ego had it not been coupled with a strong element of personal mortification. He had been 'smart’ about it. He had been so clever and subtle....p. 126"
Although this passage does not mark a sea change in the characterization of Ellery it does mark the moment, for this reader, when the authors indicate that they themselves are aware of some of the more problematic ways in which Ellery’s ratiocination have been demonstrated and described. And in a way, this can be read as a direct shot across the bow of Philo Vance since Vance repeatedly argued that “clews” and the other elements of routine police work were unnecessary to someone with a mind such as his and indeed could be misleading. All of Ellery’s logic was as nothing because he didn’t know all the facts and all the logic in the world could not replace the holes in any story left by missing data and misapprehensions.
This backstory is also used to explain why, in the first three books, Ellery was so often evasive about providing information about his conjectures to his father and other police officers. It seems that the authors had noticed some degree of criticism from readers and reviewers about that behaviour.
To buy into the Ellery Queen (or Philo Vance) mysteries one also has to buy into the idea that the authors behind these men are actually as well informed as their detectives are supposed to be. Yet there are many instances in which I am not sure the detectives (or rather their authors) are as well informed as they believe themselves to be. For example, in this book, I rather doubt that the authors even understand what colour-blindness is since they define partial colour-blindness as follows: “Demmy is afflicted with a common case of partial colour-blindness in which he consistently sees red as green and green as red." pg. 140. Demmy, it is made clear to the reader, doesn’t confuse the two colours nor does he have problems distinguishing between them he just uses the word red to describe green and green to describe red. Given that Demmy has a limited IQ one could imagine a circumstance in which he learned the wrong names as a child and has not been able to unlearn his mistake but this is not colour blindness. In fact it is the opposite of colour blindness because Demmy clearly sees those two colours as different. The fact that Demmy does not use the correct names for these colours is all the authors needed to establish.
Similarly there are moments when a reader wonders at the authors choice of words, for example when Inspector Queen is carefully but very openly searching a suspect’s rooms the authors describe his actions as follows: “The Inspector was very circumspect; he allowed nothing to escape him; he dropped to his old knees and probed beneath the rug, tapped the walls, explored the interior of the closet.” p. 165
As with all the early Ellery Queens, indeed, as with most popular books written at that time, there is so much casual sexism and racism that it becomes almost pointless to highlight individual examples. This is the first Queen book in which I noticed a large amount of “lookism” as it is sometimes called giving physicals details such as weight, height, and hair such exaggerated detail and importance that the behaviours and statements of the described individuals will be judged quite differently than they would by and from individuals differently described. One thing that does stand out is the way in which stereotypes and prejudices of then and today do not always map over each other perfectly.
This book is interesting for what it attempts while still showing the weaknesses of the formula on which the authors depended. For many modern readers these shortcomings are probably of little interest since they are most notable when one reads several books in quick succession. For the casual reader the formula may be at most a minor irritant. What may be more difficult for the today’s readers is the constant sexism, racism, classism and lookism.
[1] For the purposes of review and analysis I will write as if Ellery Queen was a single person although in fact it is the joint pen name for Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee. In later years other writers were also hired to write under that name but the initial books were written by Dannay and Lee and they always had a fairly tight control of material that went out under their professional name.
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the case of Vance and son of a prominent Inspector on the force in the case of Queen) but was not himself officially part of the force. As the series begin there are many parallels and a few major differences between the amateur detectives themselves and the police forces they aid. Both Vance and Queen are privately wealthy (Queen inheriting money from his mother), both are well educated and both affect a pseudo-aristocratic attitude. Vance, the reader is told, attended university in England and his speech still reflects that. He makes a point of decrying the pedestrian methods of the police and underlines whenever possible how much more interesting it would be for him to attend a play or go to an museum than visit a crime scene. Queen wears a pince-nez and seems to feel a need to make reference to operas, plays, poems and books whenever possible even if they are at best tangentially relevant. He hides clues from police officers, does not wait for a member of the police to be present to question witnesses and withholds results from the police labs from police officials involved in the cases. The first Philo Vance book, The Benson Murder Case, is about the first murder investigation Vance is involved with therefore the reader sees over the course of several books the development of Vance's relationship with different members of the police force. In the first Ellery Queen book, The Roman Hat Mystery, Ellery has already worked with his father and other police officers investigating crimes. However in both cases the amateur detective around whom the series revolves has already developed their method of thinking, their deductive principles, and thus the reader gets no sense of how they came to be. Since both detectives are markedly different from the “regular” police officers in terms of their syntax, vocabulary and mannerisms their superior abilities seem to arise from differences of education and cultural exposure rather from innate intellectual abilities. To put it more starkly, one learns not to expect incisive and logical thinking from members of the working class or lower middle class. In S. S. Van Dine one learns to expect brutish and unimaginative thinking and actions from anyone who is a regular member of the police force or, indeed, who works for a living.
The fourth Ellery Queen book, The Greek Coffin Mystery, begins with a departure from the formula used in the first three books. The first mystery we encounter is not a murder but rather the disappearance of a strong box and the will it contains. The murder is discovered only in the course of the attempt of the police, including Inspector Queen and his son Ellery, to find the missing will. This is a younger Ellery than the detective the reader met in previous books since The Green Coffin Mystery is a prequel rather than a sequel to the already published books. When Ellery Queen first appears on the scene we are told, “It was a younger and cockier Ellery, and, since his connexion [sic] with the policing of New York City was not so firmly established at this time, he was still considered something of an interloper despite his unique position as the son of Inspector Richard Queen. (p. 37)”
The Ellery Queen the reader has come to know in earlier books is still recognizable but he is, as the author points out, noticeably more cocky in his behaviour towards officials and witnesses.
As happened so often in the earlier books Ellery makes comments so vague that none can follow, makes people do things that are silly (why have everyone drink tea when all you need to demonstrate is how much water is in the percolator) and archly hints that he knows more than anyone else. What is different than in previous books is what happens when Ellery lays out, in painstaking detail, his deductions. It is clear that Ellery believes that they are inarguable and yet immediately two people punch holes in his theories -- one with a fact that he had been unaware of and the other with demonstrable proof that was of his deductions was factually incorrect.
"Years later Ellery Queen was to go back in memory to this moment with the sad remark: 'I date my maturity from Knox’s revelation. It changed my entire conception of myself and my faculties.’
“ The whole delicate structure of his reasoning, so glibly outlined, toppled and shivered into fragments at his feet. This in itself would not have been so disastrous to his ego had it not been coupled with a strong element of personal mortification. He had been 'smart’ about it. He had been so clever and subtle....p. 126"
Although this passage does not mark a sea change in the characterization of Ellery it does mark the moment, for this reader, when the authors indicate that they themselves are aware of some of the more problematic ways in which Ellery’s ratiocination have been demonstrated and described. And in a way, this can be read as a direct shot across the bow of Philo Vance since Vance repeatedly argued that “clews” and the other elements of routine police work were unnecessary to someone with a mind such as his and indeed could be misleading. All of Ellery’s logic was as nothing because he didn’t know all the facts and all the logic in the world could not replace the holes in any story left by missing data and misapprehensions.
This backstory is also used to explain why, in the first three books, Ellery was so often evasive about providing information about his conjectures to his father and other police officers. It seems that the authors had noticed some degree of criticism from readers and reviewers about that behaviour.
To buy into the Ellery Queen (or Philo Vance) mysteries one also has to buy into the idea that the authors behind these men are actually as well informed as their detectives are supposed to be. Yet there are many instances in which I am not sure the detectives (or rather their authors) are as well informed as they believe themselves to be. For example, in this book, I rather doubt that the authors even understand what colour-blindness is since they define partial colour-blindness as follows: “Demmy is afflicted with a common case of partial colour-blindness in which he consistently sees red as green and green as red." pg. 140. Demmy, it is made clear to the reader, doesn’t confuse the two colours nor does he have problems distinguishing between them he just uses the word red to describe green and green to describe red. Given that Demmy has a limited IQ one could imagine a circumstance in which he learned the wrong names as a child and has not been able to unlearn his mistake but this is not colour blindness. In fact it is the opposite of colour blindness because Demmy clearly sees those two colours as different. The fact that Demmy does not use the correct names for these colours is all the authors needed to establish.
Similarly there are moments when a reader wonders at the authors choice of words, for example when Inspector Queen is carefully but very openly searching a suspect’s rooms the authors describe his actions as follows: “The Inspector was very circumspect; he allowed nothing to escape him; he dropped to his old knees and probed beneath the rug, tapped the walls, explored the interior of the closet.” p. 165
As with all the early Ellery Queens, indeed, as with most popular books written at that time, there is so much casual sexism and racism that it becomes almost pointless to highlight individual examples. This is the first Queen book in which I noticed a large amount of “lookism” as it is sometimes called giving physicals details such as weight, height, and hair such exaggerated detail and importance that the behaviours and statements of the described individuals will be judged quite differently than they would by and from individuals differently described. One thing that does stand out is the way in which stereotypes and prejudices of then and today do not always map over each other perfectly.
This book is interesting for what it attempts while still showing the weaknesses of the formula on which the authors depended. For many modern readers these shortcomings are probably of little interest since they are most notable when one reads several books in quick succession. For the casual reader the formula may be at most a minor irritant. What may be more difficult for the today’s readers is the constant sexism, racism, classism and lookism.
[1] For the purposes of review and analysis I will write as if Ellery Queen was a single person although in fact it is the joint pen name for Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee. In later years other writers were also hired to write under that name but the initial books were written by Dannay and Lee and they always had a fairly tight control of material that went out under their professional name.
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LibraryThing member JeffreyMarks
One of the all-time greats. 4 different solutions proposed in a cat-and-mouse game between a very young Ellery and a cunning killer.
LibraryThing member Jiraiya
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
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.
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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.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LARA335
I devoured library-borrowed Ellery Queen mysteries many years ago as a teenager, and so had to buy this age-spotted book found in a second-hand book shop recently. The puzzle was complex, but I thought I had guessed the 'who dunnit' when I got to the page where the reader is notified all the clues
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have been revealed. And I was delighted that I was wrong and had obediently followed the red herring. So a very good puzzle, but as a far more mature reader I did yearn for some character development and psychological exploration. Show Less
LibraryThing member ChazziFrazz
An early book in the Ellery Queen series, it has a much detailed and different style from the later books.
Set in the 1930s, Ellery has yet to develop his analytical chops and can make mistakes in his possible solutions, which he does in this case. These errors cause him to re think and search for
George Khalkis, well known and respected art dealer, is found dead at home. Heart failure is the first decided cause. When Khalkis' newest will disappears and it seems there is a question of who inherits what, questions start to arise. The D.A. calls in Inspector Queen to investigate, and he in turn calls on his son Ellery.
After investigation and analysis, Ellery determines where the missing will is, but when that place is examined the will is not there. Instead it is the body of and ex-convict! This adds another element to the mystery.
The writing contains much detail so I found that I needed to take time to read or I would miss things. There is quite a long cast of characters, a number who would benefit from the estate if the new will isn't found.
One thing I did enjoy is the 'challenge to the reader' that is posed by Ellery prior to revealing the solution. Knowing it was coming, I tried that much more to solve it.
Not a fast read, but a very satisfying read!
Set in the 1930s, Ellery has yet to develop his analytical chops and can make mistakes in his possible solutions, which he does in this case. These errors cause him to re think and search for
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the missing elements needed to solve the mystery.George Khalkis, well known and respected art dealer, is found dead at home. Heart failure is the first decided cause. When Khalkis' newest will disappears and it seems there is a question of who inherits what, questions start to arise. The D.A. calls in Inspector Queen to investigate, and he in turn calls on his son Ellery.
After investigation and analysis, Ellery determines where the missing will is, but when that place is examined the will is not there. Instead it is the body of and ex-convict! This adds another element to the mystery.
The writing contains much detail so I found that I needed to take time to read or I would miss things. There is quite a long cast of characters, a number who would benefit from the estate if the new will isn't found.
One thing I did enjoy is the 'challenge to the reader' that is posed by Ellery prior to revealing the solution. Knowing it was coming, I tried that much more to solve it.
Not a fast read, but a very satisfying read!
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LibraryThing member busterrll
One of the earlier Ellery Queen Mysteries - Pretty good plot but a bit dated with the racial word usage of the time.
LibraryThing member EricCostello
My particular copy of this book had a few editorial comments by the previous owner, which I actually found germane. He (the previous owner) wasn't fond of Ellery Queen (the character), finding him annoying. Which is true; here he can be annoying as Philo Vance, and that's saying something. The
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mystery itself is one of those puzzle-mysteries with a whole mess of contrived clues that don't really jibe with reality, though it's not meant to. From an entertainment level, it's pretty good. Can't say I found the solution to be to my taste, though once elucidated, I did see the chain. Show Less
Awards
Julian Symons' 100 Best Crime Stories (1932 — 1932)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1932
Physical description
384 p.; 7.74 inches
ISBN
0143125141 / 9780143125143