Ellery Queen's short fiction - part four

(This is a translation of the preface I wrote for this Ellery Queen collection.)

Not long before the 50s, the Ellery Queen authors made a deal with the magazine This Week to produce a number of short short stories about Ellery Queen. The lion's share of these tales were written between 1949 and 1954, and the few stories that weren't published in This Week were placed in the authors' own mystery magazine: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.The last seven stories here are from the early 60s, but being so short, it is hard to see any stylistic difference between them and the earlier ones.

Here in Queen's Bureau of Investigation, the stories are once again presented in chronological order. As mentioned, they are often very short (most of them have less than 2000 words), and it goes without saying that with such a length you cannot expect much more than a very stylized puzzle.

Frederic Dannay used to describe these stories as "fun and games", and in many cases the stories simply consist of a fairly quickly described situation where Ellery gets to explain how this situation came about. Certain solutions are more far-fetched than others... Almost all of these "fun and games" tales are featured here, though you will find some in the following two volumes.

Because of the large number of stories here, I will only go through them very quickly - they aren't really made for deep analysis (or even for what goes for analysis here on this blog).

In "The Lonely Bride", Ellery has to find out where an unconscious young woman has hidden her money, while "The Three Widows" give us an impossible crime where two sisters are suspected of murdering their stepmother. "Money Talks" is a story of blackmail, and after that Ellery has to find out where the "Miser's Gold" is hidden.

"A Lump of Sugar" is the only clue to a murder in Central Park. "The Witch of Times Square" is dying and wants to bequeath her money to a certain relative, and Ellery needs to ensure which of two candidates is this relative. In "The Gamblers' Club", one of the members is trying to deceive the others, and in "Driver's Seat" one of three brothers has killed the fourth brother's widow.

"Child Missing!" is a fairly silly kidnap story, while the following "Double Your Money" is a clever impossible story about a money wizard who vanishes right in front of Ellery. "The Black Ledger" contains the names of several members of a drug mob, and Ellery is given the task to ensure that the ledger isn't found by the mob. "Cold Money" gives a shoutout to Cornell Woolrich's classic story "Mystery in Room 913", as Ellery has to solve a murder in a hotel room with just that number.

"Snowball in July" is another clever impossible story about an entire train that goes missing(!), while "Cut, Cut, Cut" is a slighter tale about a widow who's been killed by one of her three companions. "My Queer Dean!" is a fairly easily solved mystery about a stolen book, and how someone who knows nothing about boxing is supposed to solve the case in "A Matter of Seconds", I just don't know.

"A Question of Honor", a story about a British policeman who's been murdered, has a solution that will return in future stories, while Ellery in the fairly clever "GI Story" needs to find out which of three brothers has killed his stepfather. In "Diamonds in Paradise", a diamond necklace has been stolen, but the thief manages to die before revealing where he hid them.

In "Mystery at the Library of Congress", Ellery is tasked by the Secret Service to expose an espionage ring by finding connections between certain books. "E = Murder" is possible the most stylized of these stories. Ellery gets to spout several different solutions to an impossible murder of a prominent scientist, each more far-fetched than the preceding one. In "The Broken T", a woman has been abducted and threatened, and Ellery needs to find where she was taken to.

In "Half a Clue", a pharmacist dies right in front of Ellery, who now needs to find out which of his step children killed him."Last Man to Die" is a trifle where Ellery needs to figure out which of two men died first. "Payoff" is yet another variant of the authors' old chestnut - "what differentiates one thing from all others?". In the final tale, "Dead Ringer", we get yet another spy story. It's not worth thinking about all the coincidences that have to happen in order for the clue the dead spy left behind should actually work...

Conclusion

These stories are generally pure brain teasers - "fun and games", as Dannay put it, is a very apt description. They're just a little bit more elaborate than an Encyclopedia Brown story. Still, if you're in the right frame of mind, they ARE fun reads. Just don't expect any characterisation or elaborate setups.

There are in fact five impossible mysteries here. Two of them are quite good ("Snowball", "Double Your Money"), one is pretty much all right ("Three Widows") and two are poor ("E = Murder", "Diamonds in Paradise"). So I'll use the first two of these for my project.