Ellery Queen's short fiction - part one

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

This series of six volumes collecting all short fiction by Ellery Queen begins with a translation of Queen's first short story collection, "The Adventures of Ellery Queen".

As many know, Ellery Queen is the pseudonym of two cousins Frederic Dannay (who was the main man behind the plots and concepts of the stories) and Manfred B. Lee (who took Dannay's concepts and created readable novels and short stories from them).

Renowned Queen connoisseur Francis M. Nevins has divided Queen's authorship into four different periods. The first of these stretches from 1929 to 1935 and is the time when  the authors were most influenced by fellow mystery writer S. S. Van Dine and wrote pure logical puzzles where characterisation took a backseat to the mystery itself.

Period 2 stretches from 1936 to 1940 and constitutes the time when the cousins got jobs in Hollywood's film industry. This affected their authorship which became somewhat more "breezy". They were also beginning to get commissions from "ladies magazines" and romantic entanglements became more prominent in their stories.

In 1942 the third period began, lasting until around 1960. The authors paid particular attention to psychological elements and increased the realism of their stories, but also took the time to experiment with the pure fair play mystery. This was also the period where the town of Wrightsville was "invented". Subsequently a fair amount of EQ stories would take place there.

The fourth and final phase of Queen's career, from around 1960 to 1975 when the final Queen story was published, consists of a partial return to the more formal fair play mysteries of period 1, but these are interspersed with extravagant and fantastical settings.

The stories of this volume are written between 1933 and 1934 and are presented here in a chronological order (in contrast to the original American collection). Thus, they all belong to Ellery Queen's period 1 and are pure logical mysteries.

The first story of this collection is "The Adventure of the African Traveler", which was the first short story written by Queen. It was, unlike all the other stories here, never published in a magazine, making its first appearance in the original version of this particular collection. Ellery Queen is teaching detection to a group of three students, and they get to investigate a case where the titular traveller has been found murdered in a hotel room.

This is an interesting story where the solution to the mystery isn't too grand, but the idea of Queen's school of criminology is quite fun and leads to one of those tales where different people draw different conclusions from a specific set of clues. And that makes it all the more a pity that this was never followed up on.

Story number two, "The Adventure of the One-Penny Black", places us in the world of collectors. A man tells Ellery that someone knocked him out and stole a book from him, and when he later got home his other copy of the same book had also been stolen.

This isn't bad at all. Ellery gets to draw some psychological conclusions, though the solution isn't very hard to see beforehand. Some parts of the tale are quite reminiscent of certain Sherlock Holmes stories.

"The Adventure of the Teakwood Case" is a lighter story where Ellery has to solve a case concerning jewel theft and murder in an apartment house.

Some of Ellery's conclusions here feel rather farfetched. The main draw of this tale is the byplay between Ellery and his father. An all right story, nothing more.

"The Adventure of the Glass-Domed Clock" is a very clever story where an antique dealer is found murdered in his shop.

The dying message is one of Ellery Queen's best events. This tale has its very first appearance in an EQ story, and it's a good one. Most readers will probably be too quick to come to a certain conclusion - which almost certainly was the authors' intention from the very beginning. One of the best stories in this collection.

In "The Adventure of the Three Lame Men", Ellery has to investigate a case where a man has been kidnapped from his apartment, and the abductors have left footprints indicating that they are three lame men.

This is a really implausible story where I have a hard time imagining why the culprit would make up something as silly as the resulting situation.

In the next tale, "The Adventure of the Hanging Acrobat", we find ourselves in a vaudeville environment, something the authors seems to be familiar with. An acrobat's wife is found hanging from a rope in their dressing room.

NYPD's finest make a rather poor showing in this story. That only Ellery can draw the correct conclusions from the clues left doesn't say much for the intelligence of Inspector Queen or any of his men. Not the best story I've read.

In "The Adventure of 'The Two-Headed Dog'", Ellery takes a room at an inn. Some of his fellow guests tell a story about a previous guest at the inn. It turned out that he was a well-known jewel thief, but when the detectives come to arrest him, he has simply vanished from his room, but left his dead dog behind. And since then, the cabin he stayed in has been haunted.

This is an atmospheric story, which is a bit unfair to the reader - at least if they are expected to solve the mystery on their own. But the opening is great and the horror elements elevate the story. So all in all a fine tale.

"The Adventure of the Bearded Lady" follows next. Ellery is asked by a lawyer to investigate a case where a doctor, who recently received a large inheritance, has been killed.

This is probably the poorest story in this collection. The whole idea is very far-fetched, relying on one of my least liked tropes in mystery fiction (which to make matters worse is also hidden very badly), and the conclusions Ellery draw from a painted beard on a lady in a painting are just as far-fetched. I mean, come on, really.

In "The Adventure of the Invisible Lover", Ellery needs to prove that an accused murderer hasn't killed a fellow guest at the house where he boarded.

This is a rather clever story with an atmospheric conclusion in a cemetery. In contrast to the previous story Ellery's conclusions are much more down to earth.

Ellery needs to find out why an old lady is buying a whole bunch of cats in "The Adventure of the Seven Black Cats", even though she reputedly hates them.

I don't really see how Ellery can come up with the conclusions he draws, and certain elements of this story never get explained. Another fairly poor tale.

The final story is "The Adventure of the Mad Tea-Party", where Ellery is visiting friends who are all rehearsing a scene from Alice in Wonderland for the following day's birthday party. However, when they wake up the next morning the master of the house has disappeared. And then mysterious packages start to appear...

It's heartening that this collection finishes with its strongest work. There are several touchpoints between EQ and "Alice in Wonderland", but this short story is probably the greatest of these. The setting is appropriate and the clues are well-hidden. One could perhaps accuse the authors of drawing the tale out a bit by adding some red herrings, but on the whole this is one of Queen's very best stories.

Conclusion

Many modern readers have a problem with Ellery Queen's period one writing. It is quite dry and meticulous in its descriptions of the crime investigatons and focus on logic. So one advantage of these short stories is that they are short(!), forcing the authors to focus on the salient bits and to get to the point.

Some of the stories here are truly great, some are fairly poor, so as a reader you'll have to sort the wheat from the chaff.  I do find that the very best stories here ("Glass-Domed Clock", "Two-Headed Dog", "Invisible Lover" and "Mad Tea-Party") are among the finest in mystery short fiction. On the whole I'd recommend this collection to any fair play mystery fan.

However, there are no impossible crimes here, though if the authors had wanted to some of the tales could've easily be rejigged into that type of story. So that's a bit disappointing.