Ellery Queen's short fiction - part two

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

If the stories of "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" at least stylistically were of the same quality the tales of this volume are quite different. The stories here were written between 1935 and 1939, and during this time the authors evolved into a glossy, Hollywood-like style where romance and characterisation took a greater role.

The stories of this collection are yet again presented in chronological order, which means that the first few stories are still quite similar to those of the previous volume, while the last four stories present a very different Ellery Queen - our hero has even found a girlfriend in the gossip columnist Paula Paris (first introduced in the novel "The Four of Hearts").

No matter, this collection starts off with "The Adventure of the House of Darkness", where even the title reminds us of the earlier tales. Ellery Queen is visiting an amusement park with Djuna, who persuades him to enter the House of Darkness. Inside, they fall about, having a grand time, until Djuna finds the dead body of a murdered artist.

This is a clever story which is also an impossible crime - how could anyone have killed a man inside a completely dark house? Ellery Queen draws some dazzling conclusions, and this is definitely a highlight of the collection.

And yet it cannot measure up to the following story: "The Lamp of God". This novella presents one of the great  mysteries in the genre ("how can a house disappear without a trace?"). Ellery is asked by a lawyer friend to accompany him and a recently discovered heiress to a house in the middle of nowhere. The inhabitants of the house all seem fairly sinister, and when they wake up the following day, the house next door has vanished!

This is probably Queen's best effort in short fiction, though whether this can actually be called short is a matter of opinion. The solution is fairly obvious (which isn't particularly strange - a house cannot actually disappear) but the authors surround the main problem with a bunch of lovely setups, and Ellery needs to come up with as clever a conclusion as he's ever done.

In "The Adventure of the Treasure Hunt", a pearl necklace goes missing, and Ellery creates a treasure hunt to try to trap the person responsible.

Parts of this story are actually quite entertaining, it just pales in comparison to the first two stories here. The justification for not reporting the criminal to the police dates it quite badly.

A young nurse approaches Ellery in "The Adventure of the Hollow Dragon" and tells him that someone has knocked her out and stolen her employer's door stop, the titular dragon.

With this story the reader will start noticing how the authors are slowly changing their style. The logical fireworks are played down a bit, and even though Ellery gets to show off some, the story doesn't really take off.

Ellery Queen is visiting an actress in "The Adventure of the Bleeding Portrait". Their neighbours are a very jealous artist and his wife. Of course she has an admirer who turns up at the most inopportune times. And then one day, someone has splashed red paint on a portrait of her and the admirer has disappeared.

I must say that this is pretty awful, possibly Ellery Queen's worst short story ever. When I reached the end I really wondered what the point of it all was.

We now move on to the final four stories, all featuring Paula Paris as a recurring character. All four have an overarching theme, taking place in some kind of sporting environment.

The first of these four stories is "Man Bites Dog", where we find out that Ellery is madly interested in baseball. While present at the World Series match between the Giants and the Yankees Ellery and Co. are sitting next to two famous actors, and just next to them is the female actor's husband with female company. And then the husband keels over, poisoned.

Anyone who's read the earlier stories about Ellery might have a hard time reconciling this sports idiot with the earlier academic fop. Still, when the mystery actually starts, Ellery gets to show some of his best routines, even if it is just to be able to focus on the game again. A fairly clever story.

"Long Shot" takes us to horse racing. In this case, there's been threats against one of the racehorses, and then the trainer's daughter is kidnapped.

Ellery again gets to strut his stuff, but this is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill story. Absolutely no fireworks.

Boxing - to be more exact a match for the heavyweight world championship title - is the theme for the next story, "Mind Over Matter". One of the boxers takes an intentional fall, and is found murdered afterwards.

This is in fact an impossible crime, though those elements are so downplayed it's hardly noticeable. Ellery seems to care more about his lost overcoat than the murdered boxer, but manages to tie everything together rather cleverly in the end. A pretty good story, all in all.

The final story, "Trojan Horse", is set in an (American) football environment. In this case, a bejewelled ornament disappears just before an all-important match.

Ellery needs to draw some quick conclusions before the game is over and all suspects have disappeared. The authors don't quite play fair with the reader, because it's more or less impossible to figure out how those jewels actually were stolen even if you read very thoroughly...

Conclusion

 As I said to begin with, this is a varied bunch of stories, though not only stylistically but also qualitywise. The good stuff is truly, truly great, and the nadir is so low that a modern Scandi-noir story is preferable.

However, because the good stuff is so good, I have to recommend this collection to any mystery fan. Just approach some stories warily and you should be okay.

What's even better is that the really good stuff is of the impossible variety. So both "House of Darkness" and "Lamp of God" will be included in my (not so) little project.