The Topsy-Turvy Murder

"At any rate, this thing needs the application of thought... China, China, China! I’m beginning to wish I had a Charlie Chan on the scene to clarify these esoteric mysteries of Orientalism. I’m completely bewildered. Nothing makes sense, nothing at all. This is the world’s most mystifying crime.”

"The Chinese Orange Mystery"

Almost there, almost there...

Reviews of Ellery Queen's 'nationality' novels:
The Roman Hat Mystery
The French Powder Mystery
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
The Greek Coffin Mystery
The Egyptian Cross Mystery
The American Gun Mystery
The Siamese Twin Mystery
The Chinese Orange Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery

The eight novel in the Ellery Queen series, The Chinese Orange Mystery (Dutch title: Moord Achterstevoren / Backwards Murder) starts with an unknown man visiting the office of Donald Kirk, publisher and philatelist, which occupies on the 22nd floor of the Hotel Chancellor. Ushered into the waiting room, the man is left alone for an hour or so, when Kirk and his friend Ellery Queen finally arrive at the office and Kirk takes a look inside the waiting room. What they find is total chaos. Or is it? Bookcases put backwards to the wall. The carpet upside down. And a man, dead, with his clothes on backwards, and a pair of decorative spears being slipped inside his trouser legs, running up behind his back and popping out near his head like a pair of devil's horns! Who was the poor man and why is he dressed backwards?

Often remembered as a certain kind of mystery which in effect spoils half the game, so do yourself a favor and don't read too much about The Chinese Orange Mystery before actually reading the book yourself. Ignoring the type of mystery, the problem of the man dressed backwards in a completely backwards room is definitely an alluring one. Most of the Queen novels have someone killed in an unlikely spot, but like The Egyptian Cross Mystery, this time we have a genuine 'strange' body. For why would the murderer go through the trouble of redressing his victim? Why, that is as strange as finding a totally naked dead body (foreshadowing!).

I have to admit though, while I like the idea of the reversed clothes and all, I never really liked The Chinese Orange Mystery. Most deductions are sound, but not nearly as impressive as those found in the earlier books. The theme of the backwardness is interesting, but it feels forced at times like the whole Egyptian cross thing in the same-titled novel. For some reason, the whole book feels, in my opinion, padded and it might have worked better as one or two separate short stories.

The world of philately is interesting though. Queen also used the Violent and Wild background of stamp collecting in his short stories and it is a specialist world that echoes Ellery's own bibliophilia (which on its own is a Queenian trope). Such high culture past-times naturally invoke a certain Philo Vance vibe, which isn't too strange considering the influence of those novels on the early Queens. Another interesting point is the character of a female writer who used to live in China; she seems like an early, but less fanatic Karen Leith of Queen's later The Door Between.

There really is not much I have to say about The Chinese Orange Mystery. The problem which shall not be named seems more suitable for a short story, and it is a bit too technical for my taste. It has, in a way, influenced writers like NisiOisiN, so it is not without its merits though. The problem of the backwards man is interesting, but too much padding in the middle seems to weaken the effect of the bizarre idea.

The Queen's Tale

"Whoever used this exercised the usal care and wiped the gun clean of prints. Sometimes I think there should be a law against detective stories. Gives potentional criminals too many pointers"

"The Siamese Twin Mystery"

And now I'm nearing the end of this post series, I realize I should have allowed for a bit of more time between each post. I can only hope I'll have my Japanese books by the time I'll be finished with these reviews...

Reviews of Ellery Queen's 'nationality' novels:
The Roman Hat Mystery
The French Powder Mystery
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
The Greek Coffin Mystery
The Egyptian Cross Mystery
The American Gun Mystery
The Siamese Twin Mystery
The Chinese Orange Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery

The Siamese Twin Mystery starts with father and son Queen on their way back from a holiday. Driving through Arrow Mountain (note: Ellery was the one who chose the mountain route, the Inspector emphasizes), the two wind up in a huge forest fire and are forced to flee deeper into the mountain, eventually finding refuge at the residence of Dr. Xavier. The doctor welcomes the Queens in his home, but the detective duo sense a certain tension among the colorful inhabitants and other guests of the mountain villa. Are the people hiding something from the Queens? The fire surrounding the house is naturally a source of worry for the people trapped inside, but the fact that Dr. Xavier is murdered that same night is not reassuring either. The only clue? A six of spades torn in half in the hand of the victim.

The 'strange' one in the series, together with The Eygptian Cross Mystery. For even though almost all previous Queen novels did include closed environments where the murderer had to be (The Roman Theater, the Dutch Memorial Hospital etc.), this is the first time Ellery finds himself in a faux closed circle situation. Faux I say, because the closed circle trope does not work effectively with a series detective. The closed circle trope works best when you really have no idea who might be killed next. Everyone on Indian Island had an equal opportunity to die And Then There Were None, which made the trope work. Compare to Kindaichi Hajime, who finds himself together with a violent serial murderer in a closed circle situation every other week, but the reader knows that Hajime will not be killed, the reader knows that there is no real danger for our hero. Ellery and his father are too established for them to just die like that. Even if you consider that this time the danger comes from a natural phenomena, the forest fire, (instead of a Jason-like killer), you are quite sure they won't be found burned to death at the end of the story. The forest fire does, even if not a real threat, make the usually tame / boring middle part of the story interesting to read, as there is always something happening, be it with the fire or the case itself.

The dying message is also of interest here; The Tragedy of X features one too, but of the early Queen dying messages, I like The Siamese Twin Mystery's one better, even though, or rather because the meaning, and usage of the dying message trope is very different in this novel. I think it is quite difficult to have a long story to be mostly about a dying message (as opposed to just one smaller element in the big picture), but it works here; the plot structure is really built surrounding the torn card in the victim's hand and that is quite a feat.

In Queen critisicm, The Siamese Twin Mystery is often refered to as an important novel. Like Kasai Kiyoshi notes in Tantei Shousetsu to 20 Seiki Seishin, the novel is a prime example of how the so-called Later Period Queen problems work. To quote myself from The Greek Coffin Mystery review:

If you accept the probability of a false solution, that is, the possibility that the real murderer can plant false clues that lead to the wrong person, then you're dealing with an unsolvable problem. Suppose Solution 1 (featuring murderer 1) is false, because clue A was planted, by murderer 2 (thus, solution 2, substantiated by clue B). What guarantee can you have that clue B, and therefore solution 2, isn't a plant by murderer 3? And in turn a murderer 4? This is a meta problem, and the writer can 'forcefully' end this by just ending his novel, but 'in-universe', the detective can never be absolutely sure his final solution is actually the correct one.

This is also true for The Siamese Twin Mystery which features several solutions. And here is the problem with the novel: how can you be sure that the solution posed by Ellery at the end of the novel is actually the truth? In fact, Ellery and his father are manipulated to arrive at false deductions throughout the novel. They notice their mistakes because of evidence found later in the story, so how can you be confident that the final solution is indeed correct, and won't be proven false by evidence discovered later? This philosophical problem plays throughout Queen's novels, but it is most evident here. One might for example also consider the fact that this novel does not feature the traditional Challenge to the Reader, for Ellery does not present his final answer because he 'found everything', he is forced to tell his ideas because the forest fire is not leaving him much time!

And to bring the topic back to the blog's main topic, Japanese detective novels, it's pretty clear that many writers were influenced by Queen in general, but also this novel in particular. You will find plenty of closed circles, Queen tropes and Later Period Queen problems in Ayatsuji Yukito's novels for example (especially the Yakata series), while Arisugawa Alice's debut work Gekkou Game similarly features a dying message and naturally created closed circle situation through a vulcano eruption.

Overall, The Siamese Twin Mystery feels a bit different. The range of the main problem, the dying message, is quite compact small and the story feels like a lengtened short story at times. The deductions are less complex and the final deduction even features something more intuitive rather than logical. But the novel reads more like an actual story. It's a slightly different Queen, but I think it's also one of the easier Queen to recommend to people, as the thrill of the closed circle and the more compact deductions are more accesible.

The Heel of Achilles

"I said I know everything."

"Oh." The Inspector relaxed. "Another one of your jokes. 'Course, you always know everything about everything. You're one of God's Four Hundred, you are. Isn't a subject on which you aren't an expert - like these book detectives - see all, know all... bah!"

"The American Gun Mystery"

One problem that I discovered while rereading Queen: I really need to replace some of the copies I have with better ones. I have no idea what mysterious force is keeping my The Siamese Twin Mystery in one piece, but it won't keep for long. And I know the books are available as ebooks now, but I am still old fashioned and consider e-readers bad just like rock & roll. I could get those nifty new Japanese releases too, but I'd rather have them in English.

Reviews of Ellery Queen's 'nationality' novels:
The Roman Hat Mystery
The French Powder Mystery
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
The Greek Coffin Mystery
The Egyptian Cross Mystery
The American Gun Mystery
The Siamese Twin Mystery
The Chinese Orange Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery

The American Gun Mystery brings us to the new sports stadium in the City, the Coliseum, where old Buck Horne, once a famous star in Hollywood's early Western films, is to perform in a rodeo exhibitition with rope tricks, riding and fancy shooting. The Coliseum is packed, among the guests are Inspector Queen, son Ellery and houseboy Djuna, and the eyes of all guests are fixated on Buck on his horse leading a pack of cowboys gallopping around the track, when the man is suddenly shot in his heart and overrun by the horses behind him. The Inspector immediately starts his investigation, sealing off the stadium, but no matter how much he and his men search the building and all the people inside it, they just can seem to find the murder weapon!

After a bit of traveling between states in The Egyptian Cross Mystery, we're back in New York in The American Gun Mystery. This novel feels a bit similar to The Roman Hat Mystery, because both novels have a murder during a show and a large-scale search for a certain item, which includes the need of detaining a very large number of people on the crime scene. Of course, this time it's a bit different from Roman Hat because the victim was at the center of the attention during the murder, which is something completely new in the Queen novels. For we actually see a bit of the victim before he's killed. I had said in my review of The Dutch Shoe Mystery that I liked that people died fast in these novels, which is still true, but it felt refreshing to have seen the victim alive and all (even if for just a very short time) for a change. It's also the first murder made from a distance, which is probably not that interesting, but maybe handy for some kind of Queen trivia quiz.

The literary device of J.J. McC., who pens the introductions to the Queen novels, is also used more prominently compared to the previous novels. In fact, J.J. McC. even appears in the last part to narrate the story, something I had completely forgotten about The American Gun Mystery. By now, J.J. McC. feels like an unneeded relic of the past though. His existence is as interesting as S.S. Van Dine in the Philo Vance novels, that is, not at all. The inclusion of J.J. as an active figure in the narrative is just distracting.

While not as complex and exciting as the previous two novels, The American Gun Mystery does has its moments. Like in The Dutch Shoe Mystery, it is actually possible to deduce a lot about the solution from information obtained in the early parts of the story, which shows how tricky Queen's plots can be, as it is not very likely that you will actually deduce that. Also, one of the major problems surrounding Buck Horne's death feels thematically close to a major puzzle in Arisugawa Alice's excellent Kotou Puzzle surrounding a treasure map, presenting a problem in a certain dimension, before revealing that you have to look at it from a totally different angle. It's not a logic puzzle per se, but I love these kind of riddles / puzzles that you solve by looking at things from a different angle. It is not difficult to figure out the problem, but it is interesting because it adds a possible dimension to Ellery's deductions that hadn't been explored in earlier novels.

Main criticism on the novel is probably aimed at the actual whereabouts of the murder weapon. After the searches in Roman Hat and Greek Coffin, the solution to The American Gun Mystery's problem can only be called disappointing. Of course, Golden Age novels are hardly nexi of realism, but still, this is one of those solutions you remember for reasons of the less-than-positive kind.

To make it short, not one of my favourite Queens. It's like an alternative The Roman Hat Mystery, but it is easier to forgive Roman Hat's faults considering it was Queen's debut work: The American Gun Mystery is disappointing compared to the much stronger previous novels.

Crucifixion of a Dead Man

“When a crime is committed by a non-habitual criminal, that is the time for the policeman to watch out. None of the rules he has learned will apply, and the information he has amassed through years of studying the underworld becomes so much dead wood.”

"The Egyptian Cross Mystery"

Usually posts on consecutive days mean I wrote a lot of reviews the first day and post them one a day, but I've actually been writing every day now... Not sure whether I can make it at this tempo all the way to the end though.

Reviews of Ellery Queen's 'nationality' novels:
The Roman Hat Mystery
The French Powder Mystery
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
The Greek Coffin Mystery
The Egyptian Cross Mystery
The American Gun Mystery
The Siamese Twin Mystery
The Chinese Orange Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery

The Egyptian Cross Mystery (Dutch title: Het Egyptische Teken / The Egyptian Sign) starts with Ellery visiting the little village of Arroyo, where the decapitated and crucified body of school master Andrew Van was discovered on Christmas. In need of material for a new book, Ellery looks around a bit and attends the Coroner's inquest, but not much can be made out of the case, except for the fact that the letter T seems to be a repeated motif in the murder: the headless body was crucified on a T-shaped signpost on a T-shaped crossroad and a bloody T had been left on the door of the victim's house. The police do find a clue about a person who might have murdered Van, but can't seem to trace him. Fast forward six months, when Ellery receives a letter from his old professor Yardley, who wants his pupil's help with a case: wealthy rug importer Tom Brad was found decapitated and crucified to a T-shaped totem-pole.

Quite different from the previous four books: whereas Ellery was mostly operating in relatively small and closed environments within New York, The Egyptian Cross Mystery has Ellery traveling outside New York, meaning he has to perform his deduction magic without the protecting powers of his pater. Add in the fact that the murders happen in quite different areas, and we have a moving Ellery, an active Ellery, which is almost shocking. The direct build-up to the climax in particular is almost the anti-thesis to the cramped movements of Ellery in his earlier adventures. I said in the review of The Greek Coffin Mystery that it seemed like Ellery was confined to smaller and smaller spaces with every novel, well, The Egyptian Cross Mystery is the complete opposite.

The more open feeling is not only present in the geographical movements of Ellery, the case structure is also much more open. This time we have several murders spread over the Eastern part of the States: gone is the certainty that the case was an inside job and all done by the same person, as the possibilities seem endless. With the previous novels, it was always quite clear that someone inside the main location must have commited the murder, but this time we aren't really dealing with such a closed environment; heck, in spirit the hunt for the mysterious man feels a bit like Queen's own Cat of Many Tails, which also featured a similar open case structure. This is a very different Queen.

Which is also apparent in the modus operandi of the criminal. Decapitated and crucified victims? The previous four novels had fairly clean deaths: strangulations and poison and such, so the jump to decapitations is quite big. Visually, as far as you can call a novel that, this is a very dark, if not darkest Queen. But there is of course a reason for the decapitations, which does form one of the weaker points of the novel. It might have been more surprising and shocking back in the time (or not, I don't know for sure), but even the most unexperienced reader of detective fiction would know what the crucial question is when dealing with the major trope of this novel. And Ellery... doesn't ask the question. Writer Queen evades the question, tries to cloud the reader's thoughts with hardly convincing theories and metaphores about Egyptian crosses and sungods and so, but the reader will think about the question, which will bring him very far in the solution to the problem.

The novel does greatly improve on the usually weak middle part of the Queen stories. Like The Greek Coffin Mystery, Egyptian Cross's structure with several distinct parts and climaxes is much more entertaining to read than the relatively slow and boring investigation parts of The Roman Hat Mystery, The French Powder Mystery and The Dutch Shoe Mystery. It is not as deduction-heavy as Greek Coffin though, with only one really important deduction chain around the middle of the novel that drives the plot forwards.

It's maybe because I am a fan of Yokomizo Seishi and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, but The Egyptian Cross Mystery has always felt most close to my own image of the Japanese detective novel (even though the genre is very varied there, and it is not really possible to pose the Japanese detective novel). From bloody murder to the so-called mitate murders (a trope close to, but wider than the nursery rhyme murder trope), the novel seems to have featured some tropes that seem quite popular in Japan (disclaimer: at a certain time, among certain readers of the genre).

Were I to rank the book, I think The Egyptian Cross Mystery would end up somewhere around the middle point. It's a bit different from the other early Queen novels, which turns out mostly good, but the lesser emphasis on absolute reasoning knocks it down my list.

Elleryana

"No man however modest -and Ellery Queen, I think he will be the first to agree, is far from that - cares to flaunt his failures to the world"

"The Greek Coffin Mystery"

For those wondering why I seem to be posting in a fairly regular schedule lately: I am actually a relatively fast reader and writer. It's just that I can't read Japanese as fast as Dutch or English, meaning I just can't post in this tempo when I read Japanese novels. Which is most of the time. And if one considers I also discuss games here (which usually take about 10~20 hours, compared to the couple of hours for a novel), well, that explains the regular schedule and the schedule of the last few days. I wish I were eloquent enough to explain this more concise . Like "I'm a locksmith and I'm a locksmith".

Reviews of Ellery Queen's 'nationality' novels:
The Roman Hat Mystery
The French Powder Mystery
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
The Greek Coffin Mystery
The Egyptian Cross Mystery
The American Gun Mystery
The Siamese Twin Mystery
The Chinese Orange Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery

The Roman Theater wasn't really Roman, the French department store not really French and the Dutch shoe wasn't really Dutch, but the body of famous art dealer Georg Khalkis was definitely Greek. His (non-criminal) death and the funeral were just little interesting blips on the news radar, but it's what happened after the funeral that caught the attention of the police and Ellery and what started The Greek Coffin Mystery. For right after the funeral, it's discovered that Khalkis' will has disappeared from the house safe. A search through the house, adjoining courtyard and graveyard is succesful, from a certain point of view. The will is still gone, but instead, the police do find an extra dead body of a person who was definitely not going to meet his Maker on voluntary terms.

Have I already mentioned that I consider this the best Queen novel? If not, I've done it now and if I had, well, it can't be said enough! I have no idea how the Queen cousins looked at their own work in their time, but it is like the two suddenly realized that the tropes utilized in their previous novels, like the grand search and fixation on objects, worked so well of their deductions, the long chains of cause and effect, the practical use of that adage 'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?'. Reading Queen is almost an exact science, but even someone weak in the exact sciences (like yours truly), can appreciate and admire the sheer ingenuity of the deductions Queen can produce just by the look of a set of tea cups.

Deductions are what drive this novel, which give The Greek Coffin Mystery a very different dynamic compared to the previous three novels. There we had a murder, long investigations and a climax. The middle parts were the most calm ones. Here however, the middle part is almost the most dynamic part of the story, and that is because Ellery's deductions are in the spotlight now, and even the murderer is aware of that. The structure of The Greek Coffin Mystery is quite well known, so I don't consider it a real spoiler if I mention that yes, there are false solutions planted by the real murderer, but this is something that only works because Queen was quite aware of the weaknesses of Ellery's method. He can deduce the world from one single item, but that doesn't mean he should. A crafty murderer can plant false clues to manupulate Ellery, as he will infer a complete (and totally false) world for you given the right stimuli. And that is what happens here. The murderer tries to trap Ellery with his false solutions: this is very different from the previous novels, where yes, murderers (naturally) did try to hide their guilt, but never did so by actually coming up with a complete false solution for the detective. Also, in The Greek Coffin Mystery, this battle for the truth between Ellery and the murderer is repeated several times, giving the novel a kind of adventure / interrelated short stories feeling, as it is like they have several skirmishes, continuously trying to adapt each other's strategies. In my mind, The Greek Coffin Mystery therefore feels quite close to Maurice LeBlanc's 813, even though they're actually very different novels.

These false solutions are of course a central problem to Queen's novels, in Japan usually called the Later Period Queen problems (even though it was first posed in Norizuki Rintarou's essay titled Early Period Queen Problems).  If you accept the probability of a false solution, that is, the possibility that the real murderer can plant false clues that lead to the wrong person, then you're dealing with an unsolvable problem. Suppose Solution 1 (featuring murderer 1) is false, because clue A was planted, by murderer 2 (thus, solution 2, substantiated by clue B). What guarantee can you have that clue B, and therefore solution 2, isn't a plant by murderer 3? And in turn a murderer 4? This is a meta problem, and the writer can 'forcefully' end this by just ending his novel, but 'in-universe', the detective can never be absolutely sure his final solution is actually the correct one. False solutions and manupulating murderers are a common sight in Queen novels, but it does pose fundamental problems for the genre and Ellery's method, especially as The Greek Coffin Mystery shows that it can be fairly easy to create a false solution.

It is of course both a strong and weak point of the story. I remember having seen several comments on how the story developments (=new deductions) seemed to have been driven by people who suddenly remembered new things, ergo the introduction of new elements to add in the equation, altering the outcome of the deductions. It shows at the same time how drastically deductions can change because of a new element, even if it requires exceptional reasoning power, but also how arbitrarily it can be: the only way to escape from a false solution is by having the writer intervene in one way or another and even that is not really convincing.

But if you don't worry about that, then you're in for a heck of a ride. The way Queen managed to work with all these false solutions and make them a relevant part of the final solution is amazing and a showcase of how logical reasoning puzzlers should be constructed. I had already noted that the actual spatial range of the stories seemed to become smaller with every novel, this time the story being mostly set around the Khalkis residence, but the imaginary spatial range, that is, the depth and breadth of the deductions, is probably the widest of all Queen novels.

Oh, and I love the play with chapter titles! The first two novels had them to a lesser extent (French had some references to nursery rhymes), while those of The Dutch Shoe Mystery were all nouns ending with -ion, but having chapter titles whose initial letters spell 'The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen' is just awesome!

And I still consider this the best Queen. I usually recommend this novel to newcomers, but now that I've read the books in order, I am inclined to change that opinion. The Greek Coffin Mystery was the first novel of the nationality cycle I had read, but this time I read it as an evolution of the previous three novels and the novel as a whole made more sense in that context.

Tale of Two Shoes

“There are only two detectives for whom 1 have felt, in my own capacity as hunter-of-men, any deeply underlying sympathy... transcending  racial idiosyncrasies and overleaping barriers of space and time... These two, strangely enough, present the weird contrast of unreality, of fantasm and fact. One has achieved luminous fame between the boards of books; the other as kin to a veritable policeman... I refer, of course, to those imperishables—Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, London, and Mr. Ellery Queen of West 87th Street, New York City"

"The Dutch Shoe Mystery"

  
Not really sure what to think when reviews of English-language novels have about as much hits as reviews on Japanese novels. Anyway, this is the second post in this EQ series, but about the third Queen novel. Because I already did The French Powder Mystery.

Reviews of Ellery Queen's 'nationality' novels:
The Roman Hat Mystery
The French Powder Mystery
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
The Greek Coffin Mystery
The Egyptian Cross Mystery
The American Gun Mystery
The Siamese Twin Mystery
The Chinese Orange Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery

The Dutch Shoe Mystery (Dutch title: Patiënt overleden Operatie geslaagd / Patient dead, operation succes) brings us to the Dutch Memorial Hospital, built thanks to the financial support of one Abigail Doorn (Mrs.), who is about to have an operation. Her protege, Dr. Janney, is to perform the risky operation, but the doctor discovers there is no reason to operate on Mrs. Doorn after she's been wheeled into the surgical amphitheater: the reason the patient does not move, is not because she is comatose (as she should have been), but more because she is already quite dead. Who strangled the poor woman during her standby time in the room next door? Janney is suspect number one, because several people state they saw him entering the room before the operation, but Ellery, who happened to be on the scene, is not sure. Especially not after the discovery of a pair of shoes.

The third novel in the series and in a sense a logical evolution of the previous two novels. For example, the setting. Like the theater of The Roman Hat Mystery and the department store of The French Powder Mystery, most of the action of The Dutch Shoe Mystery is placed in a relatively wide, yet unmistakenly closed environment. Here the book seems to be different from the previous two novels though: the actual discovery of the body is made in the amphitheater and adjoining rooms, an closed environment, inside the larger closed environment of the hospital. It brings a sense of a smaller scale to the mystery, which is also apparent if one compares the theater and the department store to the Dutch Memorial Hospital. In the narrative, it might be refered to as a fairly well running hospital, but we only see the main actors running around in the hospital and it almost feels claustrophobic, if one is to compare it to what happened in the Roman Theater, with the large scale body searches and all.

The idea of the murder being discovered just as they want to start the operation is very memorable. Death during an operation, like in Green for Danger or Team Batista no Eikou, is a risk that is inherent to a heavy surgical operation. The death might be an accident, or murder, but it is a bit easier to accept such a death. Here the reader, together with everybody else, is confronted with death right before the effort to save someone's life starts! The blow feels bigger somehow and leaves a stronger impression.

What I like about these early Queen novels is also how quickly people tend to die. As an impatient person, I want my victims to get murdered fast, and that is something the Queen novels do well. It only takes a couple pages before the reader is taken on an investigation rollercoaster, which is exceptionally strong in the first half of The Dutch Shoe Mystery. Most of this is set in the hospital, but events and revelations follow each other in a great tempo, making this a joy to read. The middle part / second half of the novel is weaker in comparison, with fewer events that actually drive the plot forwards.

Once again, an object forms the focal point of Ellery's deductions and this time it's the state of the pair of shoes the murderer had worn. This fixation allows Ellery to make one of the greater deductions in his career, as it is almost unbelievable the writer manages to deduce just from a pair of shoes! Logicwise, this is definitely one of the high-points in the series, though it is hampered by the fact that an important event late in the novel makes it very easy to deduce who the murderer is, weakening the importance of the shoe-deduction chain. Oh, and I've heard people complain about how it is practically impossible to deduce the motive for the murders, which is absolutely true, but I have never seen it as a problem in the Queen novels. By the time Ellery has done building his logical prison around the suspect, we know that it was physically (and often also knowledge-wise) only possible for one person to have commited the murder. A motive is not even needed at this point (you can see that I am neither a policeman nor a laywer). A motive with these kind of stories, which rely on highly logical elimination deductive methods, is just an extra, in my opinion.

The 'new' thing of The Dutch Shoe Mystery, compared to the previous two novels, is probably the detailed map of the Dutch Memorial Hospital and the focus on movement and time of the actors. The first part of the novel has long descriptions of Ellery's movements through the hospital, descriptions of where the rooms are located and exact times when certain events happened. The chart of the hospital is definitely a vital part of the novel and this strong visual aspect is something you don't even really see in later Queen novels (at least not at the same level). It does fit the closed environment setting of these novels and it adds to the whole neat and clean image of the hospital.

Definitely a fun Queen novel, but this third novel is admittedly not as strong in my opinion as the second (The French Powder Mystery) or the fourth in the series (The Greek Coffin Mystery). In fact, now I think about it, if I'd rank the first nine Queen novels, this would definitely rank in the lower half, but that is more because of the overall quality of those novels, than a critique on this novel.

In which the Queens go the theatre

"Ellery is merly indulging in his favorite game of ratiocination. He doesn't know where the papers are any more than you do. he's guessing.... in detective literature," he added with a sad smile, "they call it the 'art of deduction,'"

"The Roman Hat Mystery"

 
It's almost been two months and I'm still waiting for the boat to deliver the books I sent to myself from Japan, so to fill the time, I finally decided to reread Ellery Queen. Because it's been a while. I'm planning to do the first nine novels only, and seeing I already did The French Powder Mystery a year or two ago, I'll be skipping that one too, so eight to go. And yes, I know that there are two persons behind the EQ nome-de-plume and Barnaby Ross and all of that, but as I will be mostly writing about the novels based on their plot and structure, and not about the world outside that (writers and such), I'll be just talking about Queen, as 'one' writer for convenience's sake. And to make it clear from the start: I refer to the writer as Queen, and to the character as Ellery (which is also what I do for Norizuki Rintarou and Arisugawa Alice by the way).

Reviews of Ellery Queen's 'nationality' novels:
The Roman Hat Mystery
The French Powder Mystery
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
The Greek Coffin Mystery
The Egyptian Cross Mystery
The American Gun Mystery
The Siamese Twin Mystery
The Chinese Orange Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery

The Roman Hat Mystery is indeed about a hat, though there is nothing particular Roman to it. The titular hat belonged to a certain Monte Field, crooked laywer and his untimely demise is what forms the main mystery of this novel. His rather dead body was found in a seat of the Roman Theater, during a particularly popular play and two items that the police would have liked to have found near the body were sadly not present there. That is, Mr. Monte Field's top hat and of course his murderer (because that would make things a lot easier). Inspector Richard Queen of the New York police has little choice but to try to find hat and murderer somewhere in the theater. Which is rather full people who really want to go home, with the play cancelled and a dead body among their midst and all. But the inspector doesn't has to work alone! Besides a loyal and capable group of subordinates, he's also blessed with a son Ellery, who can be pretty darn smart when he isn't talking about first edition books and all.

The first Queen novel and has both elements the reader will find in following novels, as well as some 'strange' other artistic choices. The biggest surprise of The Roman Hat Mystery is perhaps the role of our master-detective Ellery Queen. Ellery Queen might be presented as the detective in this story, but this is actually more inspector Queen's story than his son's. The story mostly follows the inspector's efforts in locating the victim's murderer and his hat and the reader is introduced to a large group of policemen, the District Attorney and shown the ways the inspector interacts with everybody. His son, billed the protagonist, on the other hand stays largely in the background and in fact, does not even appear in person in the last section of the book, nor at the crucial moment of unmasking the murderer. Yes, it was Ellery who solves the case, but he has nothing to do with the practicals of bringing the case to an end. In fact, Ellery might as well have been a ghost or some figment of the inspector's imagination, assisting him at the crucial moment with brilliant deductions. In following novels, Ellery luckily gains more personality and already in the second Queen novel, The French Powder Mystery, we see a more active Ellery in the form of a detective, rather than an oracle figure misplaced in a police story.

But the problem of the missing top hat is something we'll see a lot in Queen novels. I can't remember where this was, but I once read a text that described Ellery Queen as having a fetish for objects; that is, a lot of (the deductions in) his stories are focused on objects, whether they are missing or present or in a certain state or condition, and these objects are almost even more central to the story than for example the victim himself. In The Roman Hat Mystery, the fact the victim's hat is missing is what sets the Queens on the right trail, but one can for example also think of the beginning part of The Greek Coffin Mystery, where drinkware becomes a central point, or the cards in The Siamese Twin Mystery.

And if we're dealing with specifically a missing object, like in this novel, you can bet on a Grand Search. The Queens, they love searching for objects. And the people in the world of the Queens, they love hiding things. In all kind of places. If it's not in here, then it's beneath that or behind this or on top of that. These searches have a tendency to be set in a large area, forcing the Queens (+ accompanying police) to work very thoroughly, making it all the more surprising when we discover where the desired object was all the time.

The Queens also love rather strange crime scenes. A murder inside a packed theater? What about a body on display in a department store?  One might call it objectification of the dead body, together with the crime scene, as the murder itself is not half as interesting as the picture of how the dead body is found. In general, the bodies aren't in places that are strange per se. It's just a small adjustment to the scene that makes you feel uneasy. A man neatly dressed in a theater? Normal, except for the fact he's dead and not wearing a hat. Somebody lying in a showcase bed of a department store? Normal, except for the fact she's dead (and was locked inside the wall). These are the 'normal' examples, but there are some stranger ones in the following novels.

The other major Queenian trope, the Challenge to the Reader is also present and this is something I still enjoy thoroughly. I am not very familiar with contemporary English(-language) detective novels, so I am not sure how often this is used, but I still come across challenges in Japanese mystery novels and approach these novels with a slightly different mindset than 'normal' detective novels. Sure, I try to solve detective novels myself anyway, but give a challenge, and I am at least sure the writer tried to make it fair for me too.

I am not too familiar with the activities of other mystery clubs in Japan, but at least Kyoto University Mystery Club has a long tradition of Guess the Criminal stories, which are short stories, with a challenge to the reader (whether explicitly written or not): members have to read the first part of the story, up until the challenge and try to solve the case themselves, after which they are handed out the solution. This might explain why the trope is still relatively popular in Japan, as writers who originate from clubs with such a tradition are probably more trained in this device, and maybe also more willing to use it.

But how is The Roman Hat Mystery as a novel? At one hand, we have the logical deductions based on the elimination method that make the Queen novels such a joy to read and elements like an exciting search for a top hat and such. On the other hand, most of the characters besides the inspector are a bit bland and the deductions and hints that ultimately lead to the identity of the murderer are not as refined as in later novels: yes, the elimination method of deduction does point to the murderer (that is, we know the murderer has characteristics X, Y and Z, and only person A has all three characteristics, ergo he is the murderer), but not all hints are not laid down as visible to the reader as they should have been, making it feel less satisfying. Compare with the direct sequel The French Powder Mystery, where the murderer may seem to come out of nowhere, but the logic and the underlying hints in the text are fundamentally much stronger (and thus more convincing to the reader).

I would definitely read The Roman Hat Mystery though. Despite some minor points, it's still a fine mystery novel and has enough of the elements that grow out to be typical Queen tropes. Maybe not the best Queen novel, and maybe a bit 'different' from the other early Queen novels because of its focus on the formal police investigation, but enough of a royal entry.