Queen, Ellery

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MISADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
Ellery Queen
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000BT58JI

Product Description

This book was edited by Ellery Queen and the Contents consist of 4 Parts - stories by authors dating from 1892 - 1941. "PART ONE - BY DETECTIVE-STORY WRITERS" - this has 9 short stories by such writers as: Robert Barr, Maurice Leblanc, Carolyn Wells, Vincent Starrett, Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie, Anthony Boucher, Ellery Queen, & Stuart Palmer. "PART TWO: BY FAMOUS LITERARY FIGURES" - stories by Sr James M. Barrie, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, & O. Henry. "PART THREE: BY HUMORISTS" - stories by R. C. Lehmann, John Kendrick Bangs, and Stephen Leacock. "PART FOUR: BY DEVOTEES AND OTHERS" - stories by Zero (Allan Ramsay), R. K. Munkittrick, Oswald Crawford, Julies Castier, A. E. P., August Derleth, William O. Fuller, Hugh Kingsmill, Rachen Ferguson, Frederic Dorr Steele, Frederric Arnold Kummer and Basil Mitchell, Logan Clendening, M.D., Richard Mallett, S. C. Roberts, and Manly Wade Wellman.

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About Crime!
Spread across Ellery-the-character's career
Only one of the 5 is really good

Ellery Queen: 5 Complete Novels
Ellery Queen
Manufacturer: Random House Value Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Tragedy of Errors and Others
Ellery Queen Omnibus
The Hollywood Murders
The Roman Hat Mystery
The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries

ASIN: 0517365782
Release Date: 1988-12-12

Customer Reviews:

About Crime!.......2007-06-11

"Ellery Queen" is a title that represents the 'Golden Age' detective stories & novels that we have missed by several generations. With almost all those adventures getting out-of-print, it appeared as if we would be losing that sleuth as well as those two authors permanently to the abyss of time. Then there was a welcome break in the form of a couple of Crippen and Landru Classics short story collections that broke out last year. After reading these short stories I scanned the net and found this book which appeared attractive because of the cross-section of phases in Ellery's life that these stories represented. I got the book from Barnes and Noble, since their 'Used & Out-of-Print' section also caters to orders from India, unlike Amazon. It was a perfect value for money, but more importantly, it was refreshingly reveling to find out how, under the veneer of fair-play with the readers/listeners wherein the authors provided them every single clue that was being gathered by Ellery at the same time through his methods, immensely complex social relaities were being handled and discussed with pragmatic delicacy. This can be seen from each of the novels included in this omnibus collection, namely:

1. "And On The Eighth Day" is a fable disguised as a Crime story, that addresses the basic issues of dilemma and choice: what can be done, and what should be done.
2. "The Player On The Other Side" is a quest for a killer, as well as an exploration of the issues of identity and personality.
3. "Inspector Queen's Own Case" is a complex story of murder and deception, overcast by the grim realities underlining men-women relationship.
4. "Cat Of Many Tails" is about the simultaneous murder-spree of a serial killer and hunt to find him before the next kill takes place. This story once again made me feel that Ellery Queen, with his emotional vulnerability coupled with astute observations and tenacity, would have been more likely to catch Jack The Ripper, than Sherlock Holmes, had the killings taken place in New York of 1940-s rather than in Victorian London.
5. "Double, Double" is a Wrightsville murder case with the anticipated twists and pathos, but it is undoubtedly another gripping yarn.

All in all, I would like to recommend this collection to every lover of mystery and detection, since this novels are not likely to be reprinted shortly and yet their non-reading would be depriving yourselves.

Spread across Ellery-the-character's career.......2003-06-16

Consists of AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY, CAT OF MANY TAILS, DOUBLE, DOUBLE, INSPECTOR QUEEN'S OWN CASE: NOVEMBER SONG, and THE PLAYER ON THE OTHER SIDE.

AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY (1964) is set during 1944. Ellery, driving across the desert (in those days, he worked in Hollywood as well as his native New York City), encounters by chance an obscure community settled by a religion that doesn't exist outside that community. (The title is a play on words, following the structure of the KJV of Genesis.) It's virtually another world, created anew by its founders - and the isolated community is now dealing with its first murder.

CAT OF MANY TAILS (1949) picks up where TEN DAYS' WONDER left off, so it would have made more sense to include that rather than DOUBLE, DOUBLE (below) as the token Wrightsville story. After the TEN DAYS' WONDER case, in which one character played Ellery like a violin, Ellery resolved to give up detection, feeling that he'd played God once too often and others had suffered for his arrogant confidence in his own cleverness. His father, who hadn't been involved since that had been a case in Wrightsville's jurisdiction, had been unable to persuade Ellery to help with any other cases, until the Cat - a serial killer with few discernable patterns - began stalking New York, and Inspector Queen was put in charge of the task force hunting the murderer down. What really frightens the city's law enforcement and politicians is that a combination of factors - including public hysteria whipped up by the media - seem bound to result in massive panic-stricken riots if the killings continue much longer.

DOUBLE, DOUBLE (1950) is set in Wrightsville, where another serial killer appears to be following the nursery rhyme 'rich man, poor man, beggarman...' Given that this is Ellery Queen, this could be *either* a psychopath *or* a cover for a murder for sane motives - the Queen team has done both, in their time.

INSPECTOR QUEEN'S OWN CASE: NOVEMBER SONG (1956) is a favorite of mine, more than the sequel HOUSE OF BRASS that I happened to read first (don't let that happen to you, this is the stronger book). Inspector Richard Queen has finally reached mandatory retirement, and he has too much pride to let Ellery hover over him - when the story opens, Richard is staying with an old friend, who retired only to take up a much quieter police chief job in a sleepy New England seacoast town. The 3rd-person viewpoint is mainly split between Richard - who's privately depressed, feeling he's outlived his usefulness - and Jessie Sherwood, a professional nurse looking after a newly-adopted baby for a childless rich couple in the area. The story opens, though, with some up-close details of what turns out to have been an illegal adoption - the rich couple would've been too old for an adoption-through-channels, so they essentially bought the child. (The birth mother, an unwed nightclub singer, is actually a decent person - the slimy go-between only persuaded her to go through with it by selling her the idea that the wealthy adoptive parents could give the kid a better life than she could.)

Unfortunately, the flaw in that theory is that various parties - the ne'er-do-well nephew, for one - find it inconvenient to see a sizeable fortune suddenly redirected to an unexpected small baby. After Jessie and Richard meet casually on the beach while she's out with the baby, he insists on coming along with the chief when there's a report of an attempted kidnapping on the estate. When tragedy finally strikes, Richard and Jessie join forces in some unofficial investigating.

THE PLAYER ON THE OTHER SIDE (1963) Title quote is from Huxley, speaking of the universe as the chessboard and natural law as the rules, with the 'player on the other side' metaphorically being God - all-powerful, all-knowing. All the chapters are named for chess moves, though somewhat informally.

In this book, the gameboard is York Square, its corners featuring the four rook-like towers in which the four heirs to the York fortune while away the time until a former heir, missing and presumed dead for many years, finally has to be bypassed under the terms of his father's will. The unseen 'player on the other side' who knows too much about York Square for comfort, however, bypasses all four would-be heirs in going to work directly on Walt, the seemingly insignificant handyman who looks after the Square, and is so starved for human contact that mysterious, flattering notes from the unknown 'Y' carry a lot of weight with him. From Walt's point of view, we see a few of Y's messages before the first murder brings us around to the usual Ellery-and-Inspector-Queen viewpoint.

Their problem, of course, is to find out who might be trying to make Walt a fall guy, and there are far more than 4 suspects. Emily York, for instance, is absorbed in good works; many people, from her assistant Ann to a lot of desperate cases, have a stake in seeing her get funding for her more grandiose philanthropic schemes. Percival's redistribution of wealth would be more personal, involving his fellow woman rather than fellow man. Myra, jilted years ago, seems disconnected from reality, and Robert almost equally so in a different way (he's a fanatic stamp collector).

Only one of the 5 is really good.......2001-11-23

Cat of many Tails is excellent. The rest mostly show Queen in decline. 4 or 5 stars for that one novel, the rest 2 or 3.

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All the early short stories

Ellery Queen Omnibus
Ellery Queen
Manufacturer: Dorset House Publishing Co Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Similar Items:

Ellery Queen: 5 Complete Novels
The Tragedy of Errors and Others
The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries

ASIN: 0880292733

Customer Reviews:

All the early short stories.......2001-11-23

All of Queen's early short stories, from the Adventures and New Adventures of Ellery Queen. Most are excellent. A must for the pure-puzzle mystery fan.

A TREASURY OF GREAT MYSTERIES - Volume (1) One; and (2) Two: Man Who Explained Miracles; Incautious Burglar; Arrow of God; Instead of Evidence; Big Sleep; Maigret's Christmas; Puzzle for Poppy; Rear Window; Lamp of God; Journey into Fear

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A TREASURY OF GREAT MYSTERIES - Volume (1) One; and (2) Two: Man Who Explained Miracles; Incautious Burglar; Arrow of God; Instead of Evidence; Big Sleep; Maigret's Christmas; Puzzle for Poppy; Rear Window; Lamp of God; Journey into Fear
Howard; Beecroft, John (editors) (Carter Dickson; John Dickson Carr; Leslie Charteris; Rex Stout; Raymond Chandler; Georges Simenon; Patrick Quentin; Ellery Queen; William Irish; Eric Ambler; Dorothy L. Sayers; Craig Rice; Stuart Palmer) Haycroft
Manufacturer: Nelson Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B000GVVYAS

The Ellery Queen Omnibus: The Roman Hat Mystery; the French Powder Mystery

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The Ellery Queen Omnibus: The Roman Hat Mystery; the French Powder Mystery
Ellery Queen
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Ellery Queen: 5 Complete Novels

ASIN: B000E8O8OW

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The Sixties (Masterpieces of Mystery)

Manufacturer: Davis Publications,Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000FI2NSE

Product Description

Mystery Anthology

The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries

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Challenge to the Reader

The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries
Ellery Queen
Manufacturer: Crippen & Landru Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

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The Tragedy of Errors and Others
More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne
The Sound of Detection: Ellery Queen's Adventures in Radio
Diagnosis: Impossible--The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne
The Roman Hat Mystery

ASIN: 1932009140

Product Description

THE ELLERY QUEEN-TENNIAL!!!!! Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who wrote under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, and whose fictional sleuth was also named Ellery Queen, were probably the most important American mystery writers from 1929 until the early 1970's. Ellery Queen is the American detective story, wrote Anthony Boucher and he meant not only their detective novels, but also their critical writings, their editing, and their appearance on television and the radio. From 1939 until 1948, Lee and Dannay wrote a hugely popular radio mystery show, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, which like the EQ books stopped the action toward the end and challenged the audience to deduce whodunit. From the more than 350 surviving scripts, we have chosen fourteen of the most challenging: The case of the Tontine whose members die off one by one The disappearance of Napoleons Razor on a cross-country railroad train The case that Sherlock Holmes failed to solve The strangling in a haunted cave with only the victims footprints leading to the corpse A dying message which seems to name all the suspects The clue of the dead moth and 8 other extraordinary mysteries This book is published in honor of the centennial of the births of Lee and Dannay, and (n the fictional world of EQ), the centennial of Ellery himself. The publisher: Founded in 1994 as the only publishing house to specialize in mystery short story collections, Crippen & Landru has been described as a monument in the making (Alfred Hitchcocks Mystery Magazine) and the best edited, most attractively packaged line of mystery books introduced in this decade (Mystery Scene), and even God bless Crippen & Landru (The Strand). In many ways, however, in introducing completely unknown EQ detections to a new generation of readers, The Adventure of the Murdered Moths may be our most important book.

Customer Reviews:

Challenge to the Reader.......2005-08-19

The two cousins who wrote as "Ellery Queen" were born in 1905, and for their centennial the estimable specialty house Crippen & Landru have come out with a book of some radio plays they wrote in the late 30s and early 40s, the peak years for the great detective. Crippen & Landru issued an outline for a final, unfinished novel (A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS) which is marvelous to have, but this volume is a quantum leap more satisfying and a fantastic addition to the Queen corpus.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE LAST MAN CLUB. A play involving a tontine underwritten by an industrial capitalist tycoon and whose members are mostly Navy veterans who served with the dead son of the tycoon. One of the members is hit by a car while crossing the street, and Ellery's hot on the case.

THE ADVENTURE OF NAPOLEON'S RAZOR will appeal to everyone who loves trains, especially guys with model railroading replicas in their basements. Ellery and Nikki try to trap a cunning killer on a train completely sealed off from the outside world.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BAD BOY. Did a little boy really poison his aunt's stew with arsenic? Ellery and Nikki have to face down the possibility that even a young 10 year old may do evil in the name of love. This one is extremely far-fetched, but persuasive.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MARCH OF DEATH. When old man March gets bumped off he tries to leave a clue by carving it into his desk with the very knife that stabbed him! Then the killer erases the dying message. You won't feel a thing for any of these people, they're all despicable, but just try to figure out the solution!

THE ADVENTURE OF THE HAUNTED CAVE. Set high in the Adirondacks, HAUNTED CAVE has a spooky story to tell. A ghost hunter is slain inside the wooden door of a cave. The only footprints leading to his body are his own. It seems almost sure that Montague is the victim of a hundred-year old ghost. Almost a Henry Merrivale sort of crime for Ellery.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST CHILD. This case will remind readers of several other well-covered but much more recent true crime stories (Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, etc). The depravity of the murders in this radio play goes considerably beyond anything Queen was writing in his novels at the time. I would have thought the ad agencies would have hesitated before sponsoring this one, it's awfully trenchant.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLACK SECRET. Some mystery lovers get all lovey dovey around mysteries set in bookstores with rare book dealers as victims or suspects. This is one of those cases. It isn't my favorite, but I like having Mike Callahan-a rival sleuth-feature in Ellery's cases, and the set-up when Ellery gets arrested on suspicion of shoplifting had me laughing my ass off.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DYING SCARECROW. I wonder which came first, this macabre play of the countryside's changing seasons and the chainsaw-crazy family who lives on the farm, or maybe Joel Townsley Rogers' novel THE RED RIGHT HAND? Read this one and tell me you don't flash on the Townsley Rogers book.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE WOMAN IN BLACK. A British novelist with a family ghost has grown up believing that if the ghostly woman in black appears to him three times, then he will die. Ellery tries to intervene, but the facts of the case baffle him. Oscar Wilde plays a surprising part in this tale, and the story has atmosphere to burn. This must be the last of the hourlong radio plays, because the remainder of the bunch are much shorter.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE FORGOTTEN MEN. This play takes up the theme of the homeless, but the characterization is pretty dismal. I couldn't tell the difference between the five main characters, Manhattan, Dixie, Yank, Kansas and California. They're all derelicts living in an abandoned lot in New York City.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAN WHO COULD DOUBLE THE SIZE OF DIAMONDS. Funny how many Ellery Queen plots depend on strip searching a guy (here, a phony inventor called Doctor Lazarus) and examining every body cavity no matter how indelicate. Something a little kinky there, but that's fine by me.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DARK CLOUD. The "Dark Cloud" is a yacht on which members of the Valentine family are hosting a swim party and a rousing round of charades. Murder ensues and once again, literary texts function as the database of clues. The dying message here wouldn't have stumped a dolphin.

THE ADVENTURE OF MR. SHORT AND MR, LONG. This is Ellery Queen's version of the famous Sherlock Holmes reference to "Mr. James Phillimore who stepped into his house for an umbrella and was never more seen in this world." Wonder if John Dickson Carr knew this play when he did his own version (with Adrian Conan Doyle) in their book of EXPLOITS? For the two stories share some key points.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MURDERED MOTHS. Ellery and the gang invade what seems to be some sort of Marjorie Main EGG AND I motel for hillbillies, and meet up with an eloping couple of youngsters. Nikki offers to stand in as bridesmaid for the girl, but then it is discovered that she, Virginia Wender, is underage. Virginia's father gets killed, but not for the reason you'd think! The moths tell the tale . . .

I hated to see this book come to an end. Please, publishers, issue a sequel! If there are 350 of these plays extant, you could do a book every year for the next ten or twenty years! Don't leave us on such a teasing note! These plays bring us the best of Ellery Queen-his wit, his inventiveness, his love of humanity, his spectral note, his innate American spirit, and most of all, the brain teasers that made his name famous for decades. And Nikki Porter too, far less annoying here than in some of the books. Now I realize I should have paid more for the hardcover edition, in which you get an extra play for your money!

The Old Masters (Masterpieces of Mystery)

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The Old Masters (Masterpieces of Mystery)

Manufacturer: Davis Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HRWA4A

Product Description

Red & gilt leatherette cover, gilt page edges, red ribbon bookmark.

The King Is Dead: An Ellery Queen Mystery (G K Hall Large Print Paperback Series)

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Classic Locked Room Mystery

The King Is Dead: An Ellery Queen Mystery (G K Hall Large Print Paperback Series)
Ellery Queen
Manufacturer: G. K. Hall & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0783892829

Customer Reviews:

Classic Locked Room Mystery.......2005-09-21

King Bendigo was the head of a powerful family-run company, with his own island kingdom. Ellery and his father are hired to keep him from being killed after a series of anonymous notes announces his impending murder.

The good:
The mystery. It's a logic puzzle of a mystery, the kind Ellery Queen is rightly famous for.
The take-over-the-world conspiracy is a fun bonus.

The bad:
The murder, the solution, and the conspiracy are all over-the-top, but that's part of the series charm.

The verdict:
Don't expect in-depth characterization, and don't be surprised that it's dated (it's copyright 1952, after all). Just relax and enjoy a little mental puzzle.

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Greek Coffin Mystery
Ellery Queen
Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000H9YNU2

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