Ellery Queen is the American mystery.
Who?, you ask.
Ellery Queen.
Still doesn’t ring a bell?
The first line of this article is from the great mystery and sci-fi author and critic Anthony Boucher, and it is absolutely true. Yet Ellery Queen, whose heyday was the 1930s and ’40 but wrote until the early 1970s, is all but forgotten today.
He was one of the greatest American mystery writers, creating maddengly complex puzzles that were fully explained in the end. His books were read by millions, and his character was adapted for the movies (poorly), TV (brilliantly in the case of the 1970s TV show Ellery Queen, produced by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link), and radio (also brilliantly).
But as I noted in my National Review article on the 70th anniversary of the publication of Queen’s first novel, The Roman Hat Mystery, that anniversary passed by with little fanfare and no prominent reprints of Queen’s novels, as did the 75th anniversary last year.
Queen is well worth bringing back, however, and an interesting article from Queen’s diamond anniversary year on one of the best Ellery Queen websites suggests how this might be done, pointing out the impressive popularity Ellery Queen’s works still enjoy in Japan, China, Taiwan, Germany, and elsewhere.
I know this popularity well, as people from both China and Japan asked me for permission to translate my NR article on Queen when it appeared (which of course I granted).
The authors of the article, Kurt Sercu and Dale C. Andrews, suggest some very good ideas: one, that an enterprising publisher reprint the best five or six Queens in high-quality paperback editions with the original maps, introductions, casts of characters, and the like, and two, that a publisher work with the Queen rights holders to license a series of new novels featuring the main characters from the classic series.
These are both excellent ideas, and I encourage you to read the article and contact your favorite publishers with the request that they follow up on these suggestions. And if you have not yet read any Ellery Queen books, please head to your local used book store or online sources and pick up Calamity Town, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, The Egyptian Cross Mystery, The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Chinese Orange Mystery, Halfway House, The Finishing Stroke, Cat of Many Tails, Ten Days’ Wonder, The Player on the Other Side, and any others that strike your fancy. These are fine novels that should reach a much larger audience.
For a further introduction to Ellery Queen, see my National Review article here.
Yes, Ann. First and foremost is Edward D. Hoch, about whom you can get more information here and here.
You may find information on numerous books of collected short stories by Hoch here.
Other contemporary mystery writers who give some of the same enjoyment as Queen are the British authors Peter Lovesey and Reginald Hill.
are there any contemporary short story writers that can compare to ellery queen, or at least give us the same sort of story? if so, please share.
Congratulations, Dale. Your award is well-earned. I thought the novella was terrific.
Now, any plans for a publisher to license a new series of EQ novels?–STK
Just another little update. The May 2008 Edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is out and it contains the “Readers’ Choice” awards for 2007. “The Book Case” was voted the number two mystery story of the year, finishing one vote behind the first place entries!
Thanks, Dale. I had heard about this story but haven’t picked up a copy of the issue yet. I’m certainly looking forward to reading it, and will report on it when I’ve had a chance to do so.
Kurt Sercu, one of the two authors of the story, is the purveyor of perhaps the finest Ellery Queen site on the Web: http://neptune.spaceports.com/~queen/index.html.
“The Book Case” is the longest “Department of First Stories” entry EQMM has ever published, and was approved by the estates of Dannay and Lee, the original authors of the EQMM series.
As Secru notes on his website,
“So, did you ever wonder what exactly happened to Djuna? How about Nikki Porter? Have you wondered how Ellery might view the relevance of old-fashioned deduction in this century of forensic science? Are you interested in a few other surprises and meeting some other old friends along the way? If so, you will not want to miss the May issue of EQMM. Pull up a chair. We will see you there!”
If anything can bring about a revival of Ellery Queen, this is it.
In the “one small step” Department, all should take note of a new novella-length story, “The Book Case”, written by Dale C. Andrews and Kurt Sercu, which appears in the May 2007 edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and which brings back Ellery Queen as an elderly detective confronting a particularly (we like to think) ellusive problem!