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This is the first Ellery Queen book I’ve read. He was an author I was aware of, perhaps mostly because of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine which published short stories by many of the great American crime writers, but who I didn’t know much about. In fact I didn’t even know that Queen was a pseudonym used by two cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee. Ellery Queen is, intriguingly, also the name of the detective.
This is the sixth of the series, published in this new edition with a new introduction from publisher Otto Penzler. Penzler hails Queen as the giant of the inter war Golden Age of American mystery writing and a peer of the likes of Agatha Christie. I’m not entirely convinced by that comparison, but I did enjoy the puzzle that Dannay and Lee laid out in The American Gun Mystery.
The hallmark of this type of mystery is a crime early on that seems impossible to solve. That’s certainly the case here, with Buck Horne, noted star of numerous silent westerns, shot dead on his horse as he takes part in the dramatic opening of a new rodeo show along with 40 other riders. The mystery lies in the fact that he has been shot dead with a gun that cannot then be found and which is of a markedly different type to the many others surround Buck at the time of his death.
It’s an engaging conundrum, and the solution, when it is laid out by Queen at the end is credible if slightly unlikely. Crucially, the clues to solve it were, with the benefit of hindsight, all there in the text, that being the test of a so-called ‘fair play’ mystery.
For a book that is nearly 90 years old it is all very readable, although the middle section did drag a bit, being full of the kind of red herrings that are essential to this kind of tale. The dialogue is definitely on the stifled side and Queen himself is far from likeable. When this kind of genius detective character is done well it can work (think Holmes or Poirot) but here I found myself at times hoping that Queen wouldn’t solve the crime because he was such an arrogant dick. Even more problematic was the treatment of Djuna, a Romany boy whom Queen has adopted and “civilised”. It’s the kind of casual racism that was common in the 1930s, and which leaves a bad taste in the mouth today. A more palatable anachronism is the use of the word Brobdingnagian, which I’ve never seen outside of the Lemony Snickets books.
Overall this is a fun vintage read. The mystery is engaging and the solution amusing, even if the telling of it leaves a little to be desired. If I were rating them separately I’d probably give the mystery 4 stars and the writing 2. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which you value more.




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Back when I was a kid, Ellery Queen was all the rage. So I figured I should check him out. I dunno, this didn't do much for me. The main character is an idler who thinks he's better than everyone else because he doesn't appear to have to work for a living, and because he's able to do arcane feats of logical thinking. But with all the logical thinking, this story didn't much hold together or make sense. So, a stupid story with an unlikeable protagonist doesn't entice me to continue reading Queen.

The story revolves around a faded matinee idol from old cowboy movies, Buck Horne, who is taking a turn at Wild Bill Grant's wild west show in a huge arena in New York City. Buck appears to have been shot dead during one rip-roaring run around the arena. He was shot by a .25 caliber bullet, but all the people in the show, and all the people in the audience were carrying only .45s. Something like that. After a few weeks of investigation, the show starts up again, this time featuring another idol of the old oaters, one-armed Woody. Well, same rip-roaring ride around the arena and Woody gets toppled at the same point in the same fashion. So we have lots of red herrings and overdoses of smug pomposity by Ellery Queen, the main character. The final verdict only vaguely hangs true.

If I could give s or -s, this book would be ***-. It's not terrible, but it isn't really much worth anyone's time. I won't likely revisit Ellery Queen any time soon.
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Not exactly fair play, but a good story with lots of Queen's touches. ( )

Unforgivable. What an utter waste of time. My time. The authors - they must be doing reverse spinning in their graves - should be ashamed for having laid such a work. They comically painted themselves into a corner. They forgot the most important thing in writing a mystery. The humblest of books takes care of that thing first of all. The plot here was a convoluted mess. Like I said, the authors painted themselves into a corner, Macguyvered their brush into a gun, and shot themselves in the foot. No motive. No m-o-t-i-v-e. ( )

This book begins with the most lushly overwritten passages this reader has come across so far in the Queen oeuvre. It feels as if the author(s) were consciously trying to make their writing more ‘literary.’ The result, however, reads more like the strained attempt of an undergraduate to emulate a serious writer than a serious writer writing naturally in their own style.

Its strained conscious attempt to write at an elevated level is more noticeable by being juxtaposed with the authors attempt to capture the voice and feel of the cast of “colourful” “western” characters. While poking fun at people, such as Djuna, who are mesmerized by the world of film the authors reproduce every single cliche, trope and tired story line found in a plethora of western pulp novels and films. Indeed, if one was to pull out all the instances of stereotyping and cliche in this book and add them to the vigorously over-written passages you would arrive at volume that was larger than the original since much of it suffers from both faults.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Leaving aside the racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes that abound in this book that may be much more obvious in retrospect than they were when it was first published there are four elements that made this book such a chore for this reader to finish.

One:
The authorial voice is strained, inconsistent and self-conscious to a degree that makes it hard to simply sit back and read.

Two:
The solution to the crime may be one of the most unbelievable imagination straining of all the contemporaneous stories and books this reader has encountered. It also suggests that the police involved were incompetent. Given the basic setup--a man has been shot during a rodeo show at a large sports arena--the idea that individuals who were within shooting range were allowed to do things such as feed and water and handle the horses without police escort and oversight while those same police search 20,000 people in the stands suggests that either the police are so untrained as to be incompetent or that the authors were simply in love with the “stunt” of a massive search. And if one looks at earlier Queen books one does indeed see repeated variations on this theme.
For those who argue, as does Inspector Queen in the book, that the person who fired the gun could have thrown it to an accomplice in the crowd this reviewer points out that it is unreasonable to think that the perpetrator could have thrown the gun to someone in a nosebleed seat. To search the lower part of the audience could be argued to be justified but to search people so far away from the scene of the action is to mistake action for utility.

Three:
Ellery’s continual refusal to share with other people the results of his deductions is justified in this book, as it has been before, as a reaction to his public embarrassment on airing his theories during The Greek Coffin Mystery. This excuse for his purposeful obfuscation does not hold up to scrutiny. The embarrassment in that case did not arise from Ellery “having a idea” it arose from Ellery claiming that his idea was the sole good explanation only to have it pulled into pieces. The lesson to be learned was not that one shouldn’t share one’s theories rather that one shouldn’t proclaim one’s theories as if they were revealed truth.
This moment of being called on his propensity to see his deductions as facts is used throughout the following books for Ellery to withhold not only his ideas but information that is vital for other people to investigate the case.

Four:
Ellery’s relationship with the police force not only gives him unrealistic access to information and scenes that should have remained confidential it also opens the door for behaviour on the part of the police that must, even in the legal regime of the time, put into jeopardy their ability to actually convict the individuals that Ellery fingers as the perpetrators of the crimes.
It is notable that up until this point in the series even when Inspector Queen is most embattled the question of the propriety, let alone the legality, of him giving his son a special police badge is never brought up as a charge against him. His superiors, the editors of the New York newspapers, his subordinates and the population at large seem not to find this open nepotism worth discussing.
Ellery has in earlier books removed pieces of evidence from the crime scene. In early books, and in this book, he instructs members of the New York Police Force to withhold information and the results of tests from his father and other officials. Ellery breaks the chain of possession for evidence, handles it before it has been inspected by members of the police force and in this book openly plants evidence on a suspect. Ellery claims that this was necessary in order to have the real murderer come forward. Ellery and his father are fortunate that the man who claimed to be the real killer shot himself rather than go to trial since it is doubtful that, even in the New York of the time, the man would have ever come to trial. Nor it is likely would the man on whom the police admitted planting evidence.

What this book, and other mystery books of the time, reflected was a deep distrust of routine police work and a valorization of the detective version of the man on the white horse. Reading at this remove in time it stands out that the audience of these books was predominantly middle or upper class people or people who aspired to be middle class and the police force is routinely shown as being staffed by the men who are only a generation or two removed from Ellis Island. Ellery Queen, like Philo Vance, is fictive proof of the fact that the dull routine procedures of the working and lower middle class police force can only succeed if led by emissaries from the ”better” classes. They also reflect an acceptance among the reading population of the idea that the police and judiciary of the country are often corrupt, often incompetent and not infrequently both. In short these books reflect just how shaky the foundations of American democracy were in the period between the wars.

SPECIAL NOTE: WARNING DISTURBING RACIAL LANGUAGE REFERENCED

This reader is well aware of the many changes in American society between the date this book was published and now, particularly in reference to images of and language about African-Americans--however the especially offensive nature of both in this book stunned the reader. Queen was actually described as one of the authors who was more inclusive of minorities than some others at the time. However in this book the African-American who becomes the new heavyweight champion over the course of the story, is routinely described in animalistic terms. There is a scene in a night club in which a (white) man denounces his (white) wife for having a affair with the boxer that contains phrases that are so offensive that this reviewer is unwilling to repeat them here. If that scene had been included because the attitude of the husband had been crucial to the unraveling of the crime it might be argued that it has some redeeming literary purpose--although the reader sees no reason for the repetition of negative racial epithets to be included in the text when those same authors would never have included epithets that were equally offensive to members of the clergy. This entire scene could be easily excised from the book without the plot losing any coherence. This reader’s advise would be for librarians to at least warn people who check this book out of its potential offensiveness. ( )