"Ellery Queen is the American Detective Story"
So wrote the great critic Anthony Boucher about the contributions of Ellery Queen to the mystery story. Queen appeared in novels and short stories, in movies and on television, on the radio and even in comic books. His creators, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, dominated the mystery world through their works as novelists, critics, anthologists and editors.
In honor of the 95th anniversary of the first Ellery Queen novel, Crippen & Landru is proud to publish the first new Ellery Queen book in almost 50 years. "The Tragedy of Errors" is the lengthy and detailed plot outline for the final, but never published EQ novel, containing all the hallmarks of the greatest Queen novels--the dying message, the succession of false solutions before the astonishing truth is revealed, and scrupulous fairplay to the reader.
The Tragedy of Errors and Others also contains the six hitherto uncollected Ellery Queen short stories and a collection of essays, tributes, and reminiscences of Ellery Queen, written by family members, friends and some of the finest current mystery writers.
paper 1-885941-46-6 Ever since Manfred B. Lee, half of the writing team known pseudonymously as Ellery Queen, died in 1971, there's been only one new story about the most durable American detective of the Golden Agea brief puzzle-tale ghostwritten in 1975 by Edward D. Hoch. With the death in 1982 of Lee's cousin and collaborator Frederic Dannay, it seemed likely that Queen's silence would be permanent. But now a thorough vacuuming of the Queen vaults has disclosed not only six storiesranging from ``Terror Town,'' a non-series whydunit adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents back in the 50s but omitted from Queen's own collections, to the Hoch entry, ``The Reindeer Clue,'' included for the sake of completenessbut a prize of sorts, a sketch for an unwritten final novel, The Tragedy of Errors. The 40-page scene-by-scene outline by Dannay sketches a story whose central situationthe murder of an aging Hollywood star, presumably by the dry-eyed husband who expected to inherit her fortunehovers between Sunset Boulevard and Queen's own Face to Face (1967). Though far from top-drawer Queen, it offers a fascinating look into the cousins' workshop, revealing just how much pleasure there is in the exuberant trickiness of their mystery-mongering An added collection of 22 tributes from fellow-authors and -editors is more notable for warmth than insight. But Queen fans will want this posthumous collection regardless. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
