The Dragon's Teeth. A Problem in Deduction

First Edition. -- Condition: Near fine, toning to spine, in near fine dust jacket with short tears to spine ends, some soiling to rear panel, and light rubbing to corners and upper flap fold. -- Details: A nice clean first edition of one of the best Ellery Queen mysteries in which Ellery Queen teams up with the son of a former police colleague, the casework begins with the death of a retired munitions magnate, who dies unexpectedly while sailing his yacht in the Caribbean, and ends up in the search for two missing heiresses. Ellery Queen, and later Barnaby Ross, was the pseudonym shared by the writing team composed of cousins Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. Together, the pair wrote four Drury Lane mystery novels, starring a Shakespearean actor and detective, as well as the Ellery Queen mystery series. The pseudonym pair was all the rage in the 1920s and '30s, with one of the cousins, usually Dannay, donning a mask and appearing in public as Ellery Queen. The cousins carried on a fictional dialogue as Ross and Queen in print and ended the intrigue in 1932 when Ross was revealed to be Ellery Queen. Several years later, when the writers behind the pseudonyms were unmasked, the public was so enamoured of them that their work continued to enjoy great popularity for decades to come. 'After Poe, I think it's true that Ellery Queen was the most significant and important writer of mystery fiction in America.' - Otto Penzler. -- Reference: Reilly, 'Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers' (1980), 1225. Penguin Random House. Julian Symons, 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books, Sunday Times (1957). -- Octavo (book size 21.2x15cm), pp. vi 325 [5]. In publisher's light straw-grey cloth, lettered in orange to spine and upper board, foredge untrimmed others trimmed. Dust jacket priced '$2.00' to upper corner of front panel, all corners with publisher's decorative trim. --.…