ueen's Experiments in Detection (1968)

A Menu to Delight
THE MYSTERY GOURMET

For something light and piquant, we recommend No Parking, with its bewitching heroine and her three desperate suitors.

For a mouth-watering quick snack, you can try Half a Clue, in which Ellery nabs the murderer almost before the victim has stopped breathing.

For a main course you can really sink your teeth into, there's Mum Is the Word, in which the "dying message" offers the ultimate in hidden clues.

And for an unforgettable pièce de résistance, we have Abraham Lincoln's Clue, a classic that Anthony Boucher called "perhaps the greatest of all Queen mysteries."

These are but four of sixteen great tales designed to please the most sophisticated palate -- all prepared and elegantly served by the master chef of mystery, the one and only Ellery Queen.

Let Ellery Queen clue you in his special brand of high tension, brain-teasing mystery!

• DYING MESSAGE NOVELETTE:
  • "Mum is the Word" (EQMM, 4/66)
• CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN DEDUCTION
  • "Object Lesson" (This Week, 09/10/55, as "The Blackboard Gangsters" and reprinted: EQMM, 4/58)
  • "No Parking" (This Week, 3/18/56, as "Terror in a Penthouse" and reprinted: EQMM, 2/58)
  • "No Place to Live" (This Week,  6/10/56, as "The Man They All Hated" and reprinted: EQMM, 3/58)  
  • "Miracles Do Happen" (EQMM,  7/57)
• Q.B.I.: QUEEN'S BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
  • GAMBLING DEPT. -- "The Lonely Bride" (This Week, 12/04/49, as "The Lady Couldn't Explain", The Sunday Herald 7/9/50 as "The Case Of the Lonely Bride")
    SPY DEPT. -- "Mystery at the Library of Congress" (Argosy, 6/60 as "Enter Ellery Queen" reprinted: EQMM, 2/63)
  • SPY DEPT. -- "Dead Ringer" ( (?): Diners Club, 3/65 and reprinted in EQMM, 10/66)
  • KIDNAPPING DEPT. -- "The Broken T" (This Week, 7/28/63 as "Mystery in Neon Red" and reprinted in EQMM, 5/66)
  • MURDER DEPT. -- "Half a Clue" (This Week, 8/25/63 as "Half a Clue to Murder "reprinted: EQMM, 8/66)
  • ANONYMOUS LETTERS DEPT. -- "Eve of the Wedding" (EQMM, 8/55, as "Bride in Danger")
  • PROBATE DEPT. -- "Last Man to Die" aka "The Last Butler" (This Week, 11/3/63 reprinted: Variety (Australian), 1964; EQMM, 1/67)
  • CRIME SYNDICATE DEPT. -- "Payoff" (Cavalier, 8/64 as "Crime Syndicate Payoff" reprinted: EQMM 7/66)
• THE PUZZLE CLUB
  • "The Little Spy" (Cavalier, 1/65 reprinted: EQMM, 9/66)
  • "The President Regrets" (Diners Club, 9/65 reprinted: EQMM, 7/67)
• HISTORICAL DETECTIVE STORY
  • "Abraham Lincoln's Clue" (MD, 6/65 reprinted: EQMM, 3/67)

All stories originally published in This Week, Argosy, Cavalier, Signature - The Diner's Club magazine, MD, and EQMM between 1949 and 1966.

Mum is the Word. The Chrysanthemum Mystery - with a "dying message" that is the "last word" in bizarre and baffling clues.

Object Lesson. The third of Ellery's battles with contemporary problems: the lack of schoolrooms- and how overcrowded classes may contribute to juvenile delinquency... One of the most important cases in Ellery's career.

Terror in A Penthouse. Three men desperately wanted to marry the lovely actress. Now, which two suitors had she turned down - and which one had tried to kill her?

No Place To Live the second of Ellery's conflict with modern problems - this one, the lack of living quarters.

Mystery in Neon Red. The two hoods who kidnaped Angie left no clues behind. Yet Ellery Queen trapped them by a single brilliant deduction. If you're a good detective, you can make it too!

Last Man to Die. Suspicious of butlers? Here's a story with two of them. It's a mystery that Ellery Queen was able to unravel. Can you?

Crime Syndicate Payoff. Whodunnit? Who is the head of the plush-lined mob whose high-level nastiness makes the Cosa Nostra look like a penny-ante operation? That's what Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie want to know. All the clues are here - so match wits with the master Ellery Queen, and try to solve this caper. 

The Little Spy
The President Regrets

The concept of the puzzle club seems completely in tune with Queen's universe of strange individuals. Membership can only be earned by solving a puzzle the others prepared earlier. It seems totally unusual that someone would want to be part of a club that has a sole purpose of trying to baffle the other members, but perhaps not so unusual in the world of Queen. Nowadays analogous clubs are quiet common, although often they don't actually “meet” . . .since they do so only in the virtual sense. Several internet fora or sites (such as those catering to mathematical riddles) are based on the same concept. The two Ellery Queen puzzle stories involve a club that has 6 members. They are:

• Syres (Texan oil baron and of course millionaire), founder of the Club and also Chairman
• Darnell (lawyer rumored to be up for a chair in The Supreme Court)
• Dr.Vreeland (psychiatrist)
• Miss Emmy Wandermere (poet)
• Dr.Arkavy (biochemist who won the Nobel Prize)
• Ellery Queen
• The President of the US (no name is mentioned) was unable to attend ... so as such not (yet) a member...

They meet in an apartment on Park Avenue, there is an English butler and a cook named Charlot.

Three other "Puzzle Club" stories were published in other magazines and later collected in The Tragedy of Errors ("The Three Students", "The Odd Man" and "The Honest Swindler").
This series was, perhaps, cut short by the death of Manfred Lee. One wonders where Dannay and Lee would have gone with the series if they had been allowed to continue it.