 op
Out (March 1969)
 Who are you, Malone? Just a little while ago you were a cop. That was before the two punks and their girl hit town. That was before they boosted a payroll and shot down a man and took your 9-year-old daughter as insurance to cover their getaway. Now you're just a man. Scared. Not for yourself--that would be easy. But for your child, the only thing in the world you love enough to make you play ball with the kind of scum you've hated all your life. Except that you're one of them now. You've crossed the line no cop can ever cross. And there's just one desperate way of getting back. Furia backed his way out. At the
door he said, "Remember, cop, that's your kid we got. So don't be a
hero." And he was gone. They were left alone with the black bag. |
|
  |
|
| Above left to right: dust and hardcover for New American Library in association with The World Publishing Company (1969); dustcover Gollancz (1969)* | |
| Published in the U.S. on the occasion of Manfred/Lee's 40th anniversary with a hard cover (in a more difficult market share). A hard-boiled crime story, not a mystery in any sense. Billed on its cover as “Different From Any Detective Story Ellery Queen Has Ever Written.” prompting speculation it was long suspected as one of their farmed-out paperback originals that they thought could make it as a hardcover. Cop Out was so different to any of their work readers doubted it's origins. Janet Maslin in the New York Times said it was "disillusioning ….too coarse to sound like Dannay and Lee's [the original writers] work." | |
     |
|
| Lee insisted it was not ghost-written. Dannay himself confirmed this in
person to Francis Nevins: " I wouldn’t have believed it myself except
that Fred Dannay looked me in the eye and told me unequivocally that he and
Manny and no others had conceived and written the entire book." Fred went on confirming that the objective with Cop Out was to do something utterly and completely different from anything he and Manny had ever done before. For this book Lee did research by riding along at night with a New Milford (Connecticut) police patrol, this certainly paid off as this was one of the more authentic books for some time. So it's safe to establish that Lee with this novel conquered writer's block, a book of which he was very proud. |
|
  |
|
| Above: Cop Out was published in Star Weekly in several volumes between April 17 and 24, 1969 (Illustration by Jim McCarthy). | |
|
|
 Other articles on this book (1) Reading Ellery Queen - Cop Out Jon Mathewson (2) My Reader's Block Bev Hankins (Aug 10. 2010) |
|
|
*
Interested readers should know
that the icons/covers
of books, used throughout the
website have extra
descriptions/information not
included in the text on the same
page. Pointing your cursor at
the icon/cover used to reveal
this extra information. To achieve the same effect Firefox users can install an add-on called 'Popup ALT Attribute'. When installed pointing your cursor at an icon/cover results in showing you the details or additional information. |
 Copyright © MCMXCIX-MMXXIV Ellery Queen, a website on deduction. All rights reserved. |
