  ead man's Tale
(December 1961)
When Barney Street, the fixer, was in Holland during World War II,
his life had been saved by a German soldier. Now Barney was dead; his estate was worth
$2,000,000. But in his will Barney left it all to Hacha, the German soldier who had saved
his life. Barney's wife, Estelle, wanted that money. If Hacha was dead, she would get it.
If not...? So she sent Steve Longacre to Europe to find out. Steve, who had once been one
of Barney's boys, took along his kid brother, Andy, and they trailed Hacha from Holland to
Switzerland, to Vienna, finally to Prague. |
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| Written by Stephen Marlowe
edited by Manfred Lee and at best this could be called a "fair" spy novel
with nothing of the usual Ellery Queen attributes. Critic
Boucher tried to alert readers in the nicest possible way: "Loyal Queen
fans should perhaps be warned that "Dead Man's Tale"... bears no resemblance
to any other book by Ellery Queen. No problem in deduction,
no familiar characters, no off-trail erudition, no complexity of plot. ...
Possibly the master is trying to appeal to a new set of readers, who may
find this a readable if hardly urgent chase-thriller, pursuing ...
improbable objectives." (December 24. 1961) In an interview with Ted Fitzgerald from 1997 Stephen shed a light on the "Ellery Queen" book: "After my very first trip to Europe as a tourist I wrote a novel based on the itinerary that I took. I gave it to Scott Meredith to sell and a year passed and no one seemed to want it. One day Scott called me and said, “Remember that book you wrote called 'Dead Man's Tale'?” Well. I’ve sold it.” I said, “Great. Who is publishing it?” I asked. He stammered for a second and then told me that it was going to appear under someone else’s name. “Why?” I naturally asked. He said, “Well, look, I couldn’t sell it in any other way.” “Whose name will it appear under?” “Ellery Queen.” I said, “Well, Scott, I don’t want to do that.” There was a long silence followed by “Steve, I’ve got a problem because I signed a contract saying you would do it.” Which he shouldn’t have done. After another long silence, I said, “OK, Scott, just this one time.” “But Steve, I signed a four-book contract for you to do it.” I then replied quite firmly, “Scott, I’m not going to do it.” He said, “Gee, you’ve really got me in a bind. What if I got three writers to ghost the books for you?” I was young and hungry. I probably should have said no, but I didn’t. He got three pretty good professional writers, whom I won’t name, to do the job. The first book was published (the one that I had written). Then the second one came in and I had a chance to vet it and found it pretty good. It was passed on to Fred Dannay, who called Scott and said, “I think Steve Marlowe is slipping.” I think the others were published but I heard that Fred was never as happy with them as he had been with my first book. I think I got some part of the money, but it wasn’t much. That wasn’t my idea, it was Scott’s idea. Scott was a very successful agent but he could have been selling shoes, real estate plots or houses. With him it was the unit that he was selling. This is not entirely what an agent ought to be. An agent ought to care about books. Scott claimed he did, but he didn’t. When that became more and more evident I finally left him." (New Deadly Pleasures) Marlowe never ghosted another Queen book. |
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