A Fine and Private Place

Fine and Private Place (1971)

Millionaire Nino Importuna had a lifelong obsession with the number nine - so it was only fitting that he should be murdered on the ninth day of the ninth month, and that his watch stopped at nine minutes past nine.
Investigating the murder, Inspector Queen and his son Ellery receive nine false clues - but what about the tenth? Did Nino's beautiful young widow and her secret lover really batter him to death? And who is the mysterious Mr.E?
This fascinating mystery of love, greed and death is vintage Ellery Queen.

The 9-word clue was one of 9 cryptic notes that had been sent to taunt Inspector Queen and Ellery 9 days after the murder. Nino Importuna had been obsessed with the number. He had lived by it. Now the killer who brought a trio of gory deaths to Nino's 9th-floor penthouse at No. 99 East was camouflaging his identity in a jungle of 9s. And daring Ellery to find him. The case was destined to be a dazzling contest of wits--to the 9th degree!

Nino got his jollies. Cat of Nine Tails whippings

A Fine and Private Place - dust cover World Publishing Company, New York, 1971

A Fine and Private Place - hardcover World Publishing Company, New York, 1971

A Fine and Private Place - dust cover Gollancz edition, London, 1971

A Fine and Private Place - hardcover Gollancz edition, London, 1971

A Fine and Private Place - cover pocket book edition, Signet 451-Y7183, 1 Aug. 1972.

A Fine and Private Place - cover pocket book edition, Penguin, 28 Nov. 1974.

A Fine and Private Place - cover pocket book edition, Hamlyn, 15 Oct. 1981

A Fine and Private Place/The Madman Theory - cover pocket book edition, Signet Double Mystery 451 AE1855, August 1982.

Above top left to bottom right: a dust and hardcover World Publishing Co. (1971); dust and hardcover Gollancz edition (1971); Signet (August 1972); Signet (1972); Penguin (1974), Hamlyn (1981); Signet Double Mystery (1982). *

Manny never lived to see a copy of the last Ellery Queen novel. The last Ellery Queen novel is OK but not too much more. His first solution is so patently wrong as to be worthless as a red herring, and the "right" solution is not that hard to figure out either. The game with the 9's brings us back a bit to the familiar symbolism of the first novels. These endless references to variations on the theme of nine are perhaps the only thing that can save the book somewhat.

Nevins stated that the long middle section of the novel was precisely what The House of Brass should have been but wasn't, a sardonic portrait of greed-driven power plays by various potential heirs to a fortune. He goes on by saying that father and son had already exchanged remarks on the subject of the book earlier in Cat of Many Tails (1949) and The Scarlet Letters (1953). "Clearly Fred and Manny meant well,... but they went about the book so clumsily and with such a flimsy knowledge base that I can't imagine the staunchest Queenian defending the book today."

Mrs.Fabrikant re-appears (King is Dead). The "replacement" for Djuna is referred to as "Fabby" and her cooking seemed to be infamous ...

A Fine and Private Place - cover Thorndike Press/Chivers Large Print Paperback Series,

A Fine and Private Place - cover audiobook Blackstone Audio, Inc., read by Mark Peckham, July 16, 2014

A Fine And Private Place - cover MysteriousPress.com/Open Road, August 4, 2015

A fine and private place Translations: Danish: 9 er tallet Dutch/Flemish: 3x3=10 Finnish: Hauta on hiljainen paikka (aka Pitkä hiljaisuus) French: Un bel endroit privé (aka La preuve par 9) German: Mord im neunten Monat Hungarian: Előkelő, zártkörű hely Italian: La prova del nove Lithuanian: Devyni mėnesiai iki žmogžudystės Norwegian: Et fint og rolig sted Portuguese: A Prova dos Nove Russian: Приятное и уединённое место Swedish: Ett mord blir till

Andere artikels over dit boek (1) Reading Ellery Queen Jon Mathewson (Nov 2016) (2) The Grandest Game in the World Nick Fuller (Sep 3. 2021) (3) Clothes in Books (Mar 5. 2013)

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