he Four Johns (March 1964)
          aka our Men Called John

The four of them had only two things in common - their name and a love for the ladies. John Boce was a no-account accountant who lusted after food, drink cars, and women. John Thompson was a secretive librarian who liked his books and his women well-stacked. John Viviano was a fashion photographer with a great feel for a body - any body! And John Pilgrim was a poetic bum who had the girls hanging on his every stanza. All of them wanted the same woman, but which one wanted her enough to kill...?

Set on and around the campus of the University of California-Berkeley. Mary Hazelwood, "one of the busiest bodies on the campus," disappears one day. The main suspects in the disappearance are all named John, from John Pilgrim, a "beatnik of distinction", to librarian and UC stacks supervisor John Thompson. Thompson is "persuasive, hedonistic, and enterprising, a librarian who likes his assistants well stacked." He is a "compact, sunburned man of thirty-five," with a mild disposition. he does, however, lead a mysterious existence: Each Friday after work, he disappears from campus, not to be seen again until Monday morning. When an investigator follows Thompson as the latter blasts off in his MG late one Friday, he discovers an astonishing truth: John Thompson is living a double life. During the workweek, he's a stack superintendent-roué and lives in a bachelor apartment in the city. From Friday evening to Monday morning, he's a devoted family man who lives in the suburbs with his wife and children. Is he guilty of more than duplicity? This is a competent Ellery Queen potboiler (Librarians in Fiction: A Critical Bibliography Grant Burns, 1998)

A cast of characters is included. Although he never admitted it publicly this book is ghostwritten by Jack Vance. The title refers to an overly flirtatious young woman’s quartet of suitors, who become the chief suspects when she disappears. A university teaching assistant turns amateur sleuth when the lady’s body is found in the trunk of his car and he realizes that someone’s trying to frame him. Of his detective skills the less said the better. The plot and main characters are in retrospect incredible but the pre-uprising Berkeley milieu and some nicely observed university hangers on rescue this quickie from total forgettability. (Nevins)

Boucher (May 17, 1964) simultaneously reviewed this book and The Golden Goose: although “still a few notches below Queen’s hardcover level they are detective puzzles, with some reasonably adroit misdirection and nicely handled double-twist endings.” A kind verdict.

Vance specialist Richard Chandler asked himself if there were any clues in the novels themselves that gave away their true owner. He starts off by saying that all three stories Vance wrote for Queen are set in California with a very strong sense of place. And continues by stating that there are two clues in The Four Johns which practically shout their author’s name. Can any Vance enthusiast read the following and not think ‘Jack Vance’?

The lamb was a great success: succulent, with a crisp crust redolent of garlic, herbs and pepper.

How many such enthusiastic descriptions of food dot the Vancian landscape? Who uses the word ‘redolent’ so lovingly and appropriately? More telling though is an earlier passage: Harriet and Mary are talking.

“Going somewhere?” asked Harriet, eyes dancing with curiosity.
“Timbuktu. Around the moon. The robber woods of Tartary. Possibly even Los Angeles.”

Ellery Queen quoting from an obscure poem by
Robert Louis Stevenson? Familiar? No? Let me quote from
another Vance work Ecce and Old Earth:

“Do you want to hear the poem? It is quite short and it goes like this:
'On we rode, the others and I,
Over the mountains blue and by
The Silver River, the Sounding Sea,
And the robber woods of Tartary.’”

("The Case of the Missing Vance", Richard Chandler in Cosmopolis N° 37, April 2003)

More recently the manuscripts of the three Vance Queens were partially recovered. They were restored and made available. This story was published under its original title Strange She hasn't Written as a supplemental volume to the Vance Integral Edition in 2006. Evidently one of 400 copies printed. Sources report only 100 copies of this volume were printed which explains why it's a really rare find offered at prices ranging from $45 to $122,5