  he King is Dead
(1952)
 Armed men invade the Queen apartment. At their head is Abel Bendigo, brother of one of the world's most powerful men. King Bendigo of Bodigen Arms, an industrial monster whose tentacles embrace the planet. Someone is threatening to kill King, and Ellery must undertake to save his hated life. Virtual prisoners, Ellery and his father Inspector Queen are whisked away in a private plane to a mysterious island "somewhere in the Atlantic." In a frightening atmosphere of concentration camp, industrial slavery, and brute militarism, Ellery comes to grips with a baffling murderer who calmly announces not only the exact date of the assassination, but the exact hour and minute as well. He finds himself matching wits with the fascinating American-born King, handsome, cynical, an absolute monarch; with King's disturbing wife, Karla, from a European royal family; Abel, King's Prime Minister, of acute intelligence; and Judah, the saturnine little third brother with an inexhaustible thirst for expensive cognac. |
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"A preposterous story, told with
the wealth of detail and characterization that Mr. Queen's admirers have come to
expect." -- Saturday Review "Queen presents one of his noblest puzzles." -- New York Times "An enigma and extravaganza of Kings and Queens but no royal flush." -- Kirkus Reviews "The name Ellery Queen on a book conveys the solid assurance that here, at least, is a pure detective story in the great tradition." -- New York Times "A neat locked-room puzzle is involved here, along with some implausible but not impossible situations and a good deal of moralizing." -- Evening Star, Washington D.C. |
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| Above left to
right:
dust and 2 hardcovers for the
Little, Brown & co. edition; dust & hardcover Toscin Books edition, Below left to right: dust and hardcover Book Club edition; dust covers for Gollancz editions (1952 and 1975) (Click on the covers to see the differences) * |
| The Sydney Morning Herald - "Reviews
in Brief" by J.J.Q. , January 17. 1953 "THIS case (taken at the request of the State Department) brought Inspector Queen indefinite leave and Ellery a fee of 100,000 dollars paid without a blink. They were asked by Abel Bendigo to find the author of letters that had threatened death to his brother, King, one of the five richest men in the world Abel was sure he knew who this writer was, but desired a double check. Flown to an uncharted island, the detectives meet King, his wife and his other brother. Judah, who is generally drunk on Segonzac cognac al 50 dollars a bottle. The fifth letter has fixed an exact time for the murder Ellery and his father see their suspect pull the trigger of an empty pistol, pointed at a steel walled room with a locked door closely guarded. When the door is opened they find King wounded in the chest and his wife in a faint. They cannot find pistol or shell. That mystery is not difficult to solve however. Interest shifts to Ellery's search for a motive and to the amusing testimony of the ancients of Wrightsville concerning the early history of the Bendigo family. Back on the island, surprises multiply and culminate in an amazing finale." |
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The story used the same premise as the Ellery
Queen radio adventure "The Blind Bullet" broadcast on
6-30-1940 (repeated 9-9-1943 and 9-11-1943). It made television when used in
an episode of Dumont's The Adventure of Ellery Queen
with the same name and with Richard Hart and Florenz Ames in the title
roles. Finally the second episode "The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen" was "The King is Dead", first broadcast on 10/3/1958 it featured George Nader as Ellery, Les Tremayne as the inspector and Torin Thatcher as King. Ellery Queen takes on a political overtone here, and there's even a one-chapter trip back to Wrightsville for nostalgia. But there isn't too much mystery about whodunit - it's more a question of howdidhedoit. One of the few full length impossible crimes in the Queen canon. Although beautifully resolved, it’s hard to believe that the victim wouldn’t have noticed what was going on. To some, based on his appearance and way of speaking, King Bendigo is based on actor Orson Welles. In the King is Dead (1952), as in some of his later works, EQ also used searches for a different kind of puzzle plot. Here EQ conducts an in depth search among a dead man's clothing, looking for some item that never shows up, but which should have been there. The reader has to try to figure out which item is missing from the long list of clothing. Francis M.Nevins calls this approach the "negative clue". It was also noticed as an EQ trait by John Dickson Carr in his essay "The Greatest Game in the World" (1946), and delightfully burlesqued there. EQ was not the only author to use this approach; it also shows up frequently in Agatha Christie, for example in her novel Death in the Clouds (1935). (Michael E.Grost) |
 "The
twist is somewhat similar to one of the alternate solutions from "Death of
Jezebel" (1948) by Christianna Brand, with three family members teaming up to give each other alibis for
an impossible crime … The second novel in a row where Ellery lets the
murderer[s] get away with it … Unlike most EQ books of this period, we don’t
get an elaborate false solution before the real one, but Abel Bendigo is a
variation on the “manipulator” character who was the authors’ go-to villain."
(Jack Hamm) |
| The Examiner, Launceston - "Books..." by Nancy
Spain, November 15. 1952 "BY some ghastly quirk of fate the latest Ellery Queen whodunit, 'The King is Dead' is also set on a semi-tropical island where the Bendigos - Cain, Abel and Judas - are living in a totalitarian torpor, selling arms and munitions to anyone who cares to buy. But someone is threatening to murder Cain at midnight on June 21 and that someone turns out to be Judas. How shall Judas do it when he is outside the locked room with a gun and Cain is inside? The maestros, Messrs. Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (which are the real author-names behind the pseudonym Ellery Queen), had me held by the hair from beginning to end. I didn't emerge from the ether until an hour afterwards to say what rot it all was." The Indian, "Library Notes" July 26. 1952 "In Ellery Queen's new book 'The King is Dead' armed men invade the Queen's apartment. At their head is Abel Bendigo, brother of one of the world's most powerful men, King Bendigo of Bodigen Arms, industrial monster whose tentacles embrace the planet. Someone is threatening to kill King Bendigo, and Ellery must undertake to save that hated life. Virtual prisoners, the Queens are rocketed in a sealed plane to the headquarters of the Bendigo empire - a mysterious island believe to be "somewhere in the Atlantic". Ellery solves a difficult locked-room puzzle with classic brilliance and at the same time grapples with the life-and-death problem of the democratic world today - how to deal with the violent threat of totalitarian power." |
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| Above: The King is Dead was published in Toronto Star Weekly as a "complete novel", January 3. 1953. At 16 pages this was more likely a "condensation". |
|
The King is
dead Translations:
|
 Other articles on this book (1) Reading Ellery Queen - The King is Dead Jon Mathewson (Aug 2015) (2) The Passing Tramp - Kings and Queens and Guillotines Curtis Evans (Feb 8. 2022) |
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