The Hollow Dragon
Miss Merrivel, a qualified nurse, has taken charge of an elderly Japanese gentleman recovering from an operation. Strange things are happening in his exotic mansion. Are supernatural forces really responsible for the old man's mysterious disappearance without a trace? EQ is faced with a baffling mystery.

"The Hollow Dragon" (Redbook, Dec 1936) is perhaps one of the less successful entries in the collection. Jon Mathewson points out that the story is difficult to understand without taking into account the attitudes of the 1930s, when many Americans knew little about other cultures and regarded them as exotic. This is particularly relevant to the portrayal of Japanese-American Jito Kagiwi, whose home is described as having a “boldly Oriental character,” complete with colorful rugs, dragons and other decorative features. Without recognizing the cultural perceptions of the period, much of the story makes little sense to a modern reader.

Mathewson is not particularly impressed by the result. He finds the plot uninteresting, the characters unappealing and the mystery itself rather weak. He even wonders whether the Ellery Queen cousins were discovering that straightforward stories, requiring little intellectual effort, were sometimes the ones popular magazines were willing to pay handsomely for. Perhaps Hollywood was beginning to influence their writing. The timing is certainly suggestive: "The Hollow Dragon" appeared in Redbook in the same month that a condensed version of The Door Between was published in Cosmopolitan. Meanwhile, the second Ellery Queen film, The Mandarin Mystery, based on The Chinese Orange Mystery, premiered on December 23. 1936 (Jon Mathewson).

The House of Darkness
The House of Darkness is the latest attraction at a sensational amusement park. Gloomy, eerie and terrifying. Ellery Queen discovers that the horrors are deadly serious.

"The House of Darkness" (The American Magazine, Feb 1935) once again demonstrates Queen's talent for creating striking and eccentric settings. The story takes place in a bizarre amusement-park environment, including a murder in the giggle-house at Luna Park. Its cubist-inspired designer is French, recalling the French designer responsible for the Art Deco furniture in The French Powder Mystery (1930). Grost considers it both an imaginative mystery puzzle and an example of Queen's willingness to include Black characters among his suspects without resorting to conventional stereotypes. The Daily Telegraph reviewer also singled out the murder in the giggle-house as one of the collection's most enjoyable episodes.

The Bleeding Portrait
EQ is the guest of the artist Mark Gramaton and his beautiful wife Mimi. Mark owns a curious painting of one of his ancestors. According to legend, the portrait begins to bleed whenever a woman of the Gramaton family takes up with another man. EQ naturally refuses to believe the story, but he is nevertheless in for a few surprises.

The remaining four stories take Ellery into the world of sport, each featuring Paula Paris, the attractive gossip columnist with whom he fell in love in The Four of Hearts (1938).

"Man Bites Dog" (Blue Book, June 1939) is set during the seventh game of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the New York Giants. Ellery, Paula, Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie are seated behind the Yankee dugout, where they find themselves observing two couples whose relationships are anything but harmonious. Among them are former pitcher Big Bill Tree, film star Lotus Verne, Big Bill's estranged wife Judy Starr and her escort Jimmy Connor. The story is a tightly constructed detective puzzle, relying heavily on its carefully arranged characters and their interactions. Its solution also reveals an unexpectedly sentimental side to a hard-bitten New York police officer, who is prepared to hush up a crime rather than damage the reputation of baseball's grand old game. Grost considers it one of the better examples of Queen's return to the short-story form. "Man Bites Dog" has some affinities with the minimalist tales of poisoning Ellery Queen was essaying in these years, such as The Four of Hearts and Calamity Town (1942).

"Long Shot" (Blue Book, Sep 1939) has an interesting Hollywood connection. Queen's first assignment from the film industry was to write a screenplay about a horse race, and the story was adapted from that work. It returns to territory familiar from The American Gun Mystery (1933), combining Western characters, horses and guns. The story was later reprinted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (Mar 1959) and may also have provided the basis for a 1951 television episode of The Adventures of Ellery Queen (Episode 54).

In How to Read a Short Story by Marjorie L. Burns the plot is discussed as having four elements. First the author reveals the situation that the characters find themselves in. The problem or conflict is exposed either by narrative or immediate action. Second, events and actions grow out of the conflict if it was fully revealed at the outset of the story. If the conflict is not immediately revealed because the author starts with action rather than narrative, then the readers must discover the conflict by carefully reading and observing what the characters do and say. This part of the plot is called rising action. Readers identify opposing forces in the story, perhaps two characters, a character and a force of nature (a storm), or a character and the problem he faces. Third is the turning point or climax in which the action reaches its acme and one opposing force wins and the other loses. In mystery or detective fiction the crime is solved. Fourth, the author shows the results of whatever was decided or revealed at the climax. The resolution in mysteries can be the explanation of the crime as only the detective or private eye could have determined it.

"Mind Over Matter" (Blue Book, Oct 1939) continues the sporting sequence. The available material offers little information about its individual plot, but it belongs to the group of four stories in which Paula Paris accompanies Ellery.

The final story, "The Trojan Horse" (Blue Book, Dec 1939), is generally considered the weakest of the four sporting mysteries. Even so, Grost regards it as a respectable attempt, with some pleasant mystery elements. Like "The Treasure Hunt", it involves a lengthy search for stolen jewels.

The collection reflects an interesting development in Queen's career. After producing a substantial number of short stories between 1933 and 1935, including a novella, the authors largely abandoned the form for several years. In 1939 they returned with the four sporting stories, all featuring Paula Paris. Grost considers the first three particularly successful, while acknowledging that "The Hollow Dragon" is less impressive. Unfortunately, Paula seems to have disappeared from the Queen stories after this sequence.