he Perfect Crime
(1942)
With $250,000--of somebody else's money--in his pocket, Ellery had the time of his life buying in the famous Garten book collection as it was auctioned off. But the fun didn't last long, for before evening John Mathews, who had been responsible for Garten's ruin, was found murdered. And neither the book collector, nor the dead man's nephew, Walter, who was engaged to Garten's daughter, had any kink of an alibi. The police were certain it was murder - but a reliable
witness "saw" the hated Wall Street millionaire shoot himself in the head! There
were half a dozen suspects - each, naturally, with an airtight alibi - but first Ellery
Queen had to figure out how the impossible crime was committed. |
Non-Queen based on the movie Ellery Queen and the
Perfect Crime
for which the the plot of The
Devil to Pay was used. Nikki Porter reappeared.
The 1942 Grosset & Dunlap edition has a sketch map of the crime scene in Chapter 6 (p. 75), which is essential if you wish to figure out how the murder occurred, and careful study of the map itself may provide the answer for you. A rather humorous aside is the conversations in which the investigators speculate 1) does a chimpanzee have fingerprints, and 2) if so, is it possible to take them? (Rick Mills) Note: The sketch in the Pyramid edition can be found on p.57 |
Above right: Issue of Movie Detective, Jan.1940 with publication of movies in story form e.g. Ellery Queen & the Perfect Crime.* |
*
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