Ellery Queen Books In Order

The Dutch Shoe Mystery

Special 50th Anniversary Edition of this classic book. Features the cover which appeared on the first edition mystery

The Egyptian Cross Mystery

A new series of classic facsimile reprints selected and introduced by the internationally renowned editor and mystery expert Otto Penzler. The Egyptian Cross Mystery has justly been called Ellery Queens weirdest adventure. On Christmas Eve, an eccentric schoolmaster in the little town of Arroyo, West Virginia was brutally murdered. Over the next year, three other men were found with their heads cut off, crucified likewise in the form of a T. Ellery Queen had the feeling that there was only one clue he didnt possess and that clue came to him with the fourth murder.

The Siamese Twin Mystery

The Siamese Twin Mystery finds Ellery and his father, the irascible Inspector Queen, trapped in a mountain retreat by a raging forest fire. The members of the household are a strange lot, and the mysterious murder of the retreat’s host indicates to the Queens that not only are they isolated with an odd assortment of characters, but a dangerous killer as well!

Halfway House

Inside a run down shack on the banks of the Delaware River, married Philadelphia door to door salesman Joe Wilson lies dying in a cheap, blood spattered suit, stabbed through the heart by an assailant he describes with his last breath as a mysterious veiled woman. So begins master detective Ellery Queen’s strangest case ever. For Joe Wilson is not one man, but two, each married secretly to a different wife and in his other life, as New York millionaire Joseph Kent Gimball, he has just changed the beneficiary of a million dollar life insurance policy. With painstaking brilliance Ellery Queen sifts through a plethora of clues to solve the riddle of the Halfway House murder, beginning with the most important question of all: Whom did the murderer think she was killing, impoverished Wilson or millionaire Gimball? And why?

The Door Between

When Ellery Queen first meets the award winning novelist Karen Leith, it is at a party held to celebrate her most recent prize in literature. The next time he hears of her, she is dead murdered, so the police suspect, by the daughter of her fianc , the eminent cancer researcher Dr. John MacClure. With no other suspects and only circumstantial evidence at hand, master detective Ellery Queen delves into the reclusive writer’s past to uncover the startling method and motive of an intricate crime.

The Devil to Pay

When Hollywood bigwig Solly Spaeth is murdered, thousands cheer. He is a most popular corpse, for Solly’s stock manipulations have ruined many, including his partner. A cut and dried case or so it appears. Enter master detective Ellery Queen, whose embarrassing questions uncover a maze of conflicting alibis and motives, and ultimately reveal a deadly face lurking beneath the glittering mask of Tinseltown.

The Dragon’s Teeth / The Virgin Heiresses

Eccentric multimillionaire Cadmus Cole hires Ellery Queen to investigate a case but won’t say what it is. When Cole dies mysteriously at sea, Queen and his partner, Beau Rummell, must navigate a thicket of complications that includes a $50 million legacy, two beautiful, avaricious women vying for it, and even a phony Ellery Queen. This confection, now available in audio form, was first published in 1939.

There Was an Old Woman / The Quick and the Dead

Cornelia Potts is a wicked woman with millio ns of dollars, a henpecked husband, and six miserable childr en. Every life she touches turns to sheer hell. Then, one by one, the inhabitants of the vast, grotesque Potts mansion a re visited by death. ‘

Ten Days’ Wonder

Ellery is persuaded to accompany an old friend to his ancestral home when the latter arrives at Ellery’s house covered in blood and unable to remember anything from the past few weeks. There, tensions erupt and foul play results in the murder of one of the household’s members. Originally published by Little, Brown in 1948.

Cat of Many Tails

The cat had 9 kills. The silent rush of footsteps, the muffled shriek, the ever tightening noose of exotic silk, the mark of the Cat. The Cat had claimed number nine. Ellery found number 10 alive and offered the victim temptingly to the killer. The trap was baited and Ellery and the police poised for the strike that never came. But the strangler struck elsewhere.

Murder with a Past

Confused, Dave objected as Julian Smith interrogated him about his wife’s whereabouts: ‘You’d better stop making like a detective, Julian, and tell me what this is all about.’ Smith reached into a pocket and brought out something wrapped in a white cloth. Dave blanched, recognizing his own gun now a murder weapon.

And on the Eighth Day

MysteryLarge Print EditionIts April 1944 and Ellery Queen has been working for the military making films in Hollywood. Driving through Death Valley on his way home, his car breaks down. Stumbling over a rise in the desert, he encounters an odd man who seems to come from an earlier time, and is welcomed into his community as a sort of prophet. Queen must root out a growing corruption while operating within the limits of an alien world and comes to the realization that evil can invade the most guarded of peoples hearts and societies.

Blow Hot Blow Cold

America’s Master Crime Solver

Door Between

When Ellery Queen first meets the award winning novelist Karen Leith, it is at a party held to celebrate her most recent prize in literature. The next time he hears of her, she is dead murdered, so the police suspect, by the daughter of her fianc , the eminent cancer researcher Dr. John MacClure. With no other suspects and only circumstantial evidence at hand, master detective Ellery Queen delves into the reclusive writer’s past to uncover the startling method and motive of an intricate crime.

The New Adventures of Ellery Queen

TRICK I The first thing to vanish is a worthless doorstop. Then in the twinkling of an eye, goes its rich and eldely owner. ANd, for the grand finale, both reappear each as dead as the other. TRICK II From the House of Darkness issues more bafflement. In total darkness and from a distance of twelve feet, four bullets are pumped within an inch of ecah other into a spectator’s back. A feat utterly impossible to perform yet brazenly and undeniably done. TRICK III The piece de resistance. This time it’s an entire house, a real house, a solid house which Ellery Queen had been in only the day before…
vanished from the face of the earth. And in its place, one of the most incredible conundrums ever to face the master crime solver. ENCORES The New Adventures of Ellery Queen is a classic collection of eightshort mysteries and a remarkable short novle. First published in 1940 it has sold over a million copies and continues to be ‘as good as they come.’ THE NEW YORK TIMES.

The Tragedy of Errors and Others

ELLERY QUEEN IS THE AMERICAN DETECTIVE STORY So wrote the great critic Anthony Boucher about the contributions of Ellery Queen to the mystery story. Queen appeared in novels and short stories, in the movies and on television, on the radio and even in comic books. In honor of the seventieth anniversary of the first Ellery Queen novel, Crippen & Landru is proud to publish the first completely new Ellery Queen book in almost thirty years. The Tragedy of Errors is the lengthy and detailed plot outline for the final, but never published EQ novel, containing all the hallmarks of the greatest Queen novels the dying message, the succession of false solutions before the astonishing truth is revealed, and scrupulous fairplay to the reader. And the theme is one that Queen had been developing for many years: the manipulation of events in a world going mad by people who aspire to the power of gods. The Tragedy of Errors and Others also contains the six hitherto uncollected Ellery Queen short stories, and a section of essays, tributes, and reminiscences of Ellery Queen, written by family members, friends, and some of the finest current mystery writers.

The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries

Detection in the Golden Age!!!

In 1930, Anthony Berkeley Cox 1893 1971 founded London’s Detection Club, whose members swore that their ‘detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them, using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them.’ The Detection Club pledged ‘never to conceal a vital clue from the reader.’

Anthony Berkeley s novels and short stories featuring Roger Sheringham and Inspector Moresby are among the finest examples of the fair play, challenge to the reader tradition of the Golden Age. Berkeley punctiliously presented all the clues to the reader, but as Tony Medawar and Arthur Robinson point out in their introduction, he loved showing that clues could be interpreted in multiple ways and Sheringham is often wrong in his conclusions.

The title story in The Avenging Chance has long been considered one of the five or six greatest formal detective stories. This book also collects seven additional cases of Sheringham and Moresby, one of which ‘The Mystery of Horne’s Copse’ is a recently discovered novelette. Also included are Berkeley s own tongue in cheek satire of the Sheringham stories and a complete checklist of the Sheringham novels and tales.

The Avenging Chance is the eleventh in Crippen & Landru s Lost Classics series. Cover illustration by Gail Cross. Lost Classics design by Deborah Miller.

The Adventures of the Murdered Moths

Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who wrote under the pseudonym Ellery Queen; and whose fictional sleuth was also named Ellery Queen, were probably the most important American mystery writers from 1929 until the early 1970’s. Ellery Queen is the American detective story, wrote Anthony Boucher and he meant not only their detective novels, but also their critical writings, their editing, and their appearance on television and the radio. From 1939 until 1948, Lee and Dannay wrote a hugely popular radio mystery show,The Adventures of Ellery Queen, which like the EQ books stopped the action toward the end and challenged the audience to deduce whodunit. From the more than 350 surviving scripts, we have chosen fourteen of the most challenging: The case of the Tontine whose members die off one by one; The disappearance of Napoleon’s Razor on a cross country railroad train; The case that Sherlock Holmes failed to solve; The strangling in a haunted cave with only the victim’s footprints leading to the corpse; A dying message which seems to name all the suspects; The clue of the dead moth; and 8 other extraordinary mysteries This book is published in honor of the centennial of the births of Lee and Dannay, and in the fictional world of EQ, the centennial of Ellery himself.

The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories

Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ launched the detective story in 1841. The genre began as a highbrow form of entertainment, a puzzle to be solved by a rational sifting of clues. In Britain, the stories became decidedly upper crust: the crime often committed in a world of manor homes and formal gardens, the blood on the Persian carpet usually blue. But from the beginning, American writers worked important changes on Poe’s basic formula, especially in use of language and locale. In The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories, Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert bring together thirty three tales that illuminate both the evolution of crime fiction in the United States and America’s unique contribution to this highly popular genre. From elegant ‘locked room’ mysteries, to the hard boiled realism of the ’30s and ’40s, to the great range of styles seen today, this superb collection includes the finest crime writers, including Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Ed McBain, Sue Grafton, and Hillerman, a best selling crime writer himself. And we sample a wide variety of styles, from tales with a strongly regional flavor, to hard edged pulp fiction, to stories with a feminist perspective. Throughout, the editors provide highly knowledgeable introductions to each piece, written from the perspective of fellow writers and reflecting a life long interest not to say love of this quintessentially American genre. Hillerman and Herbert bring us a gold mine of glorious stories that can be read for sheer pleasure, but that also illuminate how the crime story evolved from the drawing room to the back alley, and how it came to explore every corner of our nation and every facet of our lives.

The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century

In The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, best selling author Tony Hillerman and mystery expert Otto Penzler present an unparalleled treasury of American suspense fiction that every fan will cherish. Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery’s eminent history from the turn of the century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammett and Chandler, to the mystery story’s rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction. Penzler, BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES series editor, and Hillerman, whose Leaphorn/Chee novels have won him multiple Edgar Awards and millions of devotees, winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE and ESQUIRE, COLLIER’S and THE NEW YORKER. Giants of the genre abound Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top notch writing of a hundred years’ worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

A Century of Great Suspense Stories

New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver’s enviable task? Choose the best mystery/horror detective stories from a century of work by the world’s most celebrated writers. The result is a triumph, featuring masterpieces of suspense by: Robert Bernard Robert Bloch Lawrence Block Anthony Boucher Frederic Brown James M. Cain Max Allan Collins Jeffery Deaver Stanley Ellin Harlan Ellison Erle Stanley Gardner Ed Gorman Anna Katharine Green Jeremiah Healy Patricia Highsmith Reginald Hill Tony Hillerman Evan Hunter Stephen King John Lutz John D. MacDonald Ross MacDonald Michael Malone Steve Martini Sharyn McCrumb Margaret Millar Marcia Muller Sara Paretsky Bill Pronzini Ellery Queen Ruth Rendell Lisa Scottoline Georges Simenon Mickey Spillane Rex Stout Janwillem van de Wetering Donald E. Westlake