The Dutch Shoe Mystery (ePub)

Queen visits an operating theater to witness a surgery, but finds a murder instead

The son of a police detective, Ellery Queen grew up in a bloody atmosphere. Since he started lending his deductive powers to the New York City homicide squad, he has seen more than his fair share of mangled corpses. Though he is accustomed to gore, the thought of seeing a living person sliced open makes him ill. So when a doctor invites him to sit in on an operation, Queen braces his stomach. As it happens, his stomach is spared, but his brain must go to work.

The patient is Abigail Doorn, a millionairess in a diabetic coma. To prepare her for surgery, the hospital staff has stabilized her blood sugar level and wheeled her to the operating theater - but just before the first incision, the doctors realize she is dead, strangled while lying unconscious on her gurney. Queen came to the hospital to watch surgeons work, but now it's his time to operate.

Review quote:

"A new Ellery Queen book has always been something to look forward to for many years now." - Agatha Christie

"Ellery Queen is the American detective story." - Anthony Boucher, author of Nine Times Nine

"A great way to visit Moscow without having to live there." - San Jose Mercury News

Biographical note:

Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age "fair play" mystery.

Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen's first appearance came in 1928, when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that was later published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who uses his spare time to assist his police inspector uncle in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee's death.