The Greek Coffin Mystery (ePub)

In one of his earliest cases, Ellery Queen confronts a murder in blue blood

America's master of deduction, Ellery Queen, has made his name by combining dazzling feats of pure reason with the old-fashioned legwork that comes with being the son of a New York cop. Before he became the nation's most famous sleuth, he was just an untested talent - a bookworm who thought he might put his genius to work solving crimes. Young Queen made his bones on the Khalkis case.

The scion of a famous New York art-dealing family, Georg Khalkis has spent several years housebound with blindness - a misery he is relieved of when a heart attack knocks him dead on the library floor. After the funeral, his will vanishes, and an exhaustive search of home, churchyard, crypt, and mourners reveals nothing. Baffled, the police turn to a headstrong young genius named Ellery Queen. During this case, Queen develops his deductive method - and swings dramatically between failure and success.

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.