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A review by luffy79
The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen
5.0
The two authors who have taken the pen name of Ellery Queen are many things, but great writers they are not. By great I mean - maybe - humanizing. To see someone solve a rubik cube in record time inspires nothing but awe; I don't mean that in a good way by the way. They do not know how to make the journey to the final solution of the mystery memorable. But such is the force with which the authors have created this story that even an average minded person like me followed most of the ongoing developments without trouble.
I learned by pure chance today that in the past a series of Ellery Queen on television lasted only for one season in the US. It was replaced by Murder She Wrote. That one went on for many seasons, and garnered pretty much every award. The detective called Ellery Queen is not distinctive in appearance. He is not fleshed out. He is far from being despicable, or mundane, but he is not relatable. As time went by, and slowly as we are nearing the 100 year anniversary of the first Ellery Queen book, the appeal of Ellery becomes less and less fetching.
Despite all this the books remain on my imaginary book shelf. The Queens books are much better, despite the limitations I chalked up regarding the authors' abilities, than most of the modern fluff being sold currently. It's difficult to have unanimous reviews that sort the wheat from the chaff. There's so many contemporary books to choose from and most of them will be subpar. The burnt hand teaches best and I've been burnt several times by inferior literature. But I digress.
The tour de force which the authors accomplished and which earned a perfect score from me lay in the deconstruction of a complex plot so that I could follow most of it. The book never got boring. It has a big cast. One of them is the murderer. There's no lengthy questioning of any select group of them. But I feel that if the authors were in another category of writing, say text books, they would have been immensely successful. They know how to make a complex idea go within reach of the masses.
I am very impressed. I had one or two suspects in my mind, but I could never guess the solution here. The authors don't show their hand blatantly. Agatha Christie shows us a lot daringly, that's why I could guess some of her mysteries. But the Queen mysteries are very delicately logical, like a puzzle. What most impressed me here was -spoilers!- the apprehension of the false murderer and the amazing, step by step dismantling of what supposedly happened. To fool the reader and leave none the wiser with such an in depth analysis of a false trail is genius work. The Queen authors were very confident of their case. I hope, however, that they don't use this device more than twice or thrice, as it would lose its novelty. Once is enough.
I learned by pure chance today that in the past a series of Ellery Queen on television lasted only for one season in the US. It was replaced by Murder She Wrote. That one went on for many seasons, and garnered pretty much every award. The detective called Ellery Queen is not distinctive in appearance. He is not fleshed out. He is far from being despicable, or mundane, but he is not relatable. As time went by, and slowly as we are nearing the 100 year anniversary of the first Ellery Queen book, the appeal of Ellery becomes less and less fetching.
Despite all this the books remain on my imaginary book shelf. The Queens books are much better, despite the limitations I chalked up regarding the authors' abilities, than most of the modern fluff being sold currently. It's difficult to have unanimous reviews that sort the wheat from the chaff. There's so many contemporary books to choose from and most of them will be subpar. The burnt hand teaches best and I've been burnt several times by inferior literature. But I digress.
The tour de force which the authors accomplished and which earned a perfect score from me lay in the deconstruction of a complex plot so that I could follow most of it. The book never got boring. It has a big cast. One of them is the murderer. There's no lengthy questioning of any select group of them. But I feel that if the authors were in another category of writing, say text books, they would have been immensely successful. They know how to make a complex idea go within reach of the masses.
I am very impressed. I had one or two suspects in my mind, but I could never guess the solution here. The authors don't show their hand blatantly. Agatha Christie shows us a lot daringly, that's why I could guess some of her mysteries. But the Queen mysteries are very delicately logical, like a puzzle. What most impressed me here was -spoilers!- the apprehension of the false murderer and the amazing, step by step dismantling of what supposedly happened. To fool the reader and leave none the wiser with such an in depth analysis of a false trail is genius work. The Queen authors were very confident of their case. I hope, however, that they don't use this device more than twice or thrice, as it would lose its novelty. Once is enough.