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A review by bookish_arcadia
The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen
2.0
I am a huge fan of traditional mysteries, where the puzzle is more important than the actual crime. Add in an eccentric and preferably amateur detective and I’m usually hooked. Not so here. This was my first Ellery Queen story but it could well be the last. I found the writing style infuriating, in prose and dialogue there was an abundance of broken sentences and far too many ellipsis as though neither the characters nor the writer(s) were capable to finishing a thought or a sentence.
The story itself is irritatingly gimmicky. All of the theatrical complications were frankly ridiculous and I found them less entertaining than infuriating. It may be considered one of the best locked-room mysteries but I almost put it down with only a few pages of exposition to go, simply because I couldn’t bring myself to care. The balance between complication and convincing puzzle is simply off. It wasn’t difficult to work out who the murderer was but the how and the why were horribly contrived. The constant references to the old, tired ideas of the exotic, esoteric East were deeply trying.
Ellery’s irascible Police Inspector father was a welcome foil to all the showboating and folderol (and I normally like this feature on my mysteries!) and his men offered most of the more believable deductions. At one point he bemoans his son’s unlikely theorising, declaring
I can’t help but agree. I did however enjoy the interactions between father and son.
The story itself is irritatingly gimmicky. All of the theatrical complications were frankly ridiculous and I found them less entertaining than infuriating. It may be considered one of the best locked-room mysteries but I almost put it down with only a few pages of exposition to go, simply because I couldn’t bring myself to care. The balance between complication and convincing puzzle is simply off. It wasn’t difficult to work out who the murderer was but the how and the why were horribly contrived. The constant references to the old, tired ideas of the exotic, esoteric East were deeply trying.
Ellery’s irascible Police Inspector father was a welcome foil to all the showboating and folderol (and I normally like this feature on my mysteries!) and his men offered most of the more believable deductions. At one point he bemoans his son’s unlikely theorising, declaring
“I give up. Go the whole hog. Go puzzlin’ your brains about Chinese oranges and Mexican tamales and alligator pears and Spanish onions and English muffins, for all I care! All I say is—can’t a man eat an orange without some crackpot like you reading a mystery into it?”
I can’t help but agree. I did however enjoy the interactions between father and son.