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mschlat 's review for:
The Roman Hat Mystery
by Ellery Queen
I picked this up because I have been watching the Ellery Queen television series with Jim Hutton and David Wayne, and I used to read and buy Ellery Queen novels back when I was a teenager. (Right now, the only one I own is the excellent [b:Cat of Many Tails|1951436|Cat of Many Tails (Ellery Queen Detective, #20)|Ellery Queen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1292842622l/1951436._SY75_.jpg|2458721].) It's possible I have read this before, but it's been decades.
What struck me with this debut novel was how strongly the emphasis was on Inspector Queen, not Ellery. Our murder occurs during a Broadway play, and the first third of the book covers the hours immediately following the discovery of the death, with Inspector Queen marshalling a ton of detectives to interrogate and investigate. It reads almost like a procedural instead of a whodunit. And that focus continues straight to the end, where the Inspector delivers the final exposition on the who, how, and why. Ellery does much of the deduction, but he's much less central than his father, and I was disappointed as a result.
The mystery was good, but not stellar, and there are a few notes that can be off-putting to the modern reader. (There's some discussion of "negroid blood", and I'm not sure what to make of Djuna, the Queen's boy servant.) I found it mostly enjoyable, but I don't feel the need to keep on making the nostalgia trip.
What struck me with this debut novel was how strongly the emphasis was on Inspector Queen, not Ellery. Our murder occurs during a Broadway play, and the first third of the book covers the hours immediately following the discovery of the death, with Inspector Queen marshalling a ton of detectives to interrogate and investigate. It reads almost like a procedural instead of a whodunit. And that focus continues straight to the end, where the Inspector delivers the final exposition on the who, how, and why. Ellery does much of the deduction, but he's much less central than his father, and I was disappointed as a result.
The mystery was good, but not stellar, and there are a few notes that can be off-putting to the modern reader. (There's some discussion of "negroid blood", and I'm not sure what to make of Djuna, the Queen's boy servant.) I found it mostly enjoyable, but I don't feel the need to keep on making the nostalgia trip.