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The Copper Frame / A Room to Die In
The Copper Frame
This was cold-blooded murder!
The Syndicate - led by gangster Larry Cutter - is trying to take over Iroquois. They want the town, mayor, and police chief in their pocket. So they kill chief Andy Saxon and one of his top men. Then they move into clean up. But they hadn't reckoned on the chief's son, Lieutenant Ted Saxon.
And to stop him, they will have to frame him with his own father's murder!
Suspended from the force, facing trial, the whole town against him, how could Ted hope to beat Cutter's hands?
A Room to Die In
How could a man have been murdered when he was found alone in his study, a gun in his hand, and the door locked from the inside? It had to be suicide, the police figured. Although there was no suicide note, there was a letter proving conclusively that Roland Nelson, over the last several months, was being blackmailed.
But to his daughter, Ann, whom he had seen only spasmodically since he had left her mother when Ann was a baby, there were unanswered questions. She was convinced that her father could never have killed himself. Before she found the answers, two people were brutally garroted with a wire, one of them in her own apartment.
This was cold-blooded murder!
The Syndicate - led by gangster Larry Cutter - is trying to take over Iroquois. They want the town, mayor, and police chief in their pocket. So they kill chief Andy Saxon and one of his top men. Then they move into clean up. But they hadn't reckoned on the chief's son, Lieutenant Ted Saxon.
And to stop him, they will have to frame him with his own father's murder!
Suspended from the force, facing trial, the whole town against him, how could Ted hope to beat Cutter's hands?
A Room to Die In
How could a man have been murdered when he was found alone in his study, a gun in his hand, and the door locked from the inside? It had to be suicide, the police figured. Although there was no suicide note, there was a letter proving conclusively that Roland Nelson, over the last several months, was being blackmailed.
But to his daughter, Ann, whom he had seen only spasmodically since he had left her mother when Ann was a baby, there were unanswered questions. She was convinced that her father could never have killed himself. Before she found the answers, two people were brutally garroted with a wire, one of them in her own apartment.
- GenresMystery
333 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 4, 1981
About the author
Ellery Queen
1,749 books505 followersaka Barnaby Ross.
(Pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee)
"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 would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who used his spare time to assist his police inspector father 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.
Several of the later "Ellery Queen" books were written by other authors, including Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, and Theodore Sturgeon.
(Pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee)
"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 would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who used his spare time to assist his police inspector father 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.
Several of the later "Ellery Queen" books were written by other authors, including Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, and Theodore Sturgeon.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 23, 2018
Every time I pick up an Ellery Queen, I remember that I am always charmed by them. It's fun to read the books that heavily influenced so much of today's crime fiction standards, tinted with the feel of the decades in which they were written. In this double issue, I was particularly delighted by the "Cast of Characters" laid out like a table of contents:
The descriptions are all so succintly tongue in cheek, and ought to be read in a Transatlantic Accent:
"The gangster's moll who got her mink coat just the way the minks do, but then was skinned alive for it...."
The Copper Frame
Not an Ellery Queen story. This one involves features the attempted framing of Lt Ted Saxon by shady politicians with criminal business in mind. It was written by Richard Deming, a crime-writer active from the 1940's-1980's. It's set pretty squarely in police stations and small-city political intrigue, and feels just as it should. I was pleasantly surprised by how much attention was given to characterization, even to supporting cast.
A Room to Die In
Also not featuring Ellery Queen the character. This has a female lead, who is inheriting after her estranged father's apparent suicide. A fantastic locked-room mystery with an interesting solution! I enjoyed the characters less in this story, but found it to be moderately superior, otherwise. It was ghostwritten by Jack Vance, a fairly notable author in his own right, and was solidly put together. There were a solid trail of clues pointing to the solution, but I admit I had to find it out in the "big reveal", along with the characters. (I find these dramatic reveals to be terribly fun, so I choose to ignore the fact that they are often not practical nor likely to occur in any sort of official setting.)
A fun but comfortable read in the most solid and tropey form of the genre. Good stuff.
The descriptions are all so succintly tongue in cheek, and ought to be read in a Transatlantic Accent:
"The gangster's moll who got her mink coat just the way the minks do, but then was skinned alive for it...."
The Copper Frame
Not an Ellery Queen story. This one involves features the attempted framing of Lt Ted Saxon by shady politicians with criminal business in mind. It was written by Richard Deming, a crime-writer active from the 1940's-1980's. It's set pretty squarely in police stations and small-city political intrigue, and feels just as it should. I was pleasantly surprised by how much attention was given to characterization, even to supporting cast.
A Room to Die In
Also not featuring Ellery Queen the character. This has a female lead, who is inheriting after her estranged father's apparent suicide. A fantastic locked-room mystery with an interesting solution! I enjoyed the characters less in this story, but found it to be moderately superior, otherwise. It was ghostwritten by Jack Vance, a fairly notable author in his own right, and was solidly put together. There were a solid trail of clues pointing to the solution, but I admit I had to find it out in the "big reveal", along with the characters. (I find these dramatic reveals to be terribly fun, so I choose to ignore the fact that they are often not practical nor likely to occur in any sort of official setting.)
A fun but comfortable read in the most solid and tropey form of the genre. Good stuff.
Displaying 1 of 1 review