shanghao's Reviews > The Tragedy of Y

The second of the Drury Lane series and arguably the more well-known title by the Ellery Queen duo (aka Barnaby Ross), this one was more enjoyable than its predecessor, albeit equally long-winded, which I’ve come to accept as the authors’ style.

Just like The Tragedy of X , the culprit came out of the left and while this artistic license seemed to be taken to give the intended shock effect, it did not work as well for me because there’s hardly any character buildup involving the reader’s attention span when it comes to the murderer, and it makes for a very emotionally detached reading when the analysis was being laid out.

The underlying allegory painted by the story though is a grim one and not altogether implausible. I’m just a little trifled about the tendency to refer to this particular ‘evil virus in the family’, ‘crazy disease’, ‘afflicted blood’ etc as the source of all problems without the story ever pinpointing a more precise description of the so-called affliction safe for a Wassermann indicator in the presented doctor’s records. Stop waffling!


What does set this apart from the usual golden age detective fiction is its more realistic take on the psychology of murder - oftentimes there just isn’t any grand motive behind it. Like the simple pleasures in life, so can murder arise from inconsequential triggers. This setup is totally opposite from The Tragedy of X, whereby the murderer was fuelled by immense personal tragedy and revenge. And because of this distinction, and the meta-swipe at detective fiction in itself, this was, albeit not entirely satisfying, a worthy read with a much more interesting aftertaste.