John's Reviews > The Tragedy of Y

The other day I read this book's predecessor, The Tragedy of X, and, while I found it far from dreadful, it did seem to represent not so much a larval form of the great Ellery Queen partnership as a member of a previous generation. I'm not just talking about some of the appallingly insensitive stereotyping (of the physically impaired) it contains -- that was, after all, fairly typical of the era -- but of the entirely pedestrian nature of the plot, the hackneyed characterization, and the lackluster dragging out of a deus ex machina as the main prop of the mystery's solution. This second volume in the series has problems of its own, but at last Dannay and Lee (the duo comprising "Ellery Queen") seem to be finding their own voice. The plot's as far-flung and artificial as we could hope for; the solution comes right out of left field (at least so far as this reader's concerned) yet has been foreshadowed with complete fairness, all the clues being in plain view; the quips are by and large witty (although there's a ghastly moment when a buxom woman's bosom is oh so hilariously likened to a cow's udder); and the central character, deaf retired actor Drury Lane, has become so much a template for the waiting-in-the-wings sleuth Ellery Queen that at one point you can see where Dannay/Lee forgot that he was deaf and had to insert a hasty patch to explain what alerted him to a sound from behind.

York Hatter, downtrodden paterfamilias of a wealthy Manhattan brood, commits suicide by poisoning himself then jumping into the river. His survivors are as odd a lot, and as oftentimes vicious, as you could hope for; there are heavy but non-explicit hints that this is because York's unspeakably vile widow Emily naughtily contracted syphillis in her youth and has "tainted" everyone with it. The only family member not to be bonkers is Barbara; on the other hand, she's an acclaimed poet so maybe the pox got her too.

A few months after York's death, it seems someone attempts to poison his deaf, dumb and blind stepdaughter Louisa; only the fact that York's grandson Jackie stole a gulp of the laced eggnog, enough to make himself sick but no more, saved Louisa from downing the full, lethal dose. Weeks go by and it seems there'll be no solution emerging to the attempted murder, but then one night Louisa's mother, the ghastly Emily, is murdered by being hit over the head with a mandolin while, it seems, seeking to avert another attempt to poison Louisa. It's a case for blustering Inspector Thumm of the NYPD and his histrionic comrade Drury. There's a locked-room puzzle, a hidden manuscript, a case of arson -- all kinds of good stuff -- before Drury works out the solution, engineers matters so that there can be absolutely no doubt as to the murderer's guilt, and then breaks all laws to bring the tragedy to the best conclusion for all concerned.

There are two very silly digressions. In one, we spend pages with Drury and Barbara's swain Perry as Drury plans to use his own thespian skills and the genius of his makeup artist to disguise himself as Perry and thereby infiltrate the Hatter family; at the end of those pages Drury decides not to use this stratagem after all. (Perhaps one of the Queens pointed out to the other that this whole idea was nitwitted -- it'd take Barbara just one kiss to spot the impersonation -- but didn't have the gumption just to discard the section.) The other concerns another digression in response to Louisa's recollection that her mother's killer had an odd smell about him, which she can't quite identify . . . could it be cakes, ice cream, a rare orchid she sniffed years ago . . .? In fact, the odor proves to be vanilla, as Drury spends many pages ascertaining. Since much has been made of Louisa's amazingly sophisticated sense of smell, is it at all possible that vanilla wouldn't be the first scent she identified, be hanged with the orchids and stuff?

The other problem I had with the novel came at the end. As mentioned, the Queens are scrupulously fair in making sure the clues are presented openly in the narrative. In the book's latter chapters, Drury explains to Thumm and DA Bruno how those clues led him to the unequivocal identification of the killer; de rigueur for a detection of this type, of course. Yet Drury's explanations seem absolutely interminable. The clue to the killer's height, for example, requires a mere few words to become obvious; yet Drury goes through it in excruciating detail, spelling out each of the arithmetical steps involved in what's actually an unnecessarily precise calculation. Then, not satisfied with that, he uses a different arithmetical approach and goes through the whole blasted process again! (His math, alas, isn't good enough for him to realize that the two arithmetical approaches are in fact equivalent; the second calculation doesn't validate the first, just repeats it.)

But here I am, concentrating on the things I didn't like about this extremely early EQ novel when really I came away from it delighted by all its EQish aspects. Whereas, after The Tragedy of X, I turned to The Tragedy of Y with a sort of dutiful resignation, I'm now looking forward to the third and last of the Barnaby Ross novels, The Tragedy of Z, with some eagerness.