The murder which is the centerpiece of "The Chinese Orange Mystery," by Ellery Queen, isn't - technically speaking - an impossible crime, I suppose - even though one door to the room where it happened was bolted and locked while the other one was constantly under observation. But it is most certainly an unusual, apparently inexplicable crime. As the author notes in the foreword to the book, "it might well have been subtitled: The Crime That Was Backwards."
Consider the situation: an unknown man walks into a suite of offices. He is told to wait in the next room. When last seen, he is settling down to read a magazine in that room, all by himself.
When the man is next seen, he is dead. All of his clothes apparently have been removed and then replaced front-to-back on his body. All the furniture in that waiting room has been reversed as well. The pictures in the room have been re-hung to face the walls. Oh, and somebody – presumably the murderer – has taken a couple of giant spears down from their positions hanging on the wall, and has jammed them into the victim’s clothing, so that the spear points look like a couple of gigantic horns growing out of the victim’s head.
And the reader - along with the detectives in the novel - must try to explain why all this has happened. Why has everything been reversed? Who is the dead man - for there are absolutely no identifying marks or labels on the man's clothes or on his body?
"The Chinese Orange Mystery" is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.
"Ellery Queen" was the pen name used by Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee for their mysteries, as well as the name of their primary detective. This was the eighth of their earliest novels. While a lot of readers and critics prefer some of the author's later books with darker plots, which are less about puzzles and more about character and psychology, I love the early puzzle books, such as "The Chinese Orange Mystery," which originally appeared in 1934. Can you think of a good reason for that most peculiar setting, in which everything has been turned around? It's up to Ellery Queen, the character, to figure it out here - although the reader will be given all the clues as well and challenged to come up with the solution before reading the truth in the last few pages.
"The Chinese Orange Mystery" has been out of print, but the Mysterious Press, through Open Road Media, has brought it back as an e-book in popular formats. The publishers provided me with a copy for my review. Ellery Queen (the author) was one of the most influential American crime writers of traditional, fair-play mysteries. "The Chinese Orange Mystery" is a great example.
This book is another entry in the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge under way at the Reader's Block blog. I'm putting in in category 35, "Genuine Fakes: Authors who wrote under a pseudonym." That would be Dannay and Lee as Ellery Queen. Take a look at some of the many vintage books people are reading for this challenge - you may find some strong temptations there for your own reading pleasure!
Les - Oh, I do like the mystery in this one. It may not count completely as 'an impossible crime,' but it's certainly a knotty little problem isn't it. I have to confess I like Ellery Queen's character a bit more in the later mysteries, where he has a slightly more human side if I can put it that way. That said though, this one shows his detective skills for sure.
Posted by: Margot Kinberg | March 18, 2013 at 11:56 AM
He's certainly more chastened and less over-sure of himself in the later books, Margot, particularly the Wrightsville books. In the early stories, he can be almost as unbearable as Philo Vance. You sort of want to take him aside and shout "LOSE THE PINCE-NEZ GLASSES, KID"...
Posted by: Les Blatt | March 18, 2013 at 12:00 PM
This is the one that I read when I was 13 and became a life-long Ellery Queen addict. Admittedly there isn't enough there beyond the wonderful and bizarre central situation, but it is a very memorable one!
Posted by: Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) | March 19, 2013 at 05:13 AM
I agree, Sergio - as another critic noted in the GAD Wiki, the story does tend to sag a bit in the middle. But the bizarre situation - and the explanation for it all - carries the book easily.
Posted by: Les Blatt | March 19, 2013 at 07:26 AM
I was a huge Ellery Queen reader when I was teenager. I loved the Challenge to the Reader feature (although I rarely figured out Whodunit). It's sad that most of the Ellery Queen classics are out-of-print.
Posted by: George kelley | March 22, 2013 at 09:29 AM
I've always preferred the first Ellery Queen novels, George, which is why I'm so pleased that the Mysterious Press and Open Road Media have brought most of them back in e-book format.
Posted by: Les Blatt | March 22, 2013 at 10:53 AM
Thanks for this, Les. I'm definitely going to get my hands on this one. Wow. It sounds like just my kind of mystery. I love a good puzzle.
Posted by: Yvette | March 29, 2013 at 05:23 PM
The early EQ books relied more heavily on the puzzle aspects of the story than they did on character, Yvette. I enjoyed the formal "challenge to the reader" as well, where the authors said, in essence, "we've given you every clue, so you should be able to figure out what really happened." I never could, but I enjoyed trying!
Posted by: Les Blatt | March 30, 2013 at 02:21 PM