Regular visitors to this blog and listeners to the podcast will know that - as a general rule - I am not a fan of books about serial killers. I don't care for books that delve into the personalities and psychoses of such killers. There are exceptions to this rule (as there are to all such rules): there are a few, a very few, books that I like about multiple murders committed by a single person, whether for an obsession or for some other reason. Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders fits into that category. So does Ellery Queen's marvelous and very definitely "noir" Cat of Many Tails, from 1949, with its searing picture of New York City at its worst, with apparently random murders taking place in the midst of one of those dreadful New York heat waves (no insult meant, Phoenix readers - it's really more the humidity). Here's what I had to say a decade ago, when I reviewed Cat of Many Tails on the Classic Mysteries podcast, somewhat edited - mostly to update and correct information about the book's availability. If you haven't already done so, this is a book you really should read.
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On a hot evening in New York City, back in the late 1940s, a man was murdered in his apartment – strangled with a silk cord. Police said there were no clues. A few weeks later, there was another murder…and another. The city began to move towards panic, as it realized a serial killer, who left no clues, appeared to be on the loose. They called the killer “The cat.” The story of how the cat was finally exposed is told in Ellery Queen’s Cat of Many Tails.
There are multiple Ellery Queens. There’s the author – actually two cousins, Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee. And there is Ellery Queen the detective character featured in the Queen novels. (I’ll try to make it clear as I go along which one I’m referring to at any given time.)
Earlier in this series, I reviewed the very first Ellery Queen novel, The Roman Hat Mystery. The early Ellery Queen books were fine examples of the “play-fair” school of mystery writing – the reader was given every clue when the detective got it; there was even a “challenge to the reader” late in the book, where the reader was given the chance to beat the detective to the correct solution.
Later Queen novels, though, are better developed in terms of plot and character, and I think Cat of Many Tails is one of his best. We are shown the city of New York in a panic over the series of murders – every week or two, another person, apparently chosen at random, is found strangled, with a silk cord around his or her neck.
Ellery Queen – the detective – becomes involved in the case after the fifth killing, at the direct and urgent request not only of his father, Police Inspector Richard Queen, but the police commissioner and the mayor. Ellery believes that there MUST be some connection among the different victims – and that if he can figure out what the connection is, he will be able to solve the murders and put the cat out of business.
In this, of course, he is correct. But for those who like puzzles, be aware that it is only by chance that Ellery stumbles across the connection, which points him to the killer.
Or does it? Like many other Queen novels of the period, Ellery’s role is fairly ambiguous – and he makes a huge mistake in his reasoning, a mistake which – he argues – led to the deaths of two more people.
The book is fascinating. Serial killers were pretty rare in those days – in fact, the term itself wasn’t coined until much later; Ellery refers to a “multiple murderer” instead. And it is one of the few instances from that period where a major author tried to come up with a plot involving such a killer. In Cat of Many Tails, the murderer really is suffering from a psychosis, and the final exposition of what really happened takes place in a conversation between Ellery Queen and a psychiatrist in Switzerland. Earlier – after a couple of additional murders – another psychiatrist tells him:
"[we] have...seven persons dying by the same hand who have no inter-identity or contiguity. What does this mean in practical terms? A series of apparently indiscriminate acts of violence. To the trained mind, this spells psychosis. I say ‘apparently’ indiscriminate, by the way, because the conduct of the psychotic appears unmotivated only when judged in the perspective of reality – that is, by more or less healthy minds viewing the world as it is. The psychotic has his motivations, but they proceed from distorted views of reality and falsification of facts."
It is a grim book, but – I think – it is quite a satisfying one.
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Cat of Many Tails is out of print, but it is available as an e-book from MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media, and there are a fair number of second-hand copies around. Your favorite mystery bookseller should be able to find a reasonably-priced copy for you.
You can listen to the original podcast by clicking here.
Next week: The Body in the Library, by Agatha Christie.
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