It was a regular routine, a show put on display every weekday at noon in the large show window of French's Department Store in New York City. The current display was an exhibit of some of the store's new bedding for sale. A model would walk around inside the window, demonstrating some of the smart new bedroom furniture, including a motorized device which would lower a bed from one of the walls at the push of a button. But on that Tuesday in March, the viewers watching the live display in the store window got a great deal more than they bargained for. When the woman displaying the model bed pressed the button on her control, the wall dutifully opened up – and the body of a murdered woman tumbled out. And Inspector Richard Queen was going to have his hands full with a very complicated case in The French Powder Mystery. Fortunately, Inspector Queen's son, Ellery Queen, was on hand to help his father figure things out.
The French Powder Mystery, by Ellery Queen, is the subject of my audio review this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you are welcome to listen to the complete review by clicking here. Written in 1930, it was only the second mystery written by the two cousins who used "Ellery Queen" as both their pen name and the name of their lead character.
When that murder victim falls out of the bed in the French’s department store display window, the police – and Ellery – find themselves with a baffling case. Why on earth would anyone bent on murder want to set up such an elaborate crime scene that surely must provide clues to the police and other investigators?
As Ellery looks around the scene of the murder, he finds a great many possible clues. For example, there are a couple of heavy onyx bookends, one of which appears to have a few grains of some unidentified powder adhering to it – that’s the clue which is referred to in the title, The French Powder Mystery. There are other physical clues, small things, to be sure, but they do grow in importance with every new discovery.
I must admit that – by today’s standards – The French Powder Mystery seems sometimes painfully slow. That’s because there is an overwhelming concentration on the puzzle-plot and the investigation into the murder, and it is a complex plot indeed. However, the reader who wants to take up the author’s challenge to find a logical solution to the mystery is given all the information he or she needs. There are maps of the crime scene and a detailed list of all the major characters which I found invaluable in keeping them straight in my own mind. If you enjoy puzzles, I think you'll enjoy this one.
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