El bazar de French de la Quinta Avenida de Nueva York era famoso por sus mercancías raras que ofrecía a su elegida clientela. Pero nadie de la tienda sintióse orgulloso de la última exhibición en su mejor escaparate: el cadáver de la esposa del propietario de los almacenes. Ellery Queen y su padre, el inspector Richard Queen pronto descubrieron que aquel palacio del comercio era un nido de víboras, de temores, de celos, de suspicacias y odios, donde el amor resultaba barato y el precio del honor estaba de baja. Y para sorprenderles aún más, se estaba burlando de ellos un cerebro maestro de la criminalidad que convirtió la reluciente tienda en un sordido escenario del crimen

En la hacienda de Cabo Español, hogar de ricos y malvados, Walter Godfrey da una fiesta por todo lo alto. Pero la velada se verá interrumpida por un pistolero tuerto que secuestra a su hija y a su tío, confundiéndolo con su amante John Marco. El detective Ellery Queen, de vacaciones en Cabo Español, logra rescatar a la hija de Godfrey. Pero la alegría durará poco. A la mañana siguiente de su liberación aparece asesinado John Marco, desnudo y envuelto en una capa española.
El caso promete sacar a la luz muchos trapos sucios, ya que todos los huéspedes parecen tener algún vínculo vergonzoso con el muerto.

Not entirely satisfactory mystery, which revolves around the discovery of a body in the display window of a fashionable Fifth Avenue, New York City department store. The body turns out to be the wife of the owner of the establishment, and in the course of the next few days, Ellery Queen, assisting his father, Inspector Richard Queen, cracks the case. I didn't cotton to the book very much, since the driving motive of the story didn't get developed until late in the book. Modern readers (the original book came out in 1930) may also quail at the casual fashion in which the evidence is handled. One of the key elements of the story -- what happened to the blood of the victim -- would be a farce by today's standards, with today's detection methods. Even by 1930s standards, it stretches a point. I also wasn't terribly satisfied by the casual nature in which the guilty party seemed to have been "allowed" to commit the crime. Early in the series, but not very satisfactory. This edition (at least my copy) had a serious flaw, in that the first few pages of the first chapter were omitted. Can't say I recommend. ( )

This is one of Queen's earliest ones. I liked that he had the cast of characters in the front and a couple of drawings of the locations involved.

With lots to draw from it kept your mind going on figuing out who was the guilty party. Lots of red herrings and twists and turns, but not too many that you got too lost. ( )

I can scarcely believe people used to read Ellery Queen mysteries for pleasure and not (as now) as historical curiosities--as examples of the bygone "classical" fair-play detective novel, essentially a very long "word problem" in which the clueing is especially scrupulous (even compared with the average English cozy), with every fact needed to deduce the identity of the murderer placed squarely before the reader.

But you've got to really, really love puzzles to take pleasure from novels this unreadable: turgid narration* that inclines to bombast, stilted dialogue (e.g. "Unfortunately, being a misogynist, I have no family, Inspector"!), and unending streams of information. Reading this novel is W O R K, man! I don't know who ever got the idea these books were for relaxation.

And the mystery at the bottom of it all--concerning a drug ring and its impractical communications system--is about as mundane as you can get. Edmund Wilson's quip about detective fiction--"I finally got to feel that I had to unpack large crates by swallowing the excelsior in order to find at the bottom a few bent and rusty nails"--while unfair to the genre as a whole, is a perfect description of what it is like to drag oneself through The French Powder Mystery.

The obnoxious Ellery, an independently-wealthy, insufferable man-child given to self-aggrandizing displays of superficial erudition, is to be sure a major liability. Ellery and his gruff father, Inspector Queen, have this Niles Crane/Martin Crane dynamic going on. Except Inspector Queen is not retired, and Ellery is inexplicably permitted by his father to traipse around crime scenes, interrogate witnesses, handle and even conceal evidence, etc., while nobody says boo. As to EQ's ostentatious shows of erudition, these might sound attractive to fans of Lord Peter Wimsey, but while Wimsey's erudition has behind it the force of Sayers' deep learning, EQ's allusions always seem to have been lifted from a reference book; Dannay and Lee (the authors of these books) just don't have the sophistication to make Queen a really plausible representation of a seriously intelligent and highly educated person rather than a self-important and vain poseur. And despite the novels' constantly informing us of Queen's genius, his deductions--in this novel especially--are fairly mundane.

The artificial world depicted in the Queen novels seems like the grown-up world seen through the eyes of a little kid, not only in its implausible depiction of police procedure but more importantly in its poor grasp of how grown-up people talk, think, interact, feel, why they might kill each other, etc. There is quite absent the intuitive understanding of human relationships, the deeply affecting sense of the passing of time and of individual and social change, that makes (say) Christie's best novels satisfying on many levels. Later Queen novels tried to rectify the infantilage of the early works, swinging to the opposite extreme in the kitsch religiosity of novels like And On The Eighth Day and The Finishing Stroke: if the early novels read like a kid's version of grownup detective work, the grandiose later ones read like a kid's idea of "deep" literature.

The only Queen novel I've enjoyed enough to recommend is [b:The Greek Coffin Mystery|1808330|The Greek Coffin Mystery|Ellery Queen|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1292712471s/1808330.jpg|956486]. It has all the flaws of early Queen--stilted dialogue, turgid narration, lack of human or literary interest, etc.--but at least it presents the reader with a genuinely mystifying crime that is then worked out with real ingenuity.

*Among other literary mishaps, Dannay and Lee almost never permit a character to simply "say" something; when it comes to dialogue, they never met an adverb they didn't like: "said the Inspector judicially"; "interpolated the Inspector exasperatingly"; "said the Inspector tiredly"; "asked the Inspector submissively"; "replied Marchbanks resignedly"; "said the Inspector distinctly"; "said Ellery argumentatively"; etc. etc. Aside from slowing down the already glacial pace of the narrative this glut of adverbs displays the deeper problem of these novels: if the dialogue were sharper and the characterizations more competent, one wouldn't need to be continually told how particular remarks were delivered. ( )