Sweeneybd and others: I just finished rereading this book and now consider it EQ's masterpiece! As I've said about other EQ books, you are entering a fantasy world, and if you don't like it you won't like EQ, but when he does it right the logic is impeccable. This mystery novel is perfect of its type. It has four solutions (three wrong, of course), all of which involve pure logic on Ellery's part and brilliance on the part of the murderer who just comes up with something else when pure bad luck spoils his previous plans. It is also great that the murderer is somebody who was always in plain sight but is ignored by the reader like the killer of Roger Ackroyd -- when you go back over the clues, this is a brilliant book in the detection sense, in that only the final identification of the murderer fits into everything even with the previous false solutions. What is especially good is that when you are reading it, and spot loose ends, the author explains them away in a convincing manner (although it is stretching it a bit far having a character turning out to be color-blind and thinking green is red, but, hey, this is EQ world). The construction of the book is great, having intermediate climaxes to keep up the momentum and not just a final revelation at the end. There is also a very fine sub-plot involving a stolen Leonardo da Vinci and an unscrupulous millionaire collector.
This one is a classic -- five stars!
Minor note for EQ fans: J.J.McC's preface says this case occurred before "Roman Hat" and the other early books, when Ellery was just out of college, which places it as having taken place in 1927 or so, if as 'biographers' have pointed out, Ellery was born in 1905. And he is insufferable here -- a real arrogant brat -- and makes one wonder how he can lord it over the top law-enforcement brass of the city the way he does. You can also nit-pick about the possibility of somebody digging up in a graveyard between Madison and Fifth in NYC, near St Pat's, without being detected even at 3 AM. All I can say is that this is EQLand, take it or leave it.
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Grobius Shortling
Last edited by BlackAdder; October 2nd, 2004 at 07:01 PM.
You can also nit-pick about the possibility of somebody digging up in a graveyard between Madison and Fifth in NYC, near St Pat's, without being detected even at 3 AM. All I can say is that this is EQLand, take it or leave it.
Yes, there may be some questions about the method, as there are in Three Coffins and Roger Ackroyd (how quickly was that alarm thingum for the dictaphone put together?) and other classic mysteries, but the solution is dramatically satisfying (as it is in Three Coffins) because it all makes sense of the clues including the characterization of the suspects. It's in reading the late Queens, where characters behave irrationally in order for a preposterous and stupid plot to work out, that I get fussy. For all my carping on Queen, this book is a masterpiece: glad you agree!
Last edited by Patrick Gore; October 2nd, 2004 at 08:42 PM.
When we get into EQLand and ACLand and JDCLand we are not in the 'real world' -- their world is often more rational than ours where you have religious fanatics killing children, but still it requires a suspension of disbelief on the reader's part. That is one of the virtues of Golden Age detection, because you don't have to take it seriously. The anti-detective-story critics from day one always considered the genre frivolous because it had no philosophical or moral or political agenda, but they missed the whole point of it. I don't want to reduce Detection to Van Dine's simple crossword-puzzle definition, since even in a classic detective story it is unfair to throw in an alternative spelling for the Emu bird (Emeu, or somesuch). Like a pocket watch of the classic sort, it has to work internally, no matter how the watchmaker might have put it together out of unorthodox materials or some self-invented technology.
PS. I apologize for being 'rude' to you if you interpret my postings that way. It just was that the thread based on I forget which book by EQ had nothing to do with THAT book, and apparently was a different thread with the same name (I don't know how this forum software works). I just like to keep on track. But of course I've already gone off track with my diatribe in this posting.
Spoiler
Don't you agree that this is a masterfully interwoven plot, especially given the fact that the murderer is EQ's intellectual equal and played him like a lute, then Ellery played his game, then pulled a coup -- it was pointed out that it was you-win, we-tie, I-win by cheating, even if I don't know who you are yet. I really love this book. And all along it was the assistant DA, who had been a defence lawyer earlier for the murder victim (a fairly clued fact), behind the scenes, and he was not a major character but was always there at all the crucial points. A stunning book, and most people would not have caught this one even when the Challenge to the Reader was presented. It's as though 'Van' the invisible turned out to be the killer in a Philo Vance novel.
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Grobius Shortling
Last edited by BlackAdder; October 2nd, 2004 at 10:30 PM.
It's as though 'Van' the invisible turned out to be the killer in a Philo Vance novel.
Pity Van Dine never thought of that. It would have been even better than the Ackroyd surprise, given Van was a recurring character. But then, if I recall, Van Dine thought Ackroyd was cheating. Isn't it interesting, by the way, that despite Van Dine's twenty rules for constructing a good mystery plot, he couldn't construct a good one to save his life? The murderer is always simple to spot, because despite being a major character, s/he never comes under serious suspicion, hence being extremely suspicious for the reader by the logic of GAM: find whatever suspect is being treated with maddening deference by the police, and by Vance, because s/he has an alibi (i.e., was seen talking to victim through locked door, or was shot herself and no pistol to be found, etc.) and you've got your killer.
OK, now I'm straying from the topic.
Last edited by Patrick Gore; October 3rd, 2004 at 07:01 AM.
In many Philo Vance books, the murderer is obvious because he/she is the only person left in the weird household who hasn't been murdered yet! "The Greene Murder Case" is particularly bad in that way, although many critics regard it as one of Van Dine's best for some reason.
IMHO, I now consider "Greek Coffin Mystery" one of EQ's few real masterpieces.
There is something very nice and dramatic about the duel of wits between the detective and the murderer. Implausibility galore, but given the presentation, it works very well, and has nice touches of 'the cussedness of things in general', as HM would put it. And all of the loose ends are cleared up (well, maybe not all, but you'd have to do the sort of analysis grad students have to do on Shakespeare plays).
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Grobius Shortling
Last edited by BlackAdder; October 3rd, 2004 at 08:43 PM.
In many Philo Vance books, the murderer is obvious because he/she is the only person left in the weird household who hasn't been murdered yet! "The Greene Murder Case" is particularly bad in that way, although many critics regard it as one of Van Dine's best for some reason.
I've often wondered why myself. But then it occured to me how reluctant I would be to part with my copy of this particular novel. It's terrific camp, with its solution derived from a bunch of clues-on-notecards strung together in the right order, and all backed up with references to that dated criminology text (which I suppose we were supposd to consult independently to find out where the killer was getting ideas) and, as you say, the fact that most of the suspects are dead by the time Vance gets around to solving it. Delightful.
Also, it's been imitated endlessly, especially by Margery Allingham in Police at the Funeral, which borders on plagiarism. Really, I've concluded she is simply not really one of the important writers of mysteries, being extremely derivative and unimaginative. I wonder why she's still so famous?
To bring things back to Queen, 1932 appears to have been his annis mirabilis: "he" produced Greek Coffin, Egyptian Cross (which is said to be great), and The Tragedy of X. Also, though I often think of Carr as the elder statesman of the mystery novel, relative to Queen, in 1932 he hadn't produced any of the books on which his reputation rests, while Queen produced three of them that very year.
I am finding a striking parallel between "Egyptian Cross" and Carr's "Three Coffins" (yes, I can break threads with the best of you). Both mysteries involve three brothers from Eastern Europe who were involved in a crime many years ago and are now facing an avenger. I'm sure this is coincidental, maybe just that this sort of plot was popular back then.
I can't buy this "EQ-land" argument. What exactly does it mean? That the characters in mystery novels don't function as ordinary human beings, but belong to some alien species with psyches different from ours? If so, how is the reader supposed to find the solution? Are the "rules of EQ-land" written somewhere?
Of course, mystery novels of puzzle type hardly describe realistic crimes. But still, we can't say they are impossible, can we? Given a novel with some unlikely, but not impossible, external circumstances, the characters should still act realistically, within this context, and it should in principle be possible for a reasonably intelligent reader to find the solution. (But not by "logic" alone though. It is certainly impossible to convert a mystery novel to symbolic logic and derive the solution. A lot of implicit background assumptions will always be necessary.)
Therefore, "The Greek Coffin Mystery", although having some merits, also have some inexcusably stupid features. The most obvious one is this color-blindness stupidity. Of course, partial color-blindness doesn't mean that you believe that "red" is called "green". What on Earth were Dannay and Lee thinking when they wrote that??? I don't even understand the purpose. It must be possible to achieve a similar effect without this peculiar idea. I can't understand why we should accept such a stupidity as feature of EQ-land!
Another thing that doesn't seem convincing at all is Ellerys conclusion from the showing of the $1000-note in the watch.
Spoiler
According to Ellery, Knox revelation of this proved him not to be the killer. If Knox was the killer, he would never draw attention to himself by revealing this, says Ellery. Why not? He might have forgotten that Grimshaw put the note in the watch, and when he later recalled it, he revealed it for Ellery, thus avoiding suspicion.
Furthermore, Ellery claims that Joan Brett must be innocent, since she was present when Knox showed the note in the watch, because, since it proved Knox to be innocent, it would be meaningless for her to try to frame Knox. But this would only hold if Joan Brett was as smart as Ellery, and understood that the revelation proved Knox's innocence, which, by the way, as we saw, is a dubious conclusion.
More could be said, but this will suffice for now. Although I too like this with the four solutions and the surprising identity of the killer, I think that a novel with a similar plot could we written without applying some mysterious "EQ-land" rules...
The most obvious one is this color-blindness stupidity. Of course, partial color-blindness doesn't mean that you believe that "red" is called "green".
I'd have to re-check to see how Queen used this. But I do know that the inability to distinguish between red and green is one of the most common types of color-blindness. I have a good friend who has just this "disability." Of course, on the conceptual level he does know that there is a color "red" and a color "green", but he cannot distinguish between the two in practice, which has led to some interesting sartorial mishaps.
As for Knox's candid revelation of his knowledge of the bill in the watch:
Spoiler
I agree that it doesn't quite "prove" his innocence (indeed, due to the "inpenetrability" of the human mind, motive can never truly be proven or misproven). However, as I remember it, there would be no apparent reason for him to use that knowledge to "avoid suspicion," as he would have no reason to fear incrimination through that bill.
Your assessment of the Joan Brett inference, on the other hand, seems to me a very valid objection.
I'd have to re-check to see how Queen used this. But I do know that the inability to distinguish between red and green is one of the most common types of color-blindness. I have a good friend who has just this "disability." Of course, on the conceptual level he does know that there is a color "red" and a color "green", but he cannot distinguish between the two in practice, which has led to some interesting sartorial mishaps.
Precisely! But in "The Greek Coffin Mystery" a blind man gives his cousin a list to arrange his dressing. In the list, both red and green ties are mentioned. Yet the blind man knows that he's wearing a red tie when he should wear a green one, according to the list.
This doesn't make sense if the cousin, like your friend, can't distinguish between red and green. If so, the blind man can't know if his tie is red or green. And indeed, it would be meaningless for the blind man to include red and green items on the list, unless somebody else helps the cousin with these, and that's nowhere hinted in the book.
So, it seems that the Dannay and Lee want us to believe that partial colorbindness, and that undoubtedly refers to the same disability as you friend has, means that the person thinks that red is called green.... which makes no sense at all!
If that's what the book says (I'm working from memory here), then I agree that you're quite right.
In looking over what I wrote about the bill-in-the-watch bit, I realize that I was somewhat unclear in my meaning. What I meant to say was that:
Spoiler
Although the bill could be traced to Knox: 1) it was not likely to be found if it hadn't already been, 2) even if it were found, the effort of tracing it back to Knox would be much less likely once the Khalkis and Grimshaw murder cases were considered closed (as Knox knew them to be at the time he related his knowledge of the bill), and 3) even if it were to be found and traced to him, he could always then use the "I forgot about it" story that he did use (though, admittedly, that story would seem slightly less credible if he himself hadn't brought the matter up).
Oops! I gotta run now... I'll continue this in a bit
As you say, Erland, the major objection to Ellery's assertion of Knox's innocence is the possibility that a guilty Knox may have also forgotten about the bill at the time of killing Grimshaw. This is a possibility that Queen no doubt ignored because it blew up his reasoning, or that to address it fully would take up too much time and space. However, in all fairness to Queen, the "I forgot about it 'till now" scenario does seem much more likely in the case of an innocent man, for, prior to carefully and premeditatedly killing a blackmailer [and this crime, as I remember, was a carefully premeditated act], one would usually take care to take inventory of and remove all possible evidence linking victim to killer. For an innocent Knox, that bill was just $1000 (not tough for a millionaire to forget). But for a guilty Knox, the bill was $1000 and highly incriminating evidence (more difficult to forget). Thus, while I agree that Knox's unsolicited admission of his knowledge of the bill doesn't really prove his innocence (as Queen maintains), it does highly suggest the likely behavior of an innocent man, especially considering Knox's choice of when to deliver the admission.
If Knox showing the bill was enough evidence to prove he was not the killer, then the guilty Knox would have definitely done just that.
You don't even have to follow the rest of Queen's convoluted logical chain to figure that out.
Spoiler
No, because the point is, I think, that if Knox was guilty, he couldn't have shown the bill in the watch at the time when did that, because the bill wouldn't have been in the watch then. The guilty Knox would have removed it from the watch already at the time of the murder.
Recall that, at the time of the murder, the guilty Knox would have planned to implicate Khalkis and not reveal anything about his own meeting with Khalkis and Grimshaw, nor any connection between himself and Grimshaw at all. It was when this plan failed that the (hypothetically) guilty Knox had to reveal part of his involvement and tell about his presence at the Khalkis-Grimshaw meeting. Before that, it would have been undesirable for him if the police found his note in the watch immediately when Grimshaw's corpse was discovered, for that would draw undesirable attention to him. Therefore, he would have removed the bill at the time of the murder.
The "dollar bill" clue exonerated Knox exactly at the right time for him. Given that, even if it clashed with his original plans, why would you say that there is no possible way he could have planted it as a failsafe?
I agree with the assumption that in real life the real killer never would have planted/shown the note. However, Queen's claim is greater than that: it is that there is no way that Knox would have (perhaps even that there is no way he could have) done that if he was guilty.
