Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God (1935)

Queen, Ellery. The House of Haunts. Detective Story Magazine, October 1935
______. The Lamp of God. The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, 1940
______. The Lamp of God. NY: Dell Books (Dell Ten Cent #23), 1951


The Lamp of God at Goodreads


Rating:     6/10


Published 32 years ago this month, the Ellery Queen novella "The Lamp of God" is technically a supernatural story. The premise finds Detective Ellery Queen invited by lawyer acquaintance Thorne to help escort a young woman, Alice, to her father's isolated house to retrieve her inheritance. Arriving at the isolated Victorian "Black House," they spend the night in the adjacent "White House" where the deceased man's remaining kin have settled. Upon waking the next morning, the black house has entirely vanished!

Though readers can deduce early on that a rational explanation will be available to explain the house's disappearance, the fact that the plot hinges on the possibility of a ghostly house categorizes the story as supernatural. In fact the story can potentially be categorized as a ghost story, if one were to be inclined to argue that vanishing house is a ghostly object, but since the plot does not reflect it being an apparition, only that it disappeared, I would refute the claim. The story was, however, originally titled "The House of Haunts," whether by the authors or publisher, but despite this detail the supernatural element is not directly investigated, nor speculated upon, so nothing in the text claims that a haunting is a possibility.

It is only at the story's denouement that the supernatural element is entirely and indisputably removed.

Though it appears that by employing the supernatural as a possibility, the authors are challenging their own conventions, along with challenging the conventions of early detective fiction. However, they are taking safe refuge with how the supernatural element is presented. The story opens with a brief segment that establishes Ellery Queen as a strictly rational man, so that no fanciful ideas can act as potential realities in his mind. When the house disappears Queen is flabbergasted, as are the other, more impressionable, witnesses. Though Queen does, on occasion, comment on the fact that God's world is shaken and there are some minor comments on his faith in the rational being challenged, his thoughts are kept conveniently away from the reader and we later discover, though it is obvious, that throughout the plot his rational brain is picking up clues and piecing the evidence together. The questioning of Queen's reality is simplistic and certainly not terribly existential; Thorne and Alice are the ones whose cores are affected, but they are secondary players in the plot so their realities are further removed. Because even much of Queen's portrayal is distanced, and though we might receive the glimpse of a thought along the lines of his worlds being shaken up, his investigative mind is kept wholly secret, so that we are left to wonder what in fact was spinning in that head of his.

As a mystery story it is a product of its time. It features stock characters and is high on melodrama. However, it is quite entertaining, and the explanation of the house's disappearance is a good one. Some might figure it out; I admit that I did not.


For more of this week's Friday's Forgotten Books, please visit Patti Abbott's blog.

Ellery Queen: Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1941)

Queen, Ellery, Ellery Queen, Master Detective, Grosset & Dunlap, 1941 (right)
___________, The Vanishing Corpse, Pyramid, 1968
___________, The Vanishing Corpse, Pyramid, (third printing) January 1976 (my edition, pictured below)

Rating: 6/10

For more Friday's Forgotten Books, please visit Patti Abbott's blog.



Because it was published in 1941, I assumed this novel was written by Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee), and that it is actually a novel. Wrong on both counts, which leads me to claim this adage: Never judge a book by its date. The book is in fact a novelization  of the film Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940), which in turn was based loosely on an earlier Ellery Queen novel, The Door Between (1937). This novelization was among the first books (perhaps even the first) published under the name Ellery Queen but written by a ghost writer. The identity of this ghostly writer appears to be unknown. The book was reprinted in 1968 under a new title, The Vanishing Corpse.

As a novel, The Vanishing Corpse is highly entertaining. It's short, straightforwardly written and manages to sustain a good mystery. In brief, the case involves the death of John Braun, the founder of a health centre who is found dead in a locked room. His throat was cut yet there is no weapon around and no way to access the room other than through the locked door. It is a genuine locked-room mystery. Before becoming a corpse, John Braun discovered that he was dying of cancer, and cut everyone but his wife from his will. Moreover, he gave instructions to close down his lucrative health resort, upsetting his various business partners. Before the actual murder, when Inspector Queen is considering taking up the case of the estranged and missing Braun daughter, Ellery Queen wanders in looking for a good plot for his next novel. Pursuing a lead in locating Barbara Braun, he encounters love interest Nikki Porter, friend of Barbara's. Nikki doesn't remain just a friend, since soon after Braun;s death she is upgraded to primary murder suspect.

The screenplay for the film was written by Eric Taylor, so he should receive much of the credit, even if just for the dialogue. The story was evidently conceived by Dannay and Lee, the prose transposed by a ghostwriter, yet the dialogue belongs to Taylor, who had a busy two decades as a screenwriter until his unfortunately early death. While the comedy does slow the pacing of the mystery, particularly in the early portion of the novella, the bantering is quite good, particularly between Ellery Queen and Nikki Porter. There are comedic gags as well, such as the burnt steak, but though familiar nonetheless well rendered on paper. With Nikki we have another 1940s gal who is less than an ideal housewife, not necessarily marriage material for that reason alone, but is nonetheless good looking despite being also a bad fiction writer. Yet while she can't cook she is neat and organized, so I guess we can't sway too far from 1941 social norms, and when we do it's supposed to be funny, which it often is. Kudos to Taylor for keeping it funny for seventy years later.

It's odd that the reprint title selected was The Vanishing Corpse. Yes it sounds interesting, and the disappearing body makes for good suspense in the text, but the vanishing occurs more than half-way through and is, because of the title, expected, hence removing a possible surprise. "The body... it's... it's... it's gone!" Well of course it is, officer, just look at the title.

The mystery itself is quite good, and though I figured out the murderer's identity early on, most elements of the crime evaded me, such as how the weapon went missing, which really I should have figured out. For a locked room mystery it's clever enough as well as believable.

I do have a few other early Ellery Queen's lying around, including some older attractive hardcover editions (which are actually shelved away, unlike most of the paperbacks), and I'll likely feature another at some point down the line.

Thanks for visiting, and please feel free to recommend a good Ellery Queen.

Ellery Queen (Charles W. Runyon), The Last Score (1964)

Queen, Ellery (Charles W. Runyon), The Last Score, NY: Pocket Books 50486, 15 October 1964. 165 pp
______. The Last Score & Beware the Young Stranger, NY: Signet Double Mystery (AE1307), October 1978. 158 pp


For detailed information on EQ and a bibliography of works, please visit World's Best Detective Crime and Murder Mystery Books.


As is now common knowledge, though kept from the public for many years, "Ellery Queen" was composed of two men, cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee (born Daniel Nathan and Manford Emanuel Lepofsky, respectively). Rather than creating a character, they created what has become essentially a brand, as the ever-churning EQ machine included innumerable novels, short stories, a still-running popular magazine, a TV series and several movies, along with a series of anthologies. Throughout the 1960s a number of young, up-and-coming writers ghosted as Ellery Queen. This was partly due to the fact that Lee suffered a series of heart attacks and was unable to work. Some of the ghosted novels were based on treatments that Lee had done, or at least begun.

The Last Score is considered among the strongest of these ghosted novels. It was written by little-known Charles W. Runyon (b. 1928), who wrote in a variety of genres, including three novels as Ellery Queen: The Last Score (1964), The Killer Touch (1965) and Kiss and Kill (1969).

In The Last Score, Adventure traveller and guide Reid Rance is approached by wealthy socialite May Gibson with a request to take her youngest daughter Leslie on a field trip through Mexico. Not wishing to babysit a seventeen year-old, Reid tries to evade the task, but alas cannot, since there would otherwise be no novel. While in Mexico he does his best to fend off the teen's sexy come-ons while teaching her proper behaviour south of the border, until one night Leslie disappears. It turns out she has been kidnapped, and Rance must go through one hell of a ride to get her back.

The novel is surprisingly well written, with solid prose, good character consistency and development, and an unusual amount of experimentation, which does lead to a certain amount of unevenness in tone, but also adds to the book's appeal. The first third of the novel is overly long and a little flat, as it consists of Reid fending off the feisty Leslie, yet once she is kidnapped we speed along through drugs, money, romance and a nice array of bad dudes (despite the acts of violence, I think real-life drug cartels would do much worse than this gang, and probably get away with it too). Surprisingly and even oddly, during the novel's last third the point of view shifts from Rance to Leslie's half-sister Karen Frankel, then to Leslie herself until finally, to cap off an exciting ride, for a few pages we are treated to the inside of El Delgado (the Thin One), our head bad dude, as Runyon escalates the drama with some stream of consciousness, wanting us to understand what has driven Delgado to the life he has been leading.

The novel's single greatest achievement, however, is Runyon's portrayal of a Reid high on some strong pot. Reid is forced to smoke while with the enemy, and his shifting thought processes are well recorded. Despite the accurateness of his descriptions and my assumption that Runyon has toked a little in his time, the novel does feature a clear anti-dope attitude, firmly entrenched in the belief that a little pot leads to a lot of heroin. There is a long lecture early on, with Rance doing his best to frighten the unconvinced Leslie away from her desire to try the stuff. Moreover, her kidnapping is a direct result of this desire. It is, of course, entirely possible that this anti-doping message was forced into the book by the publishers, so I won't speculate needlessly on Runyon's own opinions.

The Last Score presents us with a world of men. Reid Rance is a manly tough-guy with some good sense and a dash of sensitivity (and a cool name, though perhaps a little to Harlequin-esque). He falls not for the hungry, attractive Leslie but prefers the challenge of her older half-sister, sexy feminist journalist Karen Frankel. Other men are tough but lacking Rance's firmly established sense of morality, from the colourful bad guys to the deadly Delgado and the competent Mexican Lieutenant we meet later on. Rance is set up early on in contrast with his standard clients, all pretend men who want a week or so away from their urban nine-to-five selves in order to play tough toreador or crocodile hunter. Rance is the real thing, along with the heart of a noble gentleman.

And though the women can be feminists they remain mostly feminine. Karen learns to drop much of her feminist front and lets her hair down (figuratively as well as literally), becoming more and more feminine and clearly falling for good man Reid.

Credit goes to Runyon for including a few solid good Mexican men and therefore avoiding stereotypes, from Felipe, the youthful victim of the American dream, to the sympatheric cab driver Salvador and the focused Lieutenant who helps save the day. Moreover, [spoiler alert] we learn that villain El Delgado is actually American.

There are no real surprises with how the novel ends, but a quick and fun read it is. Shortening it down to novella length would make for a great read, but with the extra padding The Last Score remains an interesting contemporary exploration of the 1960s culture of marijuana as well as gender. Though nothing like a textbook, it's good to explore these themes in context of a little adventure story.

In addition, one of the great things about this book is the list of characters. Strangely though, some of them contain, or imply, spoilers. My three favourites:

Reid Rance: This travel agent's moment of truth lasted a lifetime.
May Gibson: Fate took care of her three husbands, but her daughters were another cup of tequila.
Karen Frankel: A cold cookie, but Reid crumbled her.

Overall some fine, fun stuff. 6/10