A murder in a crowded Broadway theater presents a full house of suspects--the first in this classic mystery series starring Ellery Queen Despite the dismal Broadway season, Gunplay continues to draw crowds. A gangland spectacle, it's packed to the gills with action, explosions, and gunfire. In fact, Gunplay is so loud that no one notices the killing of Monte Field. In a sold-out theater, Field is found dead partway through the second act, surrounded by empty seats. The police hold the crowd and call for the one man who can untangle this daring murder: Inspector Richard Queen. With the help of his son Ellery, a bibliophile and novelist whose imagination can solve any crime, the Inspector attacks this seemingly impenetrable mystery. Anyone in the theater could have killed the unscrupulous lawyer, and several had the motive. Only Ellery Queen, in his debut novel, can decipher the clue of the dead man's missing top hat.

Mystery.

A stylish puzzle mystery from the author who "took the intellectual game that was the formal detective novel to greater heights than any American writer" ( The Weekly Standard ). The windows of French's department store are one of New York's great attractions. Year-round, their displays show off the finest in fashion, art, and home décor, and tourists and locals alike make a point of stopping to see what's on offer. One afternoon, as the board debates a merger upstairs, a salesgirl begins a demonstration in one of the windows, showing off French's new Murphy bed. A crowd gathers to watch the bed lower from the wall after a single touch of a button. But as the bed opens, people run screaming. Out tumbles a woman--crumpled, bloody, and dead. The victim was Mrs. French, wife of the company president, and finding her killer will turn this esteemed store upside down. Only one detective has the soft touch necessary--debonair intellectual Ellery Queen. As Queen and his police inspector father dig into French's secrets, they find their killer is more serious than any window shopper.

Death Valley lives up to its name when a murder draws Ellery Queen into the strange practices of a religious cult. It's 1943, the war is raging, and sleuthing scribe Ellery Queen wants to do his bit. After a tortuous cross-country drive, he takes a job writing scripts for a Hollywood propaganda house--twelve hours a day of hack work that quickly turns his mind to jelly. After a few weeks, he is so worn down that he can type nothing but gibberish, and he decides to drive home. The trouble starts as soon as he reaches the desert. His ancient roadster breaks down on the edge of Death Valley. Wandering in search of help, he is saved by a man known as the Teacher, who takes him to an oasis called Quenan. Here, Queen finds a bizarre, reclusive cult that seems to have come straight out of the ancient past. A murder has been committed in the desert, and the Quenanites plan on delivering some Old Testament justice. Queen is just the detective they've been waiting for.

The operating room was ready, the surgeon called for his patient. A door opened and the long, still form was wheeled in - dead! Abby Doorn had been murdered only a few minutes earlier and almost under their very eyes. This is one of the most baffling murder mysteries Ellery Queen ever had to solve.

Based on the Sherlock Holmes film: Ellery Queen matches wits with the Baker Street sleuth to unmask Jack the Ripper. Ellery Queen is struggling over his latest book when a friend brings him a mystery. It is a journal, written by a Victorian doctor, of reports on the remarkable adventures of his close friend, a brilliant detective named Sherlock Holmes. Queen's surprise turns to amazement as he turns its pages and discovers the lost story of Sherlock Holmes's greatest case: the pursuit of Jack the Ripper. From the brothels and back alleys of fog-choked Whitechapel to the manor of one of England's greatest families, Holmes and Dr. Watson chase history's most fearsome killer. But it will take the brilliance of Ellery Queen to solve the case once and for all. Based on the Sherlock Holmes film A Study in Terror , this collaboration between two of the world's greatest detectives is one of the most original mystery novels of all time.

THE SPANISH CAPE MYSTERY is a study in jealousy, revenge and mistaken identity. The setting is a brooding headland called the Spanish Cape. The cast contains the monstrous Captain Kidd, the ill-fated David Cumer and his beautiful niece Rosa, and Rosa's suitors. Into this scene drives Ellery Queen, intent on a holiday. Instead he must solve a baffling kidnap-murder!

"Like father, like son ... killers! Davey Fox returned to his hometown a war hero. But inside he was a shattered man, convinced he was a killer just like his father. The war proved it; his past proved it. All signs pointed to it. His wife would soon die! unless ... Ellery Queen could show that Davey's father was innocent, and free him for his obsession with the past. But it was a cut-and-dried case. Just as the father had murdered the mother 12 years ago, there was no doubt not that ... THE MURDERER IS A FOX."--BOOK COVER

Twenty-three chilling mystery tales by authors including Antonia Fraser, Celia Fremlin, Cornell Woolrich, Baroness Orczy, John Galsworthy, etc.

Ellery returned to Wrightsville to solve the mystery of: A rich man (believed poor) who died of "old age." A poor man (believed rich) who committed suicide. A scholarly drunk who disappeared. And shortly it occurred to Queen that the puzzle had a pattern. A twisted mind was committing murder according to an old nursery rhyme! Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief...and to at least one person in town, the chief was Ellery Queen!

Lew Bascom is an idea man, and he has quite an idea. To put his career on the fast track, Bascom plans to pen a film about Hollywood's longest-running theatrical feud--Blythe Stewart and her daughter Bonnie's rivalry with Jack Royale and his son Ty. The twist? Bascom wants the four actors to play themselves in the film. The film's producer insists on bringing Ellery Queen, a successful New York writer, out to Hollywood to help close the deal. Only problem is that Bascom - a notorious procrastinator - isn't interested in outside help. So beautiful gossip columnist Paula Paris offers Queen an in by explaining the specifics of the feud ranging back to when Blythe and Jack were in a hot and heavy romance, throughout their unexpected separation, and into their subsequent marriages to other people. Meanwhile, the deepening hatred of their adult children has become the latest tabloid fodder. But when Blythe Steward and Jack Royale turn up dead, Queen must go from screenwriter to mystery solver before more Hollywood superstars become Hollywood casualties.

Raised in Japan by American expatriates, Karen Leith now lives a reclusive life in New York, known chiefly for her highly regarded novels, of which the latest has won a major American literary award. When she is found on the floor behind her desk, surrounded by blood, it looks like foul play. But the only possible suspect is Leith's future daughter-in-law, Eva, who has recently become engaged. Eva swears by her innocence, even though she was the last to hear Leith alive and the first to find her dead. Eva was waiting outside Leith's office to share the happy news and maintains that no one entered through that door, while the room's other possible exit was locked. The only one who can help her clear her name is mystery writer Ellery Queen, an acquaintance of the victim through New York's literary circles. Queen intends to unravel the locked-room mystery, but with no murder weapon and too many incriminating fingerprints, this case just might be one even he can't solve.

In the arena of a vast New York sports palace, a man lay dead, murdered during the opening scene of a spectacular rodeo.Can you, as Ellery Queen does, follow these clues to the murderer?— A dead man's belt. What was the meaning of the deep ridges in the leather?— An ivory handled revolver. How could the “feel” of the gun-butt provide a clue?— The broken locks on a green box. Did the way the locks had been bent point the way to murder?These are the big points in one of the toughest mysteries ever tackled by Ellery Queen. It was a murder witnessed by 20,000 people, but only Ellery solved it.Do you think you can, too?

Paperback Publisher: Intl Polygonics Ltd (October 1987) Language: English Ellery Queen The best of the Drury Lane stories.

About the Author Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905 1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905 1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age fair play mystery.Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen s first appearance came in 1928, when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as "The Roman Hat Mystery". Their character was an amateur detective who uses his spare time to assist his police inspector uncle in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded "Ellery Queen s Mystery Magazine", one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee s death.

Detective Richard Queen is determined to find the killer of a young fashion designer, even if he has to enlist the help of his father. A murder takes place in a Park Avenue penthouse and there's bound to be a suspect or three...The McKell family are all under suspicion. Ashton McKell is a wealthy and respectable businessman who had a relationship with the deceased and so this made him number one suspect. Lutetia McKell, his wife, was the second to be arrested, and their handsome son Dane, who falls in love all too easily, the third.

An ordinary day in Gloucestershire holds a half century of secrets and lies in this crafty and well-crafted mystery, when a skeleton turns up in a field outside the old village of Tolland. A dogtag beside it in the earth bears the name Ben Gordheimer, a young American soldier who disappeared—and was dishonorably discharged for desertion—during the war fifty years before. To complicate matters for the police team of Keith Tyrell, the adept and ambitious Detective Inspector sent to Tolland, the investigation into the G.I.'s death unearths a second, much more recent corpse whose identity and identification as a blackmailer sets the entire village even more on edge. While Tyrell discovers the killer, long dead, of the G.I. quickly enough, the village of Tolland itself proves to be a harder case to crack. The repercussions of the old murder continue to haunt the memories and disturb the souls of Tolland's inhabitants, while the fact that another killer is dwelling in their midst troubles the placidity of their closely knit daily lives. Their distrust of Tyrell's inquiry and of the avid press only reinforces their tight-lipped secrecy. Tyrell has problems of his own as well, with the envy and betrayals of internal politics among the members of his police team increasingly impeding the progress of the investigation. Neither the village nor Tyrell realizes, though, just how quickly time is running out for them in this case. Then a third dead body further rouses once-sleepy Tolland and confronts the beleaguered Tyrell with another nasty case of murder.

A Dead Dog, A man... A murder

Eccentric multimillionaire Cadmus Cole hires Ellery Queen to investigate a case but won't say what it is. When Cole dies mysteriously at sea, Queen and his partner, Beau Rummell, must navigate a thicket of complications that includes a $50 million legacy, two beautiful, avaricious women vying for it, and even a phony Ellery Queen. This confection, now available in audio form, was first published in 1939.