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Average rating3
After the death of an elderly Greek man who is an internationally famous art dealer and collector, his attorney discovers that his will is missing and notifies the district attorney. When Inspector Richard Queen of the New York Police Force's Homicide Squad and his amateur detective son Ellery are called in, Ellery narrows down the possible location of the will to a single location: the dead man's coffin. When it is exhumed, however, it contains no will but the surprising addition of a strangled ex-convict.
Ellery performs an extended piece of deduction in public early on in the novel that concerns a number of used teacups, and is proved wrong. Stung by this embarrassing error, he keeps his deductions to himself for the remainder of the case. Subsequent clues involve color-blindness, a shred of the burned will, two copies of a Leonardo da Vinci painting differing only in skin tone, a thousand-dollar bill, a dead art dealer whose office door was either open or closed and, most importantly, an infinitesimal typing error.
Ellery and his father lay a trap, unmasking the murderer— whose guilt will probably have been entirely unsuspected by most readers.
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I consider myself a fan of classic detective fiction, but after reading this novel and the Roman Hat Mystery I don't think Ellery Queen is for me.
For one thing, The Greek Coffin Mystery was about 100 pages too long, maybe more. For another, it was needlessly convoluted. The logic didn't really track, no matter how hard the author tried, and it wasn't as clever as it made itself out to be. The only clues you need to solve the mystery come three-fourths of the way through the book, so you're left wondering why the first three hundred pages were necessary in the first place.
Then there were too many indistinguishable characters, and half of them are police officers or working for the police. Without much character development, it was hard to know who was who or to care about who committed the murder in the first place or why.
Somehow it still eked three stars out of me because I like mysteries in this genre. I'm probably going to give up on the author though.
Series
14 primary books16 released booksEllery Queen Detective is a 16-book series with 14 primary works first released in 1929 with contributions by Ellery Queen, Alberto Tedeschi, and J. Lima da Costa.