The Tragedies of X, Y, and Z

With mathematical precision, the detective narrows down the list of potential suspects, placing each into a Venn diagram of motive, means, and opportunity, ultimately revealing the culprit.

          The notorious escape artist, famous for  telling detectives "Examine Your Zippers," and then fleeing while their attention is elsewhere,  is the culprit.

The subjects of this post matches the following three characteristics. They are two people who go by a singular name. They write mystery stories. Their name also happens to be the name of a prominent mystery magazine. There is only one pair of suspects who fits these descriptors: Ellery Queen.

(Alfred Hitchcock was a mystery writer via screen credits.)

Turning Venn diagrams into a lasso that also serves as a noose also happens to be the method by which Ellery Queen's detectives solve crimes.

Ellery Queen was or were the prolific writing duo of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee. Ellery Queen was also the name of their most-frequently-used detective (an early example of cross-marketing?) and the name of the mystery magazine that they started.

For me the joy of Ellery Queen mysteries are the small details of detection. Look, a letter in an envelope has the imprint of a paper clip on both sides while the envelope has a paper clip at one end. Did one paper clip disappear? No, then the envelope would also be marked at both ends. But, wait! The letter was taken from the envelope which had a paper clip on one end, read and then reinserted in reverse. Someone had steamed open the letter! An accumulation of these details, even if they are not perfect individually are cumulatively powerful and satisfying. Classic Sherlock: a world revealed by small details.

For me the taxing part of reading Ellery Queen is that some of conventions are strained. Murder victims leave baffling notes as to the identity of their murderers. The note has to be puzzling, both for the sake of the mystery. and because the murderer would scrub out a non-puzzling note. And so the gobbledy-gook message, when deciphered, solves the mystery. As a one-off notion, I suppose this is a fine clue. But after a few repetitions it feels as false as the victim muttering, "The killer is... gurgle," followed by the victim's one-way trip to the land of no more gurgles. (Meanwhile, a butler named Gurgle skips town.)

I've recently finished reading The Tragedy of X, The Tragedy of Y, and The Tragedy of Z, three Ellery Queen novels* each featuring the great, great Shakespearean actor, Drury Lane, as detective. Having retired from the stage after going deaf, Lane leads a monk-like existence, living in a castle where he is aided by his hunchback assistant, Quasey. Similar retirements await most all ex-actors. Lane lip-reads with perfect precision.


*Ellery Queen released the Drury Lane series (1932-1933) under the pen-name of Barnaby Ross, possibly because Queen already had four books coming out those two years.

Lane, with his magnificent voice shaking the timbers and fluttering the limelights, seems styled after the great, great Shakespearean actors famously lampooned by Jack Benny in Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be.

Still, like most well-seasoned hams, Lane makes for a satisfying, albeit not kosher, meal. I found The Tragedy of X  to be the weakest of the three in the tragedy series. Being a pharmacologist, I didn't buy the poisoning method. Okay, that's just me. The constant willingness of Inspector Thumm to cede the direction of the investigation to the amateur Lane seemed strained as did the who in whodunnit, the revelation of which takes the bulk of an hour's reading for the detective to convey. (Queen's explanations usually only take thirty minutes.)

I found The Tragedy of Y  to be the strongest and most worthy of a modern reading. You don't need to read the first to jump into the second. In this case, Lane investigates the murders of members of the vividly dysfunctional millionaire family, the Hatters. Their name conveniently allows for the pun, the Mad Hatters. In this case, the solution is still overly-complex, but only by half. Furthermore, the pathos of the family feels real and the finale is disturbing.

The Tragedy of Z fits on my list between the other two. In this case, the series is given a curveball. The narration is told in the voice of Patience Thumm, a new character, the daughter of Inspector Thumm. For the first two-thirds of the book, she does the job of detecting and Lane is relegated to the slow lane. She is an independent-minded, forward-thinking female who, sigh, occasionally faints. After she is stumped, Lane takes over the investigating. The solution isn't so-much contrived as the need to present it in the penitentiary's death chamber with the prisoner strapped in the electric chair and all the major suspects gathered round. Or maybe, I should say the setting for the solution is charmingly hokey. I enjoyed it. It had that William Powell (The Thin Man) level of pontification.

Why did I choose to read some classic Queen? I've recently finished reading the top 100 mysteries from lists composed by the Crime Writer's Association (Britain) and the Mystery Writer's of America. This left me with a void. No more checking books off a list, coming ever closer to my goal. So, I turned to the Mystery Writers of Japan who made their own lists of Best "Western" Mystery Story lists in 1985 and 2012. Ellery Queen is their top author, with seven and six entries in the two lists, respectively. Four of Queen's entries were written in the year 1932. The Tragedy of Y is their top novel on one list and second place on the other. The Tragedy of X places fourteenth and twenty-seventh.

The Tragedy of X, Japanese edition.

Now on to Drury Lane's Last Case, the fourth and final entry in the series. It takes discipline to create a memorable detective and then let him go so early.


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Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

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The Black Female Detective in Mystery Literature

When comparing the impact of racial prejudice to that of misogyny, it is worth noting that the United States allowed black males the right to vote 50 years before they gave females full suffrage (black or white). Correspondingly, the acceptance of black male detectives in mystery literature was slow in coming but preceded that of black female detectives.

Suffrage in the United States.

• White male: 1789.
• Black male: 1870.
• Female: 1920.

The Relative Rarity of the Black Female Protagonist in Mysteries.

The initial pioneer was all but forgotten, her efforts not repeated for decades. The editor of Colored American magazine, Pauline Hopkins, wrote a mystery novel in serial format in 1901-02 called Hagar's Daughter. Here, a black maid, who goes by the name Venus, is treated as an equal partner in solving the crime alongside a black male detective.

Being in public domain, the book is available for free on-line.

The next occasion? Over the decades to follow, male black detectives (although not many) appeared in book form, notably the works of Chester Himes and a peak coming after the popularity of the 1967 film, "In the Heat of the Night."

On television a remarkable early entry into the female black detective field came in the form of Get Christie Love, a made-for-television movie followed by a one-year series that first aired in 1974. The next example of a female black detective getting the title role in a television series? Rashida Jones in Angie Tribeca (2016).

During the blaxploitation era of the seventies, Angela Harpe (The Dark Angel) made her way into four pot-boiled novels, all written in 1975 by James D. Lawrence. Promoted as being the female Shaft, she was an ex-police officer who (wince) worked on the side as a high-price call girl and ex-fashion model who then became a high-priced private eye. I have not read the books, but several critics have described them as soft-porn, racist and misogynist.

In 1984, Susan Moody, now the author of over twenty novels, began a series of mysteries featuring Penny Wanawake, a photographer and amateur sleuth. The first of these was the novel, Penny Black. The book was ranked #56 in the 1990 Crime Writers' Association's list of all-time-best mystery novels.

I have read the first in the series. On the plus side, the character is a strong heroine, the mystery is compelling, and much of the dialogue is smart and brassy. Still, the international, globe-trotting near-perfect Wanawake was more of a fantasy figure than a character.

The late 1980s also hosted the appearance of a single volume of Clio Browne: Private Investigator. An internet rumor says that the author Delores Komo was actually a pen name of the horror author, Dean Koontz. The Bibliography of Crime Fiction states that she was Dolores Komoroski who died a couple of years after the book came out.

The 1990s brought us several black female detectives and finally their presence was more than a rarity. Black female writers led the way.

Bland's Detective Marti McAllister graced some cool book covers.

The Black Female Detective Written by Black Female Authors.

One breakthrough came in the form of Blanche White, first appearing in Blanche on the Lam, in 1992. The author, Barbara Neely, described herself as being schooled by the novels of Toni Morrison and although the main character is a maid, the choice of occupation is a commentary on race and roles. Blanche's character is strong-willed and defiant. Her ties to her family and community are important in solving the mystery, which plays out in classic Southern gothic form among the genteel and mentally unbalanced rich. Neeley knows how to wield both comedy and cutting social criticism. The novel received several awards including the Agatha Award for best first novel. Neely went on to write three sequels.

About the same time, Nora DeLoach came out with the character, Grace "Candi" Covington who appeared in Mama Solves A Murder, 1994, along with seven more entries in this cozy series.

Nora DeLoach spent much of her life as a social worker venturing into writing in her fifties. Among all of my job experiences, social work provided me with the best understanding of character from the unalloyed humanness of the desperate to the pomposity of bureaucrats.

In the hands of less diligent authors, the maid and the mother figure could have played out as stock characters. In both of the above cases, they were given a fierce humanity.

The author Eleanor Taylor Bland first presented the world with the female police detective, Marti MacAlister in Dead Time, 1992. MacAlister is a strong woman who must balance career and family while solving crimes. For Bland, racial commentary often appeared in the subject matter of the plot. In the 2003 novel, Fatal Remains, MacAlister and her partner deal with murder at the excavation of a site that was said to have been part of the Underground Railway for slaves, but may have had more sinister uses.

The late 1990s brought the arrival of LAPD Detective Charlotte Justice in Inner City Blues, by Paula L. Woods. Misogyny and racial tension are up-front and center as Det. Justice is plunged into the midst of the "Rodney King" riots and becomes involved in solving the mystery of who killed the man who killed her husband and child. The internal politics and prejudices of the LAPD make a formidable, albeit uncomfortable, backdrop to the novel which went on to win the Macavity Award and spawned three sequels.

The voices of black female authors offered an authenticity to the above novels. No longer were prejudice and racial issues defined solely in the "black and white" stories familiar to middle-class white consciousness. As much as anything, racism comes out in a thousand small ways. The protagonists experience both an external and internalized struggle.

The most successful mystery series featuring a black female detective began in the 1990s with Alexander McCall Smith's The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency, 1998. Set in Botswana, the private detective Precious Ramotswe takes a mostly gentle and intuitive approach to solving crimes. It is always a delicate balance for someone who could be described as being from the colonial class to undertake writing about another culture. Smith mostly avoids falling into traps by exuding love for his characters and for their nation. In doing so, he consciously seeks to define Botswana on its terms rather than something that is foreign. Is this love enough? Love without condescension is better than the alternatives.

I am half-Latino. Although none of this heritage appears in my facial features, I grew up raised by my mother, who was what was then called a Chicano activist. Perhaps it is this undercover persona that has provided me with a sense of otherness as I approached writing. I grew up on a farm and in the urban city, the smallish isolated town and the medium-sized town, in the cold and in the heat. For me, every culture, even my own is foreign to me.

My novel, Never Kill A Friend, (Ransom Note Press, 2015) features a black female detective. This choice seemed inevitable. I had decided to set the novel in Washington, DC, and the Washington of which I am familiar is the urban city with the national politics just being background noise. As I have said before: urban DC is Duke Ellington; political DC is John Phillips Souza on a tuba. I was immersed in urban DC and had only occasional glimmers of the weirdness of the political side. As a second reason for choosing a black protagonist, I had just finished researching a lot of African-American history for a different project.

I am proud to have contributed to the increased presence of black female detectives. As to how successfully I have honored the genre, I will leave that to others to judge.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble  

Continue reading →

What are the Best Mystery Novels of the Past 25 Years?

Over 25 years have passed since 1990 when the Crime Writers' Association of Britain compiled their list of the 100 Best Mystery Novels. It has been 20 years since the Mystery Writers of America undertook a similar effort. These lists, which included several entries that are short story collections, have been commented on and analyzed in past posts.

The lists.
Analyses.

This post presents the question: What novels of recent years are worthy to be included on a list of the best mystery novels? Combined, the 1990 and 1995 lists contained 156 novels spanning approximately 130 years. Therefore, it seems reasonable to add at least one novel for each year. How to narrow down a list to 26 entries? 

Below are the main competitors. I have unfairly included only one novel per author and even with this limitation the number swells rapidly to over fifty. 

One of the greater points of contention is why I chose a particular volume to represent an author's work. I did have a method, albeit a flawed one. I looked for the highest ratings on Goodreads among the top vote-getters for a particular author. Other times, I included the first in a series because that work defined them.

I tried to keep this list impersonal. I have read approximately half of these and could not judge those I did not read, and I did include several which were popular, but not my favorites.

Automatic Inclusions:

• The Firm by John Grisham (1991)
•  Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Moseley (1990)

These two are the sole mysteries on the MWA list that were published too late to be considered for the CWA list.

The Juggernauts.

Often when a book is too successful, it invites scorn. Other times it is worthy of every sale.
(This list, along with the others, is alphabetical by author)

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2002)
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
• Millennium series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. . .) by Stieg Larssen (2005-2007)
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002)
• Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2001) Although lesser known than the above choices, this is the second best-selling novel in the history of Spain, after Don Quixote, and one of the top 90 best-selling books (not just novels) of all time.

People's Choice.

Other quality works that were immensely popular or are representative of best-selling authors.

• The Alienist by Caleb Carr (1994)
• Worth Dying For by Lee Child (2010)
• Tell No One by Harlan Coben (2001)
• All That Remains by Patricia Cornwell (1992)
• The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver  (2006)
• One for the Money by Janet Evanovich (1994)
• In the Woods by Tana French (2007)
• Girl on a Train by Paula Hawkins (2015)
• Kiss The Girls by James Patterson (1995)
• The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (2002)
• Buried Prey by John Sandford (2011)
• The #1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (1998)

Other Acknowledged Masters.

My intent for this group is to include representative works from others who are acknowledged as the best in the field. Some of these could qualify as people's choice above while others peaked below the bestseller lists.

• Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by MC Beaton (1992)
• The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke (2010)
• Loves Music, Loves to Dance by Mary Higgins Clark (1992)
• The Black Echo by Michael Connelly (1992)
• The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook (1996)
• L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy (1990)
• M is for Malice by Sue Grafton (1996)
• Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg (1992)
• Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (2003)
• The Last Detective by Peter Lovesey (1991)
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (2005)
• The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø, Don Bartlett (2000)
• The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell  (1998)
• 1974 by David Peace (1999)
• Right As Rain by George Pelecanos (2001)
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (2011)
• Clock Watchers by Richard Price (1992)
• A Simple Plan by Scott Smith (1993)
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
• Affinity by Sarah Waters  (1999)

Masters in the Later Parts of their Careers.

Although most of these authors were included on the MWA and CWA lists, they continued to put out memorable works.

• The Cat Who Came to Breakfast by Lilian Jackson Braun (1994)
• To the Hilt by Dick Francis (1996)
• The Private Patient by P.D. James (2008)
• The Constant Gardener by John le Carré (2000)
• Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard (1990)
• Body Work by Sara Paretsky (2010)
• Night Passage by Robert B Parker (1997)
• Anna's Book by Barbara Vine (1993)

 

Mixed-Genre.

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)
• Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris (2001)
• The City and the City by China Mieville (2009)
• Naked In Death by JD Robb (1995)

If Non-Fiction is Considered.

• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story by John Berendt (1994)
• And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi (1991)
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (2003)
• Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (1991)

MWJ

The Mystery Writers of Japan did update their list of best Western mystery novels in 2012. Below are the choices that were published after the 1990 cut-off of the CWA list. Many of these are already listed above.

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown  (2003)
• The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook  (1996)
• The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver  (1997)
• The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver  (2006)
• White Jazz by James Ellroy (1992)
• Point of Impact  by Stephen Hunter  (1993)
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro  (2005)
• Millennium series by Stieg Larsson  (2005-2007)
• Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon  (1991)
• The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell  (1998)
• The Big Blowdown  by George Pelecanos (1996)
• Flicker  by Theodore Roszak (1991)
• A Simple Plan by Scott Smith (1993)
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (2008)
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
• Affinity by Sarah Waters  (1999)
• A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow (1991)
• The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow (2005)

If you do consider two or more entries from worthy authors (as did MWJ), this combination of lists could grow into 100 mystery novels in the past 26 years.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook editions through Amazon and other online retailers.
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Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

Back page blurb of A Predator's Game.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, will be available from Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016. It features Nikola Tesla as detective.

His recent mystery, Never Kill A Friend, is available from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

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