Like And on the Eighth Day, this is an example of the detective story as allegory. It has as much to do with science fiction as with detection; in fact it bears a strong resemblance in tone to some of the pioneering left-wing dystopian stories coming out of the US at the same time.
Ellery and his father are waylaid in their apartment by a trio of efficient holdup men. This is the advance guard for Abel Bendigo, second-in-command in the global munitions firm headed by his brother, King Bendigo. Like other would-be world dominators, King Bendigo has his own island, where thousands of workers and administrators toil to accumulate his wealth. Despite all the security, however, King Bendigo is receiving death threats; so it is to Bendigo Island that Ellery and the Inspector are summoned. With a hefty push from Washington, they head off to the massive secret base.
King Bendigo is large, vigorous, short-tempered and far-seeing; he refuses to countenance any threat to his life. Even when the evidence points to the third Bendigo brother, the drunken lush Judah, he refuses to take action. The inevitable happens: King Bendigo is shot in an apparently sealed room, and the weapon vanishes, only to turn up later behind a locked door.
Bendigo survives; but the Queens continue their dogged investigation. At last Ellery finds himself in Wrightsville, of all places, where the Bendigos were born, and turns up the facts about their past that lead him to an explanation of the only solution. There is an explosive finale; but the book ends on a note of hope.
Like And on the Eighth Day, The King is Dead is light on detection, though what is there is clever enough. There are only two or three clues in the entire volume, and most of the 'solution' involves explaining why the events took place, rather than what actually occurred. The ultimate explanation is rather too Freudian to convince a modern reader; but perhaps it stood up in its own time. The writing is of the usual high quality associated with 'genuine' Queens, and passionate anti-militarism shows through every line, but ultimately King Bendigo is too much of a comic-book villain to convince.
Now, if Bill Gates had been around in 1952...
Jon.
The King Is Dead (1952) includes an extraordinary diversity of material: international intrigue, high technology environments that recall science fiction, athletic contests, political commentary and debate, historical fiction, family relations, looks at men's clothes, forensic investigation, as well as an unusually constructed Impossible Crime. Each section of the book seems written using a different genre and structural approach.
The book is radically different from many of today's crime novels, which stick to an old-fashioned novel, soap opera-ish approach throughout their length. One implication of this difference: While today's writers often resort to endless padding to fill up their 300 required pages, each section of The King Is Dead is compactly written, trying to set forth its own mountain of material in concise fashion.
Impossible Crime
The Impossible Crime (Chapters 10, 11) has an unusual double structure. First, it is presented as a locked room mystery, of an archetypally classical and traditional type. In fact, EQ underlines this view, loading the room with locks, guards and high tech features, trying to create the "ultimate locked room."
But then Inspector Queen offers a partial solution to the problem (middle of Chapter 11). He can explain the locked room. But as Ellery immediately points out, that turns the mystery into a second kind of puzzle: the Impossible Disappearance of an object. Such Impossible Disappearances are an EQ specialty, running through many of his books and short stories.
The two different views of the mystery, the Locked Room and Impossible Disappearance, are in a strong logical relationship. In fact, their logical links recall pure mathematics. In proving a theorem in mathematics, an attempt to prove one theorem is often shown to be possible if one can solve a second problem. The first theorem is shown to be "equivalent" to the second. Mathematicians also often speak of "reducing" the first theorem, to solving the second problem. That is exactly what is happening in The King Is Dead.
The analogy to mathematics can be pushed a little deeper. In mathematics, the second problem often looks simpler or smaller than the first theorem - at least at first. The same is true in The King Is Dead. The Locked Room looks grandiose as a puzzle, the locked room to end all locked rooms. Whereas the Impossible Disappearance seems simple and tiny: all the sleuths have to do is find the missing object, and they have a complete explanation of the case. But as Ellery and the Inspector search, it gradually becomes apparent that finding this small object is...seemingly impossible. Such is often the case in mathematics too: that simple looking second problem can be very hard to solve, even if it looks much smaller and less pretentious or sweeping than the first theorem.
After this initial investigation of the Locked Room and Impossible Disappearance, Ellery and the Inspector are in an inconclusive logical state. They don't really know if an Impossible Disappearance actually took place, or is the real, if partial, explanation of the Locked Room. Maybe the Locked Room was caused by an entirely different criminal scheme, one having nothing to do with an Impossible Disappearance. Or, maybe the Impossible Disappearance is the right answer - and all they have to do to prove it is find that elusive missing object. This ambiguous situation is common in mathematics too, with mathematicians being unsure whether the second problem is ultimately going to be solved, or whether the first theorem will eventually be proved by some reasoning having nothing to do with the second problem.
Ellery eventually solves all. But not until the end of the book.
Mystery Subplots
The King Is Dead also has two mystery-puzzle subplots, that have nothing to do with the main Locked Room problem.
The subplot about the business, recalls a little bit the final switch in The Origin of Evil.
A second subplot involves an incident in the characters' past.
Links to Chesterton. The King Is Dead (1952) has elements that recall G.K. Chesterton's "The Arrow of Heaven" (1925):
The murder victim in both is one of the world's wealthiest men.
In both he is compared to a king or an emperor.
Both have threatening letters sent by a mysterious criminal.
In both the millionaire has a brutish bodyguard.
In both the millionaire has an elaborate, isolated compound, with unusual architecture.
In both the millionaire's sanctum is on an upper floor, reached only by an elevator.
In both, the millionaire has an inner office, and an outer waiting room.
In both there are musclemen guards.
Both tales have an impossible murder, with a rather similar solution. Chesterton's solution is largely the same as the idea proposed by Inspector Queen, during the initial investigation in The King Is Dead. However, that solution immediately leads to a new puzzle, the Impossible Disappearance. That Impossible Disappearance has no analogue in Chesterton. Queen's ideas about the Impossible Disappearance are entirely original.
Links to Jack Williamson
The King Is Dead is a book with a strange setting. It takes place on an isolated island, where a billionaire has his own private country. Such imaginary worlds recall science fiction. In fact, The King Is Dead has elements that recall Jack Williamson's science fiction novella, "The Prince of Space" (1931):
A powerful figure has his own isolated, high tech community: in "The Prince of Space" it is a highly developed space station, in The King Is Dead an island.
Both worlds are full of buildings, industrial plants, homes for the workers.
Both are approached by the air: spaceships in "The Prince of Space", airplanes in The King Is Dead.
The ruler is treated as the monarch of the community, the Prince in "The Prince of Space", the King in The King Is Dead.
The leader has a huge imposing office in both tales, nearly empty of furniture save for his desk.
Fancy uniforms are everywhere, always black-scarlet-and-gold in "The Prince of Space", black-and-gold in The King Is Dead.
The pseudonym of the leader in "The Prince of Space" is Mr. Cain; the first name of the leader in The King Is Dead is Cain.
"The Prince of Space" is reprinted in David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's anthology, The Space Opera Renaissance (2006). The space station is described in Chapter 3 of "The Prince of Space".
Links to Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace's The Four Just Men (1905) is an early story in which messages threaten a crime at a certain time. This gambit has been used by many books, films and comic books. The writing in The King Is Dead about this deadline is skillful.
Getting In
In his early Hollywood books, The Devil to Pay and The Four of Hearts, Ellery keeps trying to get into see the studio boss who employs him. Accessing this big-shot is difficult. This comic gambit returns in The King Is Dead, with Ellery demanding to see the King (Chapter 6). This is played more seriously, and unexpectedly, more violently, in The King Is Dead.
Hollywood in the early novels is portrayed as a major center of male power. It is also full of crooked businessmen in The Devil to Pay. Both aspects are pushed to the extreme in The King Is Dead. The King Is Dead is obsessed with maleness: almost all of the employees we see on the island are male.
Major characters in The Devil to Pay include the father, a handsome wealthy amateur sportsman who excels at a profusion of sports, and his devoted trainer and sports expert Pink, a muscular working class stiff. Variations on these two men recur in The King Is Dead, with the sports-excelling King, and his working class bodyguard and sparring partner Max'l. However, the characters in The King Is Dead are meaner, with a nasty, violent edge. If the father in The Devil to Pay is handsome, the King pushes this to extremes, being the ultimate in male good looks and sartorial splendor.
The Island
Early on, we get a detailed look at the island as a high-tech environment (Chapter 2).
Most of the buildings sit in a valley in the center of the island, just as Shinn Corners will be an isolated town hidden in a valley in the hills in The Glass Village.
Mike Grost.
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