Queen, Ellery - The Spanish Cape Mystery

The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935) contains an ingenious solution. The strange facts about the corpse's nakedness parallels the book's predecessor, The Chinese Orange Mystery, and its reversal of everything about its corpse and crime scene. The solution also shows EQ's admirable use of logic: once EQ figures out the method of the murder, he can deduce from it the identity of the murderer, in a way that seems paradigmatic for the use of deduction in the mystery. The Spanish Cape Mystery shares a family resemblance in its plotting to The Roman Hat Mystery (1929), "The African Traveler" (1934), parts of The Devil to Pay (1938), "Mind Over Matter" (1939) and the radio plays "The Adventure of the Dying Scarecrow" (1940) and "The Adventure of the Forgotten Men" (1940). However, the solution is fairly simple, the plot is not especially complex, and the body of the book is way over long for the substance of the plot. The whole thing would be much better as a short story.

The book shows EQ's ability to create a natural landscape, and integrate it into a story. It seems unusual for EQ, after the urban setting and delightful floor plans of so much of his fiction. "The Treasure Hunt" (1935) of the same year also has a dramatic, isolated natural location. Such lonely buildings in inaccessible settings are a tradition in 1930's mysteries: one thinks of The Phantom of Crestwood, Benighted (filmed as The Old Dark House), Rebecca, Ten Little Indians and Hangman's Handyman. The first four were made into movies, and the lonely mansion near the sea on a dark and stormy night is a staple of the 1930's Hollywood whodunit.

The short works in the above series, "The African Traveler", "Mind Over Matter" and the radio play "The Adventure of the Forgotten Men", all show interesting social commentary. One the surface, there seems no inherent reason why works in this puzzle plot tradition should involve social issues. But the plots and social ideas seemed to be linked in EQ's creative imagination.

Rufus King's first Lt. Valcour novel, Murder by the Clock, was apparently serialized in magazines in 1928, before its book publication in 1929. It has a simple plot idea involving men's hats. It is possible that EQ used King's work as a jumping off point for the far more complex ideas in The Roman Hat Mystery, and the subsequent works listed above. Another possible influence: one wonders if the name "Rufus King" affected EQ's choice of the pseudonym Ellery Queen. It seems like a natural progression from King to Queen. Also, G.D.H. Cole's The Brooklyn Murders (1923) contains a mystery writer turned amateur sleuth named Robert Ellery; he is called "Ellery" throughout the book, accentuating his resemblance to EQ.

The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935) was made into a mediocre B movie that same year, with romantic leading man Donald Cook playing a suave, well dressed, often witty and humorous Ellery. Its best sequence has nothing to do with the novel. This is the opening, in which Ellery helps Inspector Queen solve a jewel robbery. This prologue is unrelated to the rest of the story.

Mike Grost

See also: http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2012/05/mr-queen-on-essence-of-boredom.html