Queen, Ellery - The Greek Coffin Mystery

EQ's The Greek Coffin Mystery is notable for its four separate solutions, that gradually emerge at the four separate climaxes of the novel, one at the end of each major section. The book demonstrates how much more complex life can be than one originally figures. It also shows how ideas can grow out of each other, gradually leading to more complex ideas. The real and final solution impresses by being "deeper" than the others, containing some very startling surprises. EQ is not an absurdist. The solutions seem logical and well developed, unlike Anthony Berkeley's multiple solution novel, The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929). Berkeley seems most interested in writing an anti-detective story, showing how each situation can be twisted to express a multitude of interpretations, mocking the idea of detective stories in general, and the ability to understand anything through reason. This sort of absurdism is very far from EQ's approach. EQ is instead interested in showing how reason can go deeper and deeper in a situation, uncovering profounder and profounder ideas. The closest analogy or model for EQ is scientific discovery, wherein a Tycho Brahe will make thousands of factual observations, a Kepler will then group them into laws, and a Newton will finally explain these laws through a system of universal gravitation. EQ's book is a fictionalization of this process, an attempt to create an imaginary situation that fully demonstrates the complexities of human reason.

EQ's later books are not formally organized around multiple solutions; in The Greek Coffin Mystery, the four solutions are the key structural underpinning and organizational principle of the book's design and storytelling. But he retains the technique of partial solutions growing into ever deeper solutions; it returns again and again as a key feature of his detectival technique.

Mike Grost