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Halfway House

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 2 months ago

Queen, Ellery - Halfway House (1936)

 

Halfway House (1935) seems like a minor EQ work. The finale depends on one strand in EQ's writing. Various clues to the killer's identity left at the crime scene are developed by EQ into a profile of the potential killer. Then EQ goes through the list of characters in the story, showing how this profile fits one and only one of the suspects. It is similar to the deductions from the shoe in The Dutch Shoe Mystery. Fans of physical detection might enjoy this, and the book follows in a honorable tradition of "deduction through clues" in the detective story. But it seems very mild compared to EQ's best work. There is no complex plot, no wild crime schemes or final revelations. Some of Queen's logic is interesting, especially his reasons for concluding one character is speaking the truth.

 

Mike Grost

 

Joseph Wilson from Philadelphia is a happily married travelling salesman in cheap jewellery. Joseph Kent Gimball is a member of New York's Upper Crust. When a body is found in a rundown house in Trenton New Jersey there is some dispute about which of them it is, but it turns out to be both: Gimball/Wilson has been leading a double life for many years, and the Halfway House is the pivot of it all.

 

So there are two sets of suspects: the Gimball crowd from New York and the Wilsons from Philadelphia; and in the middle of it are Ellery Queen and his friend Bill Angell, Wilson's brother-in-law. As usual, the deserted shack turns out to have been busier at the critical time than Grand Central Station during the rush hour, but Ellery sorts it all out satisfactorily and pins the murder on the one possible person -- slightly later, perhaps, than an alert reader will have done.

 

This is an early, classic Queen with a good deal of rushing about and a melodramatic trial scene to pad the book before the logical deductions begin in the last third of the story. Very little detection happens until after page 143, but the revelations about Gimball/Wilson's life and the various characters involved should keep the reader satisfied until then.

 

Jon.

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