Queen, Ellery - The Roman Hat Mystery

The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) was EQ's first novel. It is clearly very much in the same pattern as the works to follow. Although a pretty ordinary mystery, it contains a number of things that laid a foundation for later Queen novels: it creates most of the continuing characters of the EQ books, including his main series detective, also named Ellery Queen, and his father Inspector Richard Queen; its early chapters contain the first of the exhaustive searches so prominent in the Queen saga; its finale is of the deductive type, like most of the great Queen works; the deductions include a sequence investigating a large cast of characters, explaining why one and only one could have the properties of the guilty party, similar to later passages in The Dutch Shoe Mystery, Halfway House, and above all The Tragedy of Z. The radio play "The Adventure of the Last Man Club" (1939) and the short stories "The Emperor's Dice" (1951) and "The Death of Don Juan" (1962) also have elements of this approach. The chief plot idea in the solution of The Roman Hat Mystery is one that will pop up in variations throughout his 1930's works: see below in the section dealing with The Spanish Cape Mystery. Much better works will soon follow.

Mike Grost

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