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Rating: 
Summary: A must for all Queen fanatics!
Review: There's been far too little written about Ellery Queen--truly the master of American detective fiction. This book from Crippen and Landru is a great step forward. In addition to the full outline of Dannay and Lee's final but never finished novel "The Tragedy of Errors," there's also a selection of EQ short stories and best yet, a collection of appreciations and essays by collaborators and contempraries to EQ, covering the early period of the pince-nez Ellery to the later ghost-written (but plotted and edited by Dannay and Lee) psychological and religious thrillers--and even the Ellery of radio and the comics!EQ's been sadly out of fashion in the mystery field over the last 20 years--following a resurgence in 1976 with the NBC-TV series, various publishers have reissued several books but let them go out of print quickly; the essays in "The Tragedy of Errors" remind me how much I wish all the EQs were still available for today's new mystery readers. This is the best book I've yet seen on the *history* of Ellery, the cousins who created him, and the groundbreaking "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine." The very best compliment I can give this book? It makes me *need* to go back and re-read all my EQ favorites. Now, if I can only figure out those cryptic dying clues...
Rating:
Summary: A fine potpourri of stories and essays for devotees.
Review: This fine book from Crippen and Landru consists actually of 3 (maybe 4) parts. The first is the outline of an Ellery Queen novel which, with the death of Manfred B. Lee in 1971, never got written fully or finalized. For devotees such as this reviewer, it is great to see, even in such a limited way, one last, full length E.Q. plot. I was afraid to tackle it, but actually enjoyed it. In my opinion, the finished novel would have been better that the previous 3 (House of Brass, The Last Woman in His Life, and A Fine and Private Place). The second part consists of a slew of E.Q. short stories published in the last years and a non-E.Q. ss never before anthologized. These are fun but not top-notch, and one was written by Edward D. Hoch, who has never been known to write a bad detective story. The non-E.Q. story, which might be considered as a separate part, is different and hard to judge for me. The last part of the book, which was unexpected for me, is what really powers it, a series of short essays by friends, editors, other writers, and, very specially, several of the Lee and Dannay children. It has lots of valuable anecdotes, biography, history, criticism, and just plain love. Special favorites are the essay by Francis Nevins, the Queen's biographer, and the James Yaffe piece, but, be warned, all are worth your time. This volume, produced with the top class values of all Crippen and Landru books, has been a very welcome and pleasant surprise for an old-fashioned fan.
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