34                             Anthony J. .Mazzella

male counterparts) is given a line of dialogue, she first "trud
back with a laconic grunt of negation; then: " 'The fat dame up¬
stairs—housekeeper?—she's okay roo,' said the matron."

But if you consider Ten Days' Wonder (1948), a novel from
the third period, you get a glimpse of what all the excitement was
about: though 224 pages in the current Signet Double Mystery
edition, it seems lean and spare. It has enough enigmatic clues to
satisfy the most tireless searcher. Its characters—from powerful
Diedrich Van Horn and bis officious brother Wolfert to the
doomed Phaedra-Hippolytus lovers—are psychologically com¬
pelling and genuinely interesting. Its double solution, startling.
Its Decalogue construction, ingenious and yet not strained. Its
logic nearly impeccable (the Pygmalion reversal isn't entirely
satisfactory, but that is a minor cavil). Ellery Queen dominates
this parable of intellectual hubris—his own—to good effect. And
the book's style is free from the mannerisms of the early novels.
There is even a Chandleresque simile: ". . . someone had turned
the lights on in the guest house and it poked fingers into the garden
like a woman exploring her hair."

Perhaps inadvertently then, the combination of scruples and
style, of playing too fair and saying too much, led to Ellery
Queen's untimely demise on the popular bookstore shelves. Also,
the prized Queen logic may be lost in a terrorist age. The second
headnote, then, takes on the aura of a kind of prescient epitaph.
It may also contain, however, the promise of a resurrection.

Addendum: The promise may already be partly fulfilled. A recent
return visit to the Mysterious Bookshop led to the discovery of
twenty-four titles on the shelves, including The Greek Coffin
Mystery, The Roman Hat Mystery, and Ten Days' Wonder.