Ellery Queen's Rogues' Gallery 1

by Ellery Queen

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION THUS, Dell Books #7478, published April 1966. ‘A Who's Who of Whodunits…with a twist of venom.’ Cover illustration by Crowley. Contents DEPARTMENT OF ‘Accident’ by Agatha Christie, Mr. Markham, Antique Dealer’ by John Dickson Carr, ‘Mr. Bowley’s Sunday Evening’ by H.C. Bailey, “The Fifteen Murderers’ by Ben Hecht. DEPARTMENT OF ASSORTED ‘A Trap To Catch A Cracksman’ by E.W. Hornung, ‘A Personal Magnet’ by O. Henry, ’The Quagg Peerless Sciatacata Co,’ by George Randolph Chester, ’The Brazen Serpent’ by R. Austin Freeman, ’The Cablegram’ by T.S. Stribling, ‘The People Versus Kelleher’ by Thomas McMorrow, ’Thubway Tham, Thvilian’ by Johnson McCulley, ‘The Blind Spot’ by Leslie Chateris, and ’Town Wanted’ by Fredric Brown. Original 50 cover price. Paperback, 224 pages, 18 cm. Original first edition hardcover published under the title ‘Rogues’ The Great Criminals of Modern Fiction’ by Little, Brown in 1945.

Genres: Short Stories, Mystery, Anthologies

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1945

About the author

aka Barnaby Ross.
(Pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee)
"Ellery Queen" was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age "fair play" mystery.

Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen's first appearance came in 1928 when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who used his spare time to assist his police inspector father in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee's death.

Several of the later "Ellery Queen" books were written by other authors, including Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, and Theodore Sturgeon.

Reviews

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow - I didn't really like ANY of these stories. That's really saying something. One or two didn't even really feature true rogues. Would not recommend.

[Neer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining collection. More here: https://ahotcupofpleasureagain.wordpr...

[Abbey · Rating 5 out of 5]

ROGUES GALLERY, Ellery Queen's superb 1945 anthology, centered around “modern” criminals (circa 1945) as protagonists

One of Queen’s earliest, and best, collections of short-stories-with-a-theme, plus lovely (and sometimes extensive) introductions to each. The best, IMO, are “Accident”, Agatha Christie, 1934; “Portrait of a Murderer”, Q. Patrick, 1942; “Blood Sacrifice”, Dorothy L. Sayers, 1939; “The Infallible Godahl”, Frederick Irving Anderson, 1913; “The Quagg Peerless Sciatacata Co.”, George Randolph Chester; “The Cablegram”, T.S. Stribling, 1932; “The Willow Walk”, Sinclair Lewis, 1918.

Also includes stories by Grant Allen, H.C. Bailey, Arnold Bennett, Fredric Brown, John Dickson Carr, Everett Rhodes Castle, Leslie Chateris, Charles J. Finger, R. Austin Freeman, Dashiell Hammett, “Pat Hand”, Ben Hecht, O. Henry, William Hope Hodgson, E.W. Hornung, Eric Knight, Maurice Le Blanc, Johnston McCulley, Thomas McMorrow, Melville Davisson Post, Ellery Queen, Howard Spring, Roy Vickers, Edgar Wallace, H.B. Marriott Watson.


Grant Allen, Colonel Clay in “The Diamond Links”, 1897
— smooth little nifty con job
Frederick Irving Anderson, “The Infallible Godahl”, 1913
— an author’s culpability in a locked room theft, nuanced and edgy, superb
H.C. Bailey, “Mr. Bowley’s Sunday Evening”
— death of a lout, at the hands of a big baby
Arnold Bennett, Lomax Harder in “Murder!”, 1931
— quiet tale of a lover (and murderer) who, maybe, gets away with it
Fredric Brown, “Jimmy” in “Town Wanted”, 1940
— moralistic little bit about racketeers, but tightly written
John Dickson Carr, “Mr. Markham, Antiques Dealer”, 1943
— elegantly old-fashioned radio tale of blackmail and murder, with a twist
Everett Rhodes Castle, Colonel Humphrey Flack in “The Colonel Gives a Party”, 1943
— smoothly genteel and old-fashioned betting scam
Leslie Chateris, Simon Templar in “The Blind Spot”, 1933
— smooth and gentle swindle, with heart
George Randolph Chester, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford in “The Quagg Peerless Sciatacata Co.”, 1910
— the perils of good business, or maybe almost good business, practices
Agatha Christie, Mrs. Merrowdene in “Accident”, 1934
— a scheming woman with poison, and a plan
Charles J. Finger, “Adventures of Andrew Lang”, 1924
— thoroughly bad lad in South America, old fashioned tale a.la Jack London
R. Austin Freeman, Danby Croker in “The Brazen Serpent”, 1916
— forgery, and avarice, potent lures for a collector
Dashiell Hammett, Guy Tharp in “Ruffian’s Wife”, 1925
— lovely “lost” story, about a “man for hire” and his little woman
Pat Hand, Careful Jones in “The Showdown”, 1944
— poker sharpies on a boat, interesting but a tad too esoteric
Ben Hecht, The X Club in “The Fifteen Murderers”, 1943
— sentimental story of an odd doctors association
O. Henry, Jeff Peters in “A Personal Magnet”, 1908
— contrified con games, well-done but a mite cutesy
William Hope Hodgson, Captain Gault in “The Red Herring”, 1917
— classic smuggler switcheroo, nicely crafted
E.W. Hornung, Raffles in “A Trap to Catch a Cracksman”
— nice Raffles outing, with Bunny as hero
Eric Knight, “Sam and his Yankee Allies”, 1943
— another coy “dialectical” flimflam about the combative Yorkshireman Sam Small
Maurice LeBlanc, “Edith Swan-Neck”, 1913
— smooth Lupin tale, but somewhat predictable, about stolen tapestries, sort of
Sinclair Lewis, Jasper Holt in “The Willow Walk”, 1918
— sublime tale of an embezzler who gets both more, and less, than he’d hoped
Johnston McCulley, “Thubway Tham, Thivilian”, 1943
— sweetly patriotic tale of a pickpocket who “makes good”
Thomas McMorrow, Ambrose Hinkle, Esq, in “The People vs. Kelleher”, 1929
— political shenanigans, in the old-fashioned way; vote early, and often...
Q. Patrick, Martin Slater in “Portrait of a Murderer”, 1942
— superb Grand Guingol set in motion by a scheming schoolboy
Melville Davisson Post, Randolph Mason, Esq, in “The Men of the Jimmy”, 1896
— sly but ultimately confusing tale of crooked lawyering and Masterminds
Ellery Queen, “Ellery Queen, Swindler”, 1942
— nifty but sentimental bit about a swindling jeweler, radio play
Dorothy L. Sayers, John Scales in “Blood Sacrifice”, 1939
— an author gets even after his play is reworked by A Great Thespian
Howard Spring, Herbert Milner in “Murder by Mail”, 1938
— tricky timetable poisoning, psychological overtones
T.S. Stribling, Dr. Xenophon Quintero Sanchez in “The Cablegram”, 1932
— excellently twisted smuggling tale, nicely confusing
Roy Vickers, “The St. Jocasta Tapestries”, 1935
— smooth Felicity Dove wins again, rather subtly
Edgar Wallace, Smith, The Mixer in “The Seventy-Fourth Diamond”, 1927
— a thief steals from another thief, lots of twists
H.B. Marriott Watson, Richard Ryder in “The Salisbury Assizes”
— a highwayman’s escapades


February 2007