The Devil to Pay

Ellery Queen Detective #13

by Ellery Queen

When every last one of the Ohippi hydro-electric power plants are destroyed by flood, Rhys Jardin is one of many who loses everything. But somehow Jardin's longtime partner, finance magnate Solly Spaeth, manages to come out of it wealthier than before, thanks to a brilliant-if-underhanded move to sell off his shares before disaster struck. Spaeth has more than enough money to rebuild the plants, but why should he, with the law on his side?

The only problem is that Spaeth's son Walter, an idealistic journalist, is in love with Jardin's daughter. When he pleads for his father's mercy, he finds himself disinherited from the will.

Walter enlists the help of Ellery Queen, a mystery author in town to try his hand at screenwriting for Hollywood, to secretly buy back the auctioned Jardin-family belongings on their behalf. But before Queen can walk away, Solly Spaeth turns up dead.

Now embroiled in a real-life mystery, Queen must figure out a way to weed through the suspects, all the while proving himself a player in Hollywood. Unfortunately for Queen, Spaeth's extreme wealth can only be matched by the number of his enemies.

From his first appearance in print in 1929, Ellery Queen became one of America’s most famous and beloved fictional detectives. Over the course of nearly half a century, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, the duo writing team known as Ellery Queen, won the prestigious Edgar Award multiple times, and their contributions to the mystery genre were recognized with a Grand Master Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Mystery Writers of America. Their fair-play mysteries won over fans due to their intricate puzzles that challenged the reader to solve the mystery alongside the brilliant detective. Queen’s stories were among the first to dominate the earliest days of radio, film, and television. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine , which the writers founded and edited, became the world’s most influential and acclaimed crime fiction magazine.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Audiobook, Detective, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Golden Age Mystery

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

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

[Alessandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un giallo classico con un insolito Ellery Queen sotto mentite spoglie e una ambientazione hollywoodiana. Piacevole.

[Jeffrey Marks · Rating 3 out of 5]

More romance than mystery, it's easy to figure out the killer in this book by process of elimination. The clues are fair and easy to interpret, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

[Tommy Verhaegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hoewel Ellery Queen een belangrijke, zoniet de belangrijkste, rol speelt in dit verhaal, draait het toch voornamelijk om de dochter van Solly's compagnon en Walter die zich in de loop van het verhaal met haar verlooft. Wat niets afdoet aan het briljante speurwerk van Ellery.
Een verhaal van 80 jaar geleden en toch nog spannend en interessant, tegen de achtergrond van Hollywood en Los Angeles waar op het vlak van de droomfabriek ook nog niks veranderd is.
De lezer is dan ook direct mee met de gebeurtenissen, volgt de haast uitzichtloze speurtocht in de knoeiboel van verdachten en gebeurtenissen tegen een neetwerk van leugens op de voet, en krijgt tegen het einde toch wel een vermoeden van de richting waarin de ontknooping moet gezocht worden.
Een goedgeschreven Ellery Queen verhaal met de schrijver/speurder zelf in de hoofdrol, een knappe plot en een onverwachte ontknoping. En een portie humor, laat ons dat vooral niet vergeten: Ellery als een opzichtige filmdetective...

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Devil to Play is the first of the Ellery Queen novels set in Hollywood. Ellery has been brought west under contract to write a screenplay, but has been left cooling his heels while the producer, Jacques Butcher plays golf by day and the playboy by night. When Ellery's old school buddy Walter Spaeth calls upon him for help, he's more than happy to leave his lonely office in the depths of the studio to come to the rescue.

Walter's father, Solomon "Solly" Spaeth and Rhys Jardin had partnered up for the Ohippi Hydro-Electric Project--investing their own money and convincing hundreds of others to sink their savings into the project as well. When the Project goes bust--both from Spaeth's machinations and flooding in the area--the investors are left with nothing. Well, all of them but Spaeth. The wily financier has juggled his money about so that he comes out with millions.

When Spaeth is found dead from an apparent sword wound in his home shortly after the news breaks, no one is really surprised and no one is really sad. In fact, the investors are cheered to think that "that crook" got what was coming to him. And not even Winni Moon, Spaeth's "protege" sheds many tears--after all, since Spaeth and his son had that very convenient argument over the financier's business practices, a new will has left her with all the loot. How could a girl be sad about that when there are minks and diamonds and pretty dresses to buy?

Added to the mix, Spaeth and Jardin's daughter Valerie are trying to be in love--but it's difficult with false clues laying about and suspicion focusing alternately on Valerie's father and her lover. And each man is stubbornly refusing to clear himself...if that's even possible. The local Inspector is determined to hang the crime on one of these men and it isn't until Queen comes into the case that all the false clues are swept away and the remaining ones are placed in the proper order to lead straight to the villain.

My take: What a relief to get back to a story written by Dannay and Lee. The entire flow of the story is so much better than my previous read. It doesn't even matter that the reader can figure out the culprit pretty quickly through simple process of elimination. The fun of reading the real Queen's turn of phrase, dialogue and descriptions totally make up for it. And the mystery is fairly clued. A fun read and decent mystery--rating a nice solid three stars

{This review is mine and was first posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission to repost any portion. Thanks.}

[blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, y'know. "Q". How many "Q" books do I have? One, exactly, by "Ellery Queen" the nom de plume of I don't know how many people. I remember Jim Hutton being him on television. And I've read some short stories under the Queen imprimatur. But this is the first novel.

It's a corker, too! A real Jim dandy! It's like reading a Howard Hawks movie.

In this episode, a hated man is murdered, and our heroes, a young couple in love and the girl's father, are the primary suspects. And they're all clearly hiding something.

I liked the writing style. It was quick and clever and dropped all the clues where you could find them. As a literary matter, of course, the mystery always has the problem of "whodunnit?" where the "who" has to make sense to the reader to keep him from feeling cheated. I mean, you can pull a Friday the 13th where the killer turns out to be someone in Act 1 who couldn't physically have done it, or a "Scooby-Doo" where the criminal is some guy you've never met before, but that's, as I say, cheating.

But the problem then becomes: If there must be a sound backing for the character in question to have committed the crime, how do you keep the reader from figuring it out beforehand? And this, I think, is a big part of the art of the murder mystery, and why I rate this one rather higher than most.

Because I kept thinking, "Well, it has to be [that character]." And not really from any super deduction, but just from a narrative standpoint: "It can't be her, him, him, him, her..." because, literarily speaking, it just wouldn't have worked. You can't, for example, have the love interest do the crime—unless it's a hard-boiled noir thing, in which case the love interest has to have done it.

Anyway, I kept coming back to the person who had to have done it, and was very well convinced that [that character] couldn't have, because it didn't fit that person's actions at all. So, when the truth was revealed, even as it was being revealed, I was surprised, and yet the answer made sense.

So that's pretty darn good, for a potboiler like this. It's 303 pages, but I think they were fairly sparse pages, and another edition has it listed as 184 pages, which I think is more on-the-money. It's not a dense book or a long book. My copy is from 1946, I think the second printing after the 1938 release, which was kind of cool. Worth checking out.

[Kate Vane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this before I learnt that Ellery Queen was a pseudonym for cousins Lee and Dannay, which made it all the more interesting, because it felt like two different books to me.

The first part introduces all the characters. They are sparky, complex and colourful. The prose is stylish, at times poetic. There’s a real sense of the place and the period (Depression-era Hollywood), and a strong story at the heart of it – Walter despises the privileged background of his peers and himself but is in love with Valerie, who is entirely at ease with her life of luxury and finds his principles somewhat comical.

Their lives are turned upside-down when Valerie’s father, Rhys, and an awful lot of other people (little people who were never even rich to start with and who therefore largely serve as extras) lose all their money, due to the dishonest dealings of Walter’s father, Solly. Then Solly is murdered and the main suspects are Walter and Rhys.

From then on the book seems to lose something. It has all the hallmarks of a classic whodunnit – clues and misdirection and a wanton disregard for realism – but the characters become slaves to the plot and the prose at times pedestrian. And the killer was obvious from very early on. I kept thinking that it was so obvious it must be a red herring or the jumping-off point to another plotline, but it wasn’t.

Still, I kept going. There were glimpses of the early promise – clever dialogue and wry humour – in among the endless set-piece scenes where Queen gets everyone in a room to talk about his insights and the police allow the wealthy or formerly wealthy suspects to walk all over them (perhaps that bit is realistic).

On the whodunnit level, it all works. The fact that Queen adopts a disguise, which makes little sense in story terms, has some resonance when you know that Ellery Queen is a pseudonym. It flowed well and I did think I’d like to try another Queen novel (though I can’t help feeling that the Queen character is the least interesting thing about this book).
*
I listened to the Blackstone audiobook – the reading by Robert Fass was excellent.

[Lewis Attrib · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad as mysteries go but one of those plots where you can't help siding with the murderer. Ellery should have kept his nose out of it and left it unsolved in my opinion.

[Chazzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellery Queen has been brought to Hollywood, by Jacques Butcher, to work on a screenplay. The problem is that Butcher has yet to see Ellery to discuss what the screenplay is to be about. After a few weeks, Ellery has been idle for too long.

Meanwhile, financier Solly Spaeth and his business partner, Rhys Jardin, find that their "Ohippi Hydro-Electric Project" has failed due to flooding in the area it is located. Their investors have lost their investment money. Rhys is now broke. Spaeth is the only one who is afloat due to selling his shares before the flooding. Strange....

Rhys is forced to sell off all his belongings just to raise enough for him and his daughter to have money to live on. The auction goes better than expected when an unknown man buys the who lot of goods. Unbeknownst to Rhys and his daughter, the buyer is Ellery Queen and the money comes from Spaeth's son, Walter. Seems both boys were in school together back in New York.

They real mystery kicks in when Solly is found dead in his house. Rhys is the prime suspect due to his being Solly's business partner and have suffered such a large financial loss. This situation allows Ellery to do what he enjoys....solve a murder. The difference is that he takes on the personage of Hilary "Scoop" King, reporter from Back East and new to the West Coast. This also gives him the ability to poke and prod in an city he isn't really know to the police in.

Twists, turns and red herrings were all there. Another fun read.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though Queen fans don’t always like to admit it, Ellery Q had a Hollywood period. But instead of the mean streets of Raymond Chandler, Hollywood, to Mr. Queen, is Oz. A fantasyland of sunshine and goofy behavior. Still, despite all the silly beauty, murders happen.Ellery, hired to write a movie, but waiting to see his producer, finds the spare time to solve it.

The result is a murder mystery set in a universe of screwball comedy, with daffy heiresses and diligent solemn men who wander through this world, waiting for the right girl to loosen them up. It is magazine ready fiction, and an attempt at making EQ something more than a priggish mystery solving machine. It works in fits and starts, as the writing half of the EQ team is in good form here, and creates a fun universe. The plot itself — well, when you go with EQ, some of the problem solving and solutions can be daft. This is one of those.

[Steve Goble · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was in the mood for an old-fashioned whodunit, and this fit the bill.

This one is set in Hollywood, in the 1930’s, and so is missing familiar supporting characters from the early Queen books, such as Inspector Queen and Sgt. Velie. Ellery himself is absent from most of the early chapters. It’s a tale lost fortunes, rich people and misleading assumptions, featuring a crime not nearly so bizarre as those in many other Queen novels. Indeed, I solved this one, and I often do not solve Queen murders.

I nearly gave up on this one, not particularly liking any of the characters and finding the prose more dated than I expected, but once Ellery arrived on the scene things got more fun and the story moved more swiftly. Not the best of Queen, but a neat puzzle nonetheless.

[Anna Katharine · Rating 2 out of 5]

After run of new authors I felt like revisiting an old friend, and it's been awhile since I looked in on Ellery Queen. I generally like the later Queen novels, after Ellery's character has developed and he's not such a cocky kid. Despite being the 13th book in the series, Ellery's still in late-cocky phase. That alone isn't enough to sink the narrative, but I found the the female protagonist, Valerie Jardin, to be near-insufferable, too. The usual stereotypes and prejudices of the time (Hollywood in 1937) are in evidence, but not too overwhelming. As much as I love the classics- Queen, Marsh, Allingham, and even Sayers- the social norms of the time become more cringeworthy the older I get. Worth a reread, but I'm glad to live in a different time.

[Gabriele Crescenzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il libro, sebbene considerato da molti non ben riuscito, mi è sostanzialmente piaciuto. Se non fosse per dei particolari che mi rendono un po' scettico, avrei dato anche 4 stelle. I motivi per cui ne do invece 3 sono prettamente dovuti alle modalità del crimine:



SPOILER
Come è possibile che la scientifica non si sia accorta che la spada non fosse l'arma del delitto? Come è possibile che il sangue sulla spada non sia stato identificato con quello di Walter? Se avessero controllato sarebbe stato chiaro che non era della vittima, per cui avrebbero scoperto tutto in precedenza.

[Michael Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

EQ is contracted to come to Hollywood for 6 weeks to work with the leading producer on some films. He is given a tremendous salary, a great office and no work. No one approaches him from the head office. For 6 weeks he tries to contact the producer and is stonewalled. So when a murder occurs and he is in the vicinity, the detective him takes over.
He cons the police and the accused while sifting through the obvious evidence and the little things that are always there if you look for them. And in the end, voila! The crime is solved.

[Conni Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an absolutely delightful read. Finally! Ellery is so intrinsically Ellery in this, except when he's not ;)! Much better than the previous book. And I absolutely adore Val and Walter. I think Val is definitely the highlight of the book. She's funny and smart and real and human. She tries her best, and finally the narrative is allowing for a strong female character who is a normal person besides. Between Hilary--I mean Ellery, and Val, the shenanigans were at an all-time-high and the witty one-liners kept rolling in. What a blast!

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A crooked businessman is murdered, his righteous partner is the police's main suspect, and he won't defend himself because that would implicate his daughter's fiancee. There's much to criticize in this book: Queen's "Hilary King" disguise was ludicrous, the crucial clue was found by luck, and the chimpanzee that shows up in the beginning never appears again. But it's fun, and the main twist to the mystery is one I cannot recall having seen before in mysteries.

[James Farner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite liked this. We’ve definitively left the era of the intricate puzzle solutions, but we still get a quintessential-Ellery list of murderer traits and the following process of elimination at the end. The romance between Val and Walter isn’t the best, but at least she actually has agency and is developed as a character. This was a fun way to pass time on a long plane ride.

[Shabbeer Hassan · Rating 2 out of 5]

An alternative title of this book would say it all about this - "Ellery goes to Hollywood"...then gets disenchanted and solves a murder which perks him up!

It's a rather plain kinda book, without any whiff of excitement and definitely not worth a re-read (like ever!)

My rating - 2.5/5

[David Megginson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book forms a loose series with the next one (The Four of Hearts) as a Hollywood period in Ellery's life.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the first few chapters quite tedious and nearly gave up there and then. I am really glad I didn't as despite Ellery Queen being a smug so-and-so the books are really amusing plus the crimes, and the solving of them, are well thought out

[the_bookshelf_explorer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic! Amusement! “Beneath that bland exterior he fancied he saw a considerable equipment for skullduggery”

[Betty Torma · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read!

If you have not read Ellery Queen before go for it starting with this book. You'll really enjoy it. And will start another right after.

[Maxfound · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un mito intramontabile. Giallo "cinematografico" nella scrittura e nella trama, con una meravigliosa caratterizzazione dei personaggi. Si leggono sempre con piacere

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is surprisingly brief mid-period Queen. I read it in an afternoon on a train from hokkaido to kyoto- it's certainly zippy enough. However, this acts almost like the other bookend to Queen's overly long and abstruse earlier works. When Queen goes for the concision of Christie, what results isn't quite to the same level of complexity. Here, there's a strong dearth of credible suspects. When formulating my theory before the reveal, I had only two individuals to choose between.

The mystery felt fair enough- though it did rely a little bit on some arcane knowledge.

I will say that I was reasonably invested in the characters- which seems to be more of a focus in mid Queen. But ultimately, it's not a fair trade. Go read French Powder, Siamese Twins, or Dutch Shoe instead.

[Erik Deckers · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better Queen novels. Had a lot of the old elements from the older books, but it was way more believable than those older stories.

[Bill Suits · Rating 2 out of 5]

I made the mistake of trying to listen to the audiobook. It's almost impossible to listen to. It makes a very little sense. I recommend reading and not listening.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook

[Fran · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5💫

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

10 A sophisticated tale with just the right number of red herrings. The 13th outing and Mr Queen continues to go from strength to strength.

[Marie-Clare · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well written 30s murder mystery, but weighted with social attitudes of the time and undercurrent of dog-whistle antisemitism.

[Kristina Plaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellery Queen in Hollywood! It's amazing how he works into every story. It is such a well woven tale. I would think I knew who dunit and, whoops, nope can't be that person.