The Fourth Side of the Triangle

Ellery Queen Detective #29

by Ellery Queen

Sheila is found murdered, two floors down millionaire & his family are suspects

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime

185 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1965

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

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is reputed to be one of the Ellery Queen novels written by a ghost writer from an outline by Frederic Dannay. The ghost writer is thought to be Avram Davidson.

This would be a reasonably decent little mystery novel if the ending made sense. I don't think that it does, though. The anagram name part of the solution is just the kind of thing that annoys me about "Ellery Queen," both the author(s) and the character. That Sheila would have done this at all seems unlikely to me; that Ellery would have reasoned it out is considerably more improbable.

Evidently Sheila and Dane had made no attempt to hide their growing relationship. Her co-workers, people in restaurants, and others had seen them together repeatedly. Somehow, though, the police were not aware of this. Oh, really?

But what I think is totally wrong is the time sequence surrounding the murder. Dane almost strangled Sheila and then left her apartment shortly after 10:00 pm. Ashton McKell arrived at Sheila's apartment at 10:03, had a brief conversation with her, and then left. Then Sheila wrote the note to the police, which took an estimated 4-10 minutes. At 10:20, Ramon came to Sheila's apartment. There is nothing to indicate that Ramon had a key, so Sheila probably let him in. But whether he had a key or not, he somehow entered the apartment. "[Sheila] was lying spread out in a chair looking pretty sick, half unconscious, holding her throat. She hardly seemed to know he was there, [Ramon] said. He suspected something was very wrong and he beat it. But not before he spotted the letter addressed to the police in her handwriting, thought there might be something juicy in it for him, and put it in his pocket." While Ramon was still in the apartment, Dane somehow entered unnoticed by Sheila or Ramon, and heard Sheila and Ramon having a conversation. Ramon left. Dane evidently made just enough noise to alert Sheila that someone was there, and she called the police. She was able to converse intelligibly and give them her name and address before Dane shot her.

So in that 23 minute period, Sheila went from almost being strangled, to then being able to hold a short conversation, writing a letter, sealing and addressing it in two envelopes, collapsing while speaking to the criminal intruder who was blackmailing her, and then making a rational phone call. What is the likelihood that the only part of this time that she was "half unconscious" is when she knew that a crook (with whom she was speaking) was in her apartment? This just makes no sense at all.

Solutions to murder mysteries may be unlikely but this is absurd.

[Sonja · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ending was a bit much but someone told me this was not written by Queen. I will have to try another one.

[Ivana Pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

My husband bought me this book when we went to a second hand store…The book is well-written, I do like the use of anagrams as clues, as it’s quite innovative. However, the ending with Dane just does not make sense. If the ending were of Ramon being convicted as I thought it would remain, the book would have been more than adequate. Dane being the murderer is a cheap last-minute plot twist, quite shabbily executed might I add.

However, considering my husband purchased this book…I gave it a bonus star. :)

[George Tsalamandris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh wow, this makes as much cents (sense) as a three dollar bill.

Why this rich and well to do family accused of murder do what they do in this book goes beyond reasonableness. Before and after the murder.

The father’s actions are absurd, the mother’s is borderline nuts, the son’s actions are inconsistent.

Strangely the redeeming feature is the early star-crossed lovers arch which I enjoyed but it all spun out of control and landed flat after that.

The anagram part of the mystery I had figured out by halfway into the book. But even that part disappointedly turned into a red herring.

The last 23 or so minutes of the victims life - the timeline is ridiculous.

No less than 4 visitors came into the apartment without any of them running into each other only phrases such as ‘I saw him but he didn’t see me’, offer any excuse. Really??? On a floor that has only one apartment and one elevator nobody ran into each other in that 23 min period? Huh?
And somewhere in that 23 min after the murder was committed the murderer hangs up the phone to the police and while knowing the police would be only a few minutes before they arrived decided to go on a search for the current years designer plans, hunt for something to rub out his name (amazingly there was one on hand) think up a reasonable anagram for another person’s name stencil that in all in that 23 min period and before the police arrived! But no thought of wiping down fingerprints that must be all over the apartment?
In the book the murderer admits ‘there might be other copies of this years designs so I couldn’t just take it’. But if he feared other copies couldn’t they have the legit name on them? Or couldn’t some file or notes somewhere or notebook with anagram workings exist?

What about the father who takes the ridiculous precautions of leaving his 1st floor apartment to run around town in and out of buildings and cars wearing a false face only to end up in his own building to meet the girl on the 4th floor? Who does that?
Add to this his wife saying ‘oh I knew what he was doing anyway.’ What is going on here?
Add to the fact the father visiting the victim on the night of the murder and for a reason that was never explained ditches the whole run around town and false face routine, just shows up as himself. ‘Risks be damned..I now don’t care. “

The whole wife changing the blanks in the gun is wow just pure idiotic.

How did the chauffeur who is blackmailing the victim enter her apartment anyway - with no key? Run off with a valuable document without the victim even noticing him? Superpowers maybe.

The police seemed to do absolutely nothing based on evidence except swallow what was told to them without even checking anything. No mention of interviewing everybody that was in the building on the night of the murder, or interviewing the victims work staff. If they did maybe they would have been told the apartment complex’s doorman saw the son enter the building just a few minutes before the victim’s death. (Funny no mention of how the chauffeur entered or exited the building without the doorman or anybody else seeing him - superpowers theory gaining traction). Or he could have told them how many times the couple left the building together to go out at night. Because they didn’t hide their relationship.
A quick interview with the designer’s staff would have told police that a short while ago a staff member was fired for being caught taking photos of the designs. Maybe the camera was the same used for the photo of the blackmail letter sent. Hey, let’s interview the disgruntled ex-staffer or other designers who she feared wanted to steal from her didn’t seem to be high up on the police’s agenda. Put that down to missed opportunities.
Keys the dad and son had that opened the victims front door the police blindly missed.
No mention at all from the police of regular doctors’ visits every Wednesday to the victims apartment- couldn’t spare one police car to find out about this mysterious doctor? Oh I see he only ever arrived when the doorman wasn’t there …err explain again about why we are wasting all this time and effort in wears disguise then? Why not just go from your first floor apartment to her fourth floor…oh doesn’t matter.

What about the stupid “the father must be innocent because some barman remembers two months ago him at his bar fully disguised in fake face hair and beard on the night of the murder”. What the…? No let’s base everything on that guy who admits he doesn’t know the father at all only some guy made up to look like some Dr Watson in a bad pantomime version of Sherlock Holmes, lets base our whole murder case on that. Yeah that’s great let’s trust our luck on that barman guy!
Hey Mr. Prosecutor I have an idea let’s get 20 guys to wear a false face, hair and beard and let’s see if the barman can pluck him out from that crowd!

Now, just picture this our lovely stylish sophisticated victim at home In her boudoir some Wednesday afternoon waiting for her appointment to arrive. She is sitting when the doorbell rings she opens the door to see an older man standing there - a man of great repoire who meets with Presidents and is a leading man of industry..he is standing there dressed in a false face, nose, hair and beard - pretty pathetic. I’d laugh and judging by what I read of the victim she would have laughed at him too, or at least thought ‘you look pathetic’

Same as this book really.

[Bev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite Ellery Queen.

[Rick Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

About the author: Avram Davidson ghost-wrote this title, from an outline by
Frederic Dannay.

Major characters:
Dane McKell, aspiring writer
Ashton McKell, his father; a.k.a. Dr. Stone
Lutetia McKell, his mother
Judy Walsh, Ashton's secretary
Sheila Grey, the other woman
"Aunt" Sarah Vernier, Dane's godmother
Ramon Alvarez, chauffeur

Locale: New York City

Synopsis: Wealthy Ashton and Lutetia McKell live in a palatial New York apartment. Their son, Dane McKell, is more interested in being a writer than following in his father's business footsteps, but has yet to be successful at it.

There is a sudden upset when Lutetia, sensing Ashton is becoming distant, asks what is wrong; and Ashton reveals there is "another woman". Lutetia takes this in stride, and focuses on being the obedient wife and avoiding any sniff of scandal in society, and in their church.

Dane feels it is his duty to break up this illicit romance, but doesn't know the identity of the other woman. He follows his father to an assignation to learn the woman is fashion designer Sheila Grey, and she lives in the penthouse of the same apartment building. She is young - about the same age as Dane. Since Ashton does not want to be recognized visiting her, he assumes a disguise as "Dr. Stone", even to carrying a physician's bag.

Dane sees Sheila in the guise of researching her industry for his book. He gradually falls in love with her, and when she rejects his marriage proposal, he attempts to strangle her. He leaves, and in the interval before Ashton arrives, Sheila is shot by a person unknown.

Review: This book is written in four chapters, each named for a "side of the triangle".

Chapter 1, "Sheila", moves right along as we follow Dave discovering his father's elaborate disguise and the other woman's identity. It opens with some historical McKell family background which fleshes out the family characters nicely and helps the reader understand their Victorian background, and ends with Sheila's murder.

Chapter 2, "Ashton" covers the arrest of Ashton for the murder.

Chapter 3, "Lutetia" covers her arrest for the murder, following Ashton's acquital.

Chapter 4, "Dane" leads us to the murderer, with a nice red herring episode, following Lutetia's acquital. Not too many possibilities left!

This book follows a typical Queen formula of chapters, and also includes a solution which involves solving a formula left behind by the deceased. I had the murderer all picked out but on the last pages I found I was wrong.

A nice aspect of this story is the limited cast of characters. It is never difficult to keep track of who is who. Another unique aspect is that Ellery solves the case from his hospital bed (following breaking both legs skiing).

I was a bit skeptical that this ghost-written title could stand up to the Queen reputation, but it does easily.

For additional reviews indexed by author, please visit The Mystillery Blog and try The Mystillery Reading Challenges!

[Conni Wayne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely Lunatic.
The only saving grace for this book is that Dane, who was a total monster at the beginning of the book, actually ended up being the murderer at the end. Seriously. When Dane decided to seduce his father's Mistress I thought that was sick, but when he nearly strangled her to death, I knew that he was an irredeemable figure. But then they spend most of the time after that trying to paint him in like a sympathetic light??? Literally, people found out he nearly strangled his lover to death, just because she wanted to have sex with him out of wedlock (opposed to marrying him first), and then they were just ok with it because at least he didn't actually kill her??? Fucking insane. And the fact that Alternate Love-Interest Judy was on his side after finding out that he TRIED TO KILL HIS PREVIOUS GIRLFRIEND (WHO HE STARTED DATING WHILE THINKING SHE WAS HIS FATHER'S MISTRESS) makes me want to puke. Literally the only saving grace for this book-- since the on-screen Ellery time was negligible, and Ellery wasn't even the person who solved the mystery in the end; it was his father-- the only saving grace is that at least Dane was the murderer, that he was the bad guy, and the narrative wasn't letting him get off the hook with this nonsense. I already hate all the "Oh she's just being too female about it, she doesn't understand" Sexist BS, but the fact that for most of the book we're supposed to view this vile man as somewhat sympathetic? And even in the end, his break down has an edge of the author trying to make us feel sorry for this human piece of garbage? I spit on this man
Anyway, at least I was genuinely thrown by the mystery. Like. I couldn't figure it out. Granted, I don't know how I possibly could have figured it out, because they gave us barely any information so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Christopher Rush · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm fairly certain this should be filed under "the author wanted to be a 'real' author but wanted money and/or a foot in the biz so he temporarily laid aside his principles and wrote an EQ mystery," which may require an unusual size label, for which I'm sorry. I'm not very familiar with EQ, but surely the real ones have to be better than this, and I'm pretty sure this is not by the two creators of EQ, but I could be wrong. This served as the basis for the TV series pilot with Jim Hutton, but fortunately the movie-episode is far superior to this non-EQ story masquerading poorly as an EQ mystery. It's just a mid-'60s psychological profile novel (and not a good one, either). To make it even worse (beyond how dull it is and offputting the premises and "motivations"), the portrayal of EQ himself is wretchedly done: he's irritable, yells at his father in front of people, gets the case almost wholly wrong, and is hardly even in the story. But of course that was the point of the "real" author trying to make a "real" story without EQ. The only potentially redeeming aspect of this is how intelligent Inspector Queen is shown in the last five pages (after being shown a fool for 100 pages prior), but it's not enough to redeem it after all. Watch the show's version instead.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my first Ellery Queen mystery. I may not read another.

The plot was good and kept me interested. The characters, however, were not very interesting or worthy of sympathy. There were not many suspects. It's one of these stories where the author could easily have written different endings. In fact, he sort of did.

It strikes me as a rather old-fashioned detective story, even though it takes place in 1965. There is an apartment where various people enter and depart in a small period of time and someone is killed. Each person seems to have an alibi.

There is no depth to the characters, nor is there the strong central character of the detective. The detective here, also called Ellery Queen (weird), is sort of a wimp. I much prefer Ross McDonald's Lew Archer series, the detective story as philosophical tragedy; or Gardner's Perry Mason, the detective as heroic genius fighter. In either series, there are much more complex plots too.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Slow to start, and despite being an Ellery Queen mystery, the detective himself doesn't show up until about a third of the way through the book--and during every appearance, he makes time to lust after a Swedish nurse. HO HO, SEXUAL HARASSMENT HUMOR, HOW CHARMING! Other timeworn tropes include ethnic stereotypes and the "he's got a temper and assaults people but he's really a good guy" line.

The story did keep me guessing, but in retrospect it was because I didn't understand how or why "we" (the reader [me], the narrator, and Ellery Queen) had ruled out the most obvious suspect. The characters were well-sketched but almost impossible to like.

tl;dr: Skip it.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another of the ghostwritten (with outlines from Dannay and Lee) Queens. It's also my last late-Queen (excepting Cop Out, which sounds like a bad time). How does it stack up? It's engaging enough as a psychological thriller, but it barely feels like Queen. Most of the relevant clues come at the last minute, and at least one really critical clue is pulled out of a hat during the denouement. Essentially, it's not fair-play. Worthwhile for Queen completionists and maybe some more casual readers, but don't expect a true Queen book.

[Jas “LdyBlackheart” · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to first read this in college and I hardly remembered a thing besides that I liked it.
Well, I did like and the mystery keeps you on your toes the entire time. It reminded me why I liked detective and mystery novels. Of course, it’s a little slow since they have to build the suspense but it’s a really interesting story viewing a lot of different sides.

[Scott Drake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sooo...it's the ending I suspected through most of the book, though arrived at in a different direction. The four sides/four chapters worked really well. It was kind of like reading four independent stories. Not complex but treated as though it were which almost dropped it to three stars.

[Nefeli Konsta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though this book had potential, the writing was good so was the plot, but we lost it in the execution. So many things were happening but it felt like nothing was happening at the same time. Also, the character's personality was there but not a single one stood out.
I found who the killer was from the start, and the only reason I didn't DNF this book was to prove me right.

[John R. Goyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

A later Ellery tale ghost written by a different author - and it sucks. Characters are loathsome and the story is overly contrived - I made it about 2/3rds through before giving up in disgust. a shame for a usually good series.

[Lawanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook performed by Mark Peckham

[Rick Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better Ellery Queens. Lots of twists and turns and an unusual format where Ellery does not even appear until more than halfway through the book. Exceptional whodunit.

[Rog Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apparently ghost written by Avram Davidson based on an outline by Dannay.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable mystery.

[Kevinjwoods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manages to have a surprise ending despite repeatedly telling you who the killer is

[Brandon Gates · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not actually written by Ellery Queen, I still enjoyed this book!

[Sailaway · Rating 3 out of 5]

average

[Alexia Athanassiadou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πολύ ωραίο αστυνομικό που δεν έχει να ζηλέψει τίποτα από τα σημερινά αστυνομικά. Μικρό, περιεκτικό, πρωτότυπο και πολύ ενδιαφέρον καθώς παίζει με την ψυχολογία των ηρώων. Πολυ ωραίο.

[carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

First and last Ellery Queen book I will read.

[Sharla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have yet to figure out where in the order of Ellery Queen books, they change from irritatingly pretentious to books I actually enjoy reading. This is one of the good ones.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good mystery, nicely paced but the ending was a little lazy, I think he painted himself into a corner on how to end this and took the easy way out. The print in this copy looks to be a xerox copy of the original 1965' printing. The print looks like it was typed on a old manual typewriter and the ribbon was wet and sloppy, print is smeared and sometimes blurred too much to read comfortably but this posing a problem also gave me the feeling that I was reading the original fresh of the press. I have read Ellery Queen short stories in the old Pulp magazines but this was my first Queen novel and I enjoyed it enough to put me on the hunt for more of his books. Good read, good read indeed!

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Father and son share the same mistress. Mistress, a fashion designer, ends up dead. Everyone has a motive; no one has a verifiable alibi.

Has similarities to Nero Wolf since Ellery Queen has broken two legs skiing and is immobilized requiring others to do the investigating for him. Also similarities to Perry Mason with courtroom drama and dramatic testimony.

This story was going along remarkably but lost a star, maybe two, for the last two pages. Good set-up, lousy conclusion.

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing, in a word.

[Randy · Rating 3 out of 5]

these seemed to have been ghost written.

[Jim Hager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well thought out and keeps you guessing