The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery QueenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Crisp, efficient prose chronicles the crisp, efficient police procedure of Richard Queen, somewhat implausibly assisted by his amateur-detective son Ellery, who's a novelist, but appears to be able to take as much time as he likes to assist his father (what I call a "superhero job"). Ellery supplies the brilliance his dogged father lacks. As with "Nicholas Carter," the detective's name is the same as the author's pseudonym (two authors, in this case), but the narration is not first person.
The mystery is suitably intriguing. A man has been murdered in a theatre during a performance. Someone has carefully engineered, in what would normally be a packed house, that there was nobody sitting next to or in front of him, and he was in the back row. Nobody saw anyone come near him, at least that they are willing to admit. And, for no obvious reason, his custom top hat is missing - not in the possession of any other patron of the theatre, not anywhere to be found in an exhaustive search.
The victim is a dodgy lawyer suspected of being a mastermind of organized crime, but neither his home nor his office yields clear documentary evidence. He had a large income, but a small bank account. And, to add an extra layer of mystery, in the corpse's pocket is the purse of a wealthy man's socialite daughter, also in attendance at the play, but seated nowhere near him.
There are diagrams of the crime scene, reproductions of key bits of evidence, and a list of the characters to help you figure out the crime for yourself. I didn't, and while technically everything was there for one to do so, the detectives did have access to information hidden from the reader. It's clever, though, and well told, and I can see why the series was so popular. I have the second one from Project Gutenberg, and will look for more through my library.
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