Review: The French Powder Mystery

The French Powder Mystery by Ellery Queen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As with the first book, even though all of the clues are there, I didn't figure out who the criminal was until just before it was announced at the end. Ellery Queen is the kind of person who is very aware, and likes everyone else to be aware, that he's the smartest (and best-educated) person in the room, and he does back it up with clever deductions that make complete sense when he lays them out.

The same drawbacks are present as in the first book. It is, of course, completely absurd that a senior police inspector on the NYPD lets his dilettante author son trail around with him and investigate crime scenes, and also vouch for someone he'd known as a kid who would otherwise be a suspect, so that he, too, can be present in places he absolutely should not be and party to information he shouldn't have. Even setting that aside as a genre trope, there's an unpleasant undercurrent of casual racism, not in blatant "all these people are inferior and should have no rights" declarations, but in the language used about non-whites. There's a black minor character who is almost always referred to as "the Negress" when a more offensive term isn't being used (not the most offensive one, but a couple of slurs). She's described in the cast of characters as "a study in normal ebon," in other words, a stereotype, and the "dialect" that she and the other black character speak is fully represented, making it clear that they're part of an outgroup. Meanwhile, the Queens' Roma servant is described at one point as "simian."

There's not a lot of character work that isn't directly related to the plot. The romance subplot isn't even resolved.

These are clever mystery puzzles, and I do enjoy them at that level even though I don't solve them, but there's really not much in the way of other levels at which to enjoy them, and the racism is difficult to ignore. I don't think I'll continue with the series.

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