The Chinese Orange Mystery: 0 (An American Mystery Classic)
£8.20£8.50 (-4%)
A topsy-turvy crime scene sends a detective on a puzzling quest for the truth.
The offices of foreign literature publisher and renowned stamp collector Donald Kirk are often host to strange activities, but the most recent occurrence the murder of an unknown caller, found dead in an empty waiting room is unlike any that has come before. Nobody, it seems, entered or exited the room, and yet the crime scene clearly has been manipulated, leaving everything in the room turned backwards and upside down. Stuck through the back of the corpse’s shirt are two long spears and a tangerine is missing from the fruit bowl. Enter amateur sleuth Ellery Queen, who arrives just in time to witness the discovery of the body, only to be immediately drawn into a complex case in which no clue is too minor or too glaring to warrant careful consideration.
Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, The Chinese Orange Mystery is revered to this day for its challenging conceit and inventive solution. The book is a “fair-play” mystery in which readers have all the clues needed to solve the crime. In 1981, the novel was selected as one of the top ten locked room mysteries of all time by a panel of mystery-world luminaries that included Julian Symons, Edward D. Hoch, Howard Haycraft, and Otto Penzler.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Penzler Publishers (30 Nov. 2018) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 264 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1613161069 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1613161067 |
| Dimensions | 13.46 x 1.78 x 20.57 cm |
by R. J. Mcgarrie
An excellent book by a “King” of the detective genre. As usual, an ending with a most surprising suspect. It is a work I have wanted to read for a long time, and was delighted when I saw that it was recently published.”Queen” books, especially the early numbers are always a joy to read Recommended!
by Moishe Yitzchak
Classic EQ. Early titles are very catchy
The plot here, especially motive & how committed are very difficult to work out
I don’t even try, just read and enjoy.
by E. Cleland
I must have read my first Ellery Queen novel about 55 years ago and then read them all avidly. Strangely, I had never come across this title and it was a real joy to return to the world of the Queens (and of my early teens)!
by Credit Man
The Ellery Queen stories follow a set path, with the same law enforcement characters, and the apparently impenetrable solution. The skill lies in creating a very complicated set of facts with a suggested solution after the reader has all the information.
As with most other EQ stories, the solution in this book is too complicated and contrived.
Despite that, it is an entertaining read.
by J. Lesley
Thank you to NetGalley and Penzler Publishing for a digital galley of this novel.
Otto Penzler is reissuing mystery and detective fiction novels from the Golden Age of crime fiction through his American Mystery Classics series. I was glad to choose The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen (actually cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee). This one was originally published in 1934 and is a very good example of the “fair-play” idea used to give readers all the clues they need to solve the crime problem presented in the story. In this one, between chapters 15 and 16, there is a section where the author tells the reader that at that point they could have picked up on all the clues necessary to solve the mystery. I had the “who” (guilty party) but only some pieces of the “why”. Even so, I just wallowed in all this old fashioned goodness.
The story concerns a dead man found in a room with a door opening into a hotel corridor. The hotel attendant outside in the corridor didn’t see anyone enter the room during the time the murder must have been committed. That was bad enough for Inspector Queen and his son, Ellery, but what in the world did all the changes to the room and the corpse mean? Everything, every single thing in the room, was turned backwards. Solving this murder means the Queens have to touch on a lot of sensitive spots for the Kirk family with secrets being uncovered right and left.
The Chinese Orange Mystery was a lot of fun to read. Combine this book with a comfortable place to sit, a good drink to satisfy your thirst, a little snack to satisfy your appetite, some quiet time away from “life” and you have the makings of a relaxing indulgence that will have you feeling really good!
by Stephen L Rowland
A very enjoyable read based on the Ellery Queen series of books, some of the views expressed are those of the 1940’s and may be offensive. The plot will get your old grey cells working. I found it a enjoyable read
by Nick Keighley
Probably a book of its time. I didn’t like the detective or find him interesting. Nor did I find the mystery particularly compelling.
by ronk
As a confirmed Ellery Queen ‘nut’ of long standing. (I first read the books in my teens) I was very pleased to see that they were at last available in the Kindle store. This is a particularly fiendish example of the ‘locked room’ type of detective story. Not necessarily for lovers of ‘realistic’ detective fiction, but enjoyable as an example of the Golden Age of detective fiction.