''The Egyptian Cross Mystery'' is a

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

that was written in 1932 by

Ellery Queen Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...

. It is the fifth of the

mysteries.

Plot summary

A schoolmaster in a tiny town in West Virginia is found on Christmas morning beheaded and crucified to a signpost in such a way that his body seems to form the letter "T". The letter "T" is scrawled in blood on the dead man's door. Ellery Queen is on the scene and notes that the letter "T" is also the shape of a "tau cross", or Egyptian cross; this seems to lead to a nearby bearded prophet whose invented religion mixes nudism and Egyptology. The prophet's business manager is missing and suspected of the murder. Ellery cannot solve the crime with the little information he has, but six months later in Long Island, New York, a neighbour of one of his university professors is found headless and crucified to a totem pole in the same way, in the new neighbourhood of the Egyptian prophet and his followers. This corpse is clutching a red piece from a game of

checkers Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; British English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers ...

. The third victim is a millionaire yachtsman, similarly crucified. Many events turn on the families of the victims and their interaction with the Egyptian nudists, the game of checkers and the smoking of unusually-carved pipes, but the key clue that leads Ellery to the solution is a bottle of iodine that enables him to go on a cross-country chase and hunt down the murderer.

Literary significance & criticism

(See

.) The character of Ellery Queen was probably suggested by the novels featuring detective

Philo Vance Philo Vance is a fictional amateur detective originally featured in 12 crime novels by S. S. Van Dine in the 1920s and 1930s. During that time, Vance was immensely popular in books, films, and radio. He was portrayed as a stylish—even foppish— ...

S.S. Van Dine S. S. Van Dine (also styled S.S. Van Dine) is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 – April 11, 1939) when he wrote detective novels. Wright was active in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-Worl ...

, which were very popular at the time. This novel was the fifth in a long series of novels featuring Ellery Queen, the first nine containing a nationality in the title. It contains some similarity to the subsequent ''

The Three Coffins ''The Hollow Man'' (''The Three Coffins'' in the USA) is a 1935 locked room mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr, featuring his recurring investigator Gideon Fell. It contains in chapter 17 the often-reprinted "locked room ...

'' by

John Dickson Carr John Dickson Carr (November 30, 1906 – February 27, 1977) was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn. He lived in England for a number of years, and is ...

(1935) in that both are concerned with three brothers from the same general area of the world who are involved in a murder plot based on long-ago events. The introduction to this novel contained a detail which is now not considered part of the Ellery Queen

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

. The introduction is written as by the anonymous "J.J. McC.", a friend of the Queens. Other details of the lives of the fictional Queen family contained in earlier introductions have now disappeared and are never mentioned again; the introductory device of "J.J. McC." lasts only through the tenth novel, ''Halfway House'', then vanishes (though J.J. appears onstage in ''Face to Face'' in 1967). This novel is the first to feature Ellery Queen investigating a murder alone, outside

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and without the assistance of his father, Inspector Richard Queen of the Homicide Squad. The novel, and the other "nationality" mysteries, had the unusual feature of a "Challenge to the Reader" just before the ending is revealed—the novel breaks the

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

and speaks directly to the reader. "It has been my custom to challenge the reader's wits at such point in my novels at which the reader is in possession of all facts necessary to a correct solution of the crime or crimes. ''The Egyptian Cross Mystery'' is no exception: by the exercise of strict logic and deductions from given data, you should now be able, not merely to guess, but to prove the identity of the culprit."

External links

"Ellery Queen ''is'' the American detective story."
by Tony Hays (The Rap Sheet). {{DEFAULTSORT:Egyptian Cross Mystery, The 1932 American novels Novels by Ellery Queen Novels set in West Virginia Frederick A. Stokes Company books