''The Greek Coffin Mystery'' is a 1932 novel 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 fourth of the

mysteries.

Plot summary

After the death of an elderly Greek man who is an internationally famous art dealer and collector, his attorney discovers that his will is missing and notifies the district attorney. When Inspector Richard Queen of the

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 ...

Police Force's Homicide Squad and his amateur detective son Ellery are called in, Ellery narrows down the possible location of the will to a single location: the dead man's coffin. When it is exhumed, however, it contains no will but the surprising addition of a strangled ex-convict. Ellery performs an extended piece of deduction in public early on in the novel that concerns a number of used teacups, and is proved wrong. Stung by this embarrassing error, he keeps his deductions to himself for the remainder of the case. Subsequent clues involve color-blindness, a shred of the burned will, two copies of a

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

painting differing only in skin tone, a thousand-dollar bill, a dead art dealer whose office door was either open or closed and, most importantly, an infinitesimal typing error. Ellery and his father lay a trap, unmasking the murderer— whose guilt will probably have been entirely unsuspected by most readers.

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 fourth in a long series of novels featuring Ellery Queen, the first nine containing a nationality in the title. The introduction to this novel contained some details which are 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 ...

. For instance, the introduction is written as by the anonymous "J.J. McC.", a friend of the Queens, speaks of the Queens having retired to Italy, and that the names of both Ellery Queen and his father are pseudonyms—none of these circumstances survived for long. The names of the chapters, each a single word, contain an

acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...

which spells out "The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen". This novel begins a tradition in the series of Ellery Queen novels. Because Ellery is publicly embarrassed by his initial error in deduction with respect to the teacups, he will never reveal any of his thoughts about this or any other murder until he is ready to solve it. 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. "Ungentle reader, you now have in your possession all the facts pertinent to the only correct solution of the ... problem. ... I say with all good will and a fierce humility: ''Garde à vous'', and a pox on headache!" A contemporary reviewer,

Will Cuppy William Jacob Cuppy (August 23, 1884 – September 19, 1949) was an American humorist and literary critic, known for his satirical books about nature and historical figures. Early life Cuppy was born in Auburn, Indiana. He was named "Will" i ...

of the ''Herald Tribune Books'', said "''The Greek Coffin Mystery'' is a lively and well-constructed yarn containing unusual setting, ingenuity of plot, a surprise solution and legitimate use of the analytico-deductive method." (Quoted in the first paperback edition,

Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing in ...

#179, in 1942.)

External links

"Ellery Queen ''is'' the American detective story."The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932)
"Reading Ellery Queen" (blog) {{DEFAULTSORT:Greek Coffin Mystery, The 1932 American novels Novels by Ellery Queen Novels set in New York City Frederick A. Stokes Company books