Face to Face

As the story opens on New Year's Eve as Ellery Queen, the famous writer, is on the final leg of an around the world trip when he happens to meet Harry Burke, a British private invesigator, who, it turns out, is returning to New York at the request of Inspector Queen, Ellery's father. During the plane trip Burke and Ellery discover they have much in common, so much so that when they land in New York Ellery offers Burke the Queen's guest room. The two weary travelers are quickly caught up in a murder investigation. Burke's client had been murdered shortly after he had completed his assignment and left her to catch his fight home. The victim was a retired singer who had a taste for puzzles and bad taste in men. Her husband was a philanderer who had married her for her money, a plan that had been threatened when Burke had found the victim's long lost niece. It would have been so very simple if the husband hadn't had an alibi. Inspector Queen and New York's finest were hard at work on the case but even with Burke's and Ellery's help the progress is slow. It is not until Spring that Ellery has his usual sudden flash of inspiration. This is a long running series of mystery novels written by a team of two writers under the pen name of Ellery Queen. The series had begun in early 1900's, and like Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, set each adventure in the (then) modern day while keeping the main characters the same age. Here lies a bit of a problem. Ellery who was quite at home in the 1920's and '30's just doesn't seem comfortable in the psychodelic sixties neither as an author or a character. Still fans of the character will overlook this for a chance to once again follow along as Ellery solves another one.

This is the one in which Manny Lee got over his nervous breakdown or depression or whatever it was and rejoined his partner Fred Dannay in a full length novel for the first time in a decade or so. Ghost writers had stood in for Lee in the novels between, including THE PLAYER ON THE OTHER SIDE and AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY. The jacket copy hinted at this reunion, but basically it was a trade secret, although Queen lost millions of fans by farming out his name to stick on dozens of cheap pocketbook mysteries that completely lacked the qualities people turned to Ellery Queen for in the first place: a good mystery, fair play, cracking good clues, dying messages, expert storytelling. Readers of Queen followed their hero through many changes, from silly fop to Hollywood heel to Wrightsville agonist to the 50s Ellery, a ladies man (sort of). Here he is in the 1960s, in swinging New York, and it's a little dated. What am I say, a lot dated! This makes Agatha Christie's often derided THIRD GIRL look like a document of eternal verity. It also features Ellery in one of his most touching love stories, his affection for the Scottish private eye, Harry Burke, whom our sleuth takes home with him the very first night they meet--New Year's, an auspicious day for young love. But soon the two men find their fondness for each other tested by the murder of Flory Guild, sort of a Helen Morgan/Judy Garland/Ethel Merman mix who is found slumped over her desk having scrawled the word "f a c e" onto her blotter. What does "face" mean? Ellery asks the coroner to probe into the crevices of "GeeGee"'s face, a grisly scene worthy of Cornwell. In the meantime two young ingenues, Roberta West and Lorette Spanier, meet and decide spontaneously to share a flat together. Harry becomes involved with Roberta, and this strains his relationship to Ellery, and when the wedding draws near Ellery vecomes increasingly out of sorts, complaining of "crotch trouble," which Harry pretends not to comprehend. FACE TO FACE has all the trademark twists of a Queen novel, including the case built up against the wrong person, whom Ellery must free with some further ratiocination. Even J J McCue is brought back from mothballs to okay an important part. However in the last analysis, FACE TO FACE needed perhaps one more twist. Its minimal cast of suspects, coupled with some less than scintillating writing by Lee, lowers my rank of this one by one star at least. Yet still, as the Jimmy Walker song Queen quotes in FACE TO FACE goes, one loves Ellery Queen in December just as one did back in May.