![]() ![]() Read moreįirst in the Inspector Queen series of mysteries featuring Inspector Richard Queen and his bookwormish geeky son Ellery, the Roman Hat mystery was set in the late 1920s or early 1930s. The continuous discussion in the book about the difficulty of solving such a mysterious crime hides the fact that answer to "who was the murderer" is fairly obvious and the most important clue would have been found within hours of the murder had the police been even minimally competent.In addition it is hard, when reading this first Ellery Queen novel, to shake off the impressions left by reading Ellery Queens written half a century later and even more, it is almost impossible not to see Jim Hutton in the mind's eye whenever Ellery comes into a room. The prejudices and attitudes of the time of its initial publication (1929) are obvious with incidents of casual gender, class, education and race biases cropping up throughout. ![]() The character of Ellery is clearly inspired by S. ![]() Ellery Queen, detective novel writer and son of Inspector Richard Queen, is the co-protagonist at the center of the early Ellery Queen books. This is one of those books that are so firmly set in the time of their publication that it is difficult to rate them now on their own merits independent of their placement in the development of their genre. ![]()
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