Okay, the first one of these I took on wasn’t an impossible crime, and the second wasn’t any good. So, a new collection, shorter stories — hence two this week — how did we get on?
What Are They About?
‘The Three Widows’ concerns the apparently impossible poisoning of a step-matriarch who stands in the way of her two step-daughters accessing their dead father’s fortune (“Penelope, to whom money was nothing, and Lyra, to whom money was everything, consequently each required large amounts of it.”). The thankfully neat problem is summed up by Ellery with a delightful adroitness:
“You’ve bought your own food. You’ve done your own cooking in this room and you’ve eaten here alone. … Further, you tell me you’ve purchased new dishes, have kept them here, and you and you alone have been handling them. … How then was the poison administered?”
I used to lap these up in my teens. Been a very long time since I read any of their short stories but you certainly have me interested now! Do you have that Pan edition? it’s lovely 🙂
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These two alone were enjoyable enough that I might even check out the rest of the collection 🙂
I do indeed have the edition, and it’s beautiful. Mind you, I love the look of this one even more…maybe if it’s a good ‘un I might try and find one of those.
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Ahhhh – that’s the one I’VE got! Nyyyaaahhhh!
So you like Queen as long as he’s 3 – 5 pages long. Well, it’s a start . . .
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We all start somewhere; you enjoyed parts of The Night of the Wolf, remember. There’s hope for both of us.
I feel we’ve each learned something about us by this comparison, I’m just not sure what it is.
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I’ve learned that you like to look for odd things in the weirdest places . . . . you have learned that I’m taller than you ever imagined me to be.
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…y-yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.
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So, what will be the story/stories for next week?
Good to hear that you enjoyed these a bit more. I’d say that something you commented last week – that EQ create a “too tight” impossibility – is actually true for these ones as well. Or at least for “The Witch”. The situation there is so impossible that it certainly only leaves one possible culprit.
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I completely agree, but at least in doing so, as I said, the situation is resolved quickly. I would have enjoyed every moment of ‘The Dauphin’s Doll’ if the ending had been in any way as clever as that much investment requires; here, there’s less of a payoff, but also less of an anticipation. I guess it’s about balance: does the solution warrant the setup? Here the solution is simple, so a simple setup is perfect.
Next week, er, I think it’s ‘The Black Ledger’ and if there’s not much to say I can add in ‘Object Lesson’ from QED, I believe.
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I have a huge love for TTW for exactly the reasons you list.There is no complex and painful Queenian writing to deal with and instead you’re treated to pure puzzle with a fun setup and a enjoyable shock ending.It is a very slight novel in miniature with its features and that makes the story my favorite Queen story so far.
Haven’t read Double Your Money,but I think I will soon.
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Yeah, I am encouraged by these two. Onwards and hopefully not downwards, eh?
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Hallelujah for Queen stories with a word count! I need to check when I get home (as I have this paper back) but I believe there area few more impossibles in this collection.
And in terms of good impossible poisonings (yes Red Widow wins them all in my experience so far) I would pose Chinese Gold Murders by van Gulik as one I always loved. Although the solution to the real life impossible poisoning that the story was based on in a way has a better solution!
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I seem to remember there being possibly more EQ short impossibilities than Adey claimed — in fact, Christian’s posts would be the obvious place to go for that information. But, hey, I’m happy wherever it comes from!
I read a Van Gulik, I think it was The Chinese Maze Murders. Stands to reason he’d have some good trick in his books somewhere, now I just have to work up the enthusiasm to read a second one by him…!
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I think you would like Chinese Gold, it’s got a lot going for it, not to mention multiple impossibilities.
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The main impossibility here is “Snowball in July”, but that’s been anthologised here, there and everywhere so maybe that’s why J.J. is skipping it? There’s also “Diamonds in Paradise”, but the impossibility is overshadowed by the dying message (which is, admittedly, not bad at all).
And then there’s “E = Murder”… I can almost imagine seeing J.J.’s head spinning so wildly it would fall off his shoulders, so he should probably skip it.
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Come to think of it, the latter two are probably not from QBI. Sorry for the confusion. 🙂
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Who’s skipping anything? 🙂 I’m going chronologically, on information received. My list is:
1. The Dead Cat (1946)
2. The Dauphin’s Doll (1948)
3. The Three Widows (1950)
4. Double Your Money (1951)
5. The Black Ledger (1952)
6. Object Lesson (1955)
7. Snowball in July (1956)
8. E = Murder (1960)
However, it turns out that ‘Diamonds in Paradise’ is from 1954 and so would be in the next post if that’s a twofer. So if it is then I’ll do that instead of ‘Object Lesson’ and I’ll just have to fit those other three on here at some other time… Sound like a plan?
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If not a plan, then at least a functioning replica of one.
I like what you’re saving for last. 🙂
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I’m glad someone does…given my track record, I may not 🙂
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If Snowball in July and E = Murder are the final two, you’re saving the best and the worst for last!
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Snowball in July was the one I was thinking of.
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Suddenly at His Residence features two excellent impossible poisonings. Scratching my head to think of others.
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So here’s a thing I just realised: I don’t consider the murder of Sir Richard in Suddenly at His Residence to be an impossible poisoning. I mean, sure, he is poisoned and it is an impossible crime, but the impossibility is to do with access rather than poison per se: were he found stabbed, the problem would be exactly the same — the problem is how anyone got in without leaving footprints, and nothing do to with the poison itself, in my head.
Is that…weird?
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That’s a fair point to make. I suppose that the poisoning in John Dickson Carr’s The Burning Court would be similar. Here are a few other thoughts:
Till Death Do Us Part – I don’t know why I didn’t think of this poisoning immediately. I guess you could make the same argument though that the poisoning itself isn’t impossible.
Seeing is Believing – There is a poisoning that could be thought of as impossible, although I won’t even bother analyzing it because it is fairly weak.
Below Suspicion – This story involves a poisoning that does qualify as impossible. I won’t go into detail since I think you haven’t read this one.
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This is an interesting distinction that I hadn’t thought of before. Poisonings that are in a locked room, and ‘impossible’ poisonings. Chinese Gold Murders counts as there is no way that the poison could have been administered and that’s the focus. A subversion of this I just thought of is in the Foreign Bodies collection the short story Venom of the Tarantula by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, which features a character who is able to somehow keep ingesting a hallucinogenic drug even though everything he does is watched.
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Yeah, ‘The Venom of the Tarantula’ is an impossible poisoning, but it’s a terrible one — just a rehashed ‘Purloined Letter’ or Roman Hat Mystery (“We’ve looked absolutely everywhere!!!“). CGM sounds like it might be promising, however; I’ll slowly overcome my aversion to Van Gulik and check that out in, like, 2021 or something.
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Below Suspicion is one I haven’t read, yes, though I do now own three copies… Goddamn, my TBR is a nightmare. I’ll be sure to try and keep this in mind for when I do eventually get to it…but, if I foreget, can someone please remind me? 🙂
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I will vouch for Below Suspicion as being quite good. Not great, but good. Slide it up that pile.
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The pile is chronological. The only sliding done there is by Jerry O’Connell and John Rhys Davies.
Oh, wait, that was parallel dimensions, wasn’t it? Or something? Anyway, welcome to the way my brain works: outdated 90s references a speciality.
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I guess a device like a locked room or missing footprints won’t mesh as easily with poison as a weapon, because with poison, the presence of the murderer is not necessary for the victim to die. The impossibility will usually arise from something else… “nobody went near that pitcher between the time X took a harmless drink from it and the time Y took a fatal one,” something like that.
If you’re looking for more impossible-poisoning stories, Edward D. Hoch wrote several in the Dr. Sam Hawthorne series. All titles start with “The Problem of…”
The Boston Common
The Courthouse Gargoyle (both in More Things Impossible)
The Sealed Bottle
The Dying Patient (in Nothing is Impossible)
The Poisoned Pool (in All But Impossible)
And there is one Carr impossible poisoning that nobody’s mentioned in this thread… should I say which one it is?
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Ah, yes, Hoch. Dammit, one of these days…
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Hey, instead of reading MacDonald and Keeler and whathaveyou, just get yourself a Hoch collection and get started! 🙂
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He did write some really good impossible-crime stories. Closer in length to The Dauphin’s Doll than to The Three Widows, generally, but you won’t find the writing style a slog.
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Is that Carr impossible poisoning Death in Five Boxes?
I remember The Problem of th Emperors Mushrooms by James Yaffe as being a particularly enjoyable impossible poisoning tale.
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Five Boxes is a very good impossible poisoning…but it’s totally not fairly told; maybe the key detail would be considered implicitly obvious at the time, I dunno, but there’s a very specific point where it could have been mentioned just for the sake of clarity and completeness and…nup, nothing. And it would be a brilliant poisoning if proper clewing were observed.
‘Emperor’s Mushrooms’ is…fine, but, well my thoughts on it can be found here…
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Interesting… (The rest of this comment may partly spoil Death in Five Boxes, even though I’m going to be as vague as possible, and should be skipped by those who haven’t read it.)
I thought the impossible-poisoning puzzle was completely fair, but perhaps that was because I knew more about… a certain field of activity… than most people would. I suspect you’re right that that key detail would have been more obvious to a reader in 1938 than more recently.
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Certainly the, uh, poison delivery system is not explicitly mentioned, shall we say. Maybe people knew it was there, maybe trying to do what is done without it present would never occur to anyone and so it gets by on implication alone…but it challenges the fairness for its lack of mention, which is about the only blight on that superbly clever book.
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Yes, there are lots of great things about it besides the impossibility.
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Yep, DiFB is the one I had in mind.
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“Beyond Carr’s The Red Widow Murders (1935) has there actually been a brilliant deployment of the poison in an impossible crime story?”
This comment seems to have garnered more reaction than the review of Ellery Queen per se. 😊 I suppose my first reaction, unlike some of the other bloggers/ commenters, would be that I might not use ‘brilliant’ in relation to “Red Widow Murders”? I personally didn’t enjoy it very much.
Now that I’ve vented – am I right in thinking that “Reader is Warned” featured a poisoning? I haven’t read it, but I seem to recall a review mentioning the use of poison? In any case, I’m quite sure Carr would have written about impossible poisonings more than once.
I agree with Ben that “Below Suspicion” is worth reading – I purchased a copy in response to his review, and enjoyed reading it. 😊
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The deaths in The Reader is Warned are all committed in the same way as far as I remember, but none of them are poisonings. Precisely how it’s done would be spoilers, though…
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