THE TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

paper 1-885941-46-6 Ever since Manfred B. Lee, half of the writing team known pseudonymously as Ellery Queen, died in 1971, there’s been only one new story about the most durable American detective of the Golden Age—a brief puzzle-tale ghostwritten in 1975 by Edward D. Hoch. With the death in 1982 of Lee’s cousin and collaborator Frederic Dannay, it seemed likely that Queen’s silence would be permanent. But now a thorough vacuuming of the Queen vaults has disclosed not only six stories—ranging from “Terror Town,” a non-series whydunit adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents back in the —50s but omitted from Queen’s own collections, to the Hoch entry, “The Reindeer Clue,” included for the sake of completeness—but a prize of sorts, a sketch for an unwritten final novel, The Tragedy of Errors. The 40-page scene-by-scene outline by Dannay sketches a story whose central situation—the murder of an aging Hollywood star, presumably by the dry-eyed husband who expected to inherit her fortune—hovers between Sunset Boulevard and Queen’s own Face to Face (1967). Though far from top-drawer Queen, it offers a fascinating look into the cousins’ workshop, revealing just how much pleasure there is in the exuberant trickiness of their mystery-mongering An added collection of 22 tributes from fellow-authors and -editors is more notable for warmth than insight. But Queen fans will want this posthumous collection regardless.