Talk Back

[edting]

38. The Vanishing Corpse by Ellery Queen

I couldn’t find this book listed on any of the EQ fan sites. Then I discovered later that it is usually known as “Ellery Queen, Master Detective.” (By the way, this re-naming issue clears up a lot of confusion I’ve had over the titles of these books. For a while I thought there were more than 95 of them.)

It’s a decent locked room mystery, but the subplot about how he meets his future secretary Nikki Porter is more interesting.

I caught a continuity error. He “meets” Nikki in this book (1941). In 1943, he “meets” her again in “There Was An Old Woman” (review is somewhere below.) What’s more, “There Was An Old Woman” is itself sometimes published under “The Quick And The Dead.” And, “Nikki Porter” in that book is actually Sheila Potts, one of the suspects in the case in “Woman”! (Ellery gives her the “Nikki Porter” pseudonym at the end of the book.) Are we confused yet?

Revised total: 32/95 (34%) read.

[jeffp]

[edting]

Jeff:

No hurry. I might hit a "slow patch" of reading in the next few weeks anyway.

Thanks for returning the books!

-Ed

[shaw]

Doug's mature.
He's mature not.
He's mature.
He's mature not...

[jeffp]