 First US edition | |
| Author | Ellery Queen |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Ellery Queen mysteries |
| Genre | Mystery, whodunnit |
| Publisher | Stokes (US) Gollancz (UK) |
Publication date | 1937 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Halfway House |
| Followed by | The Devil To Pay |
The Door Between is a novel that was published in 1937 by Ellery Queen. It is a mystery novel primarily set in New York City, United States.
Karen Leith is a novelist whose fictional life and works bear a resemblance to Pearl S. Buck—she was raised in Japan and writes novels that are set there, but lives in Manhattan surrounded by Japanese customs, art and furnishings. She is engaged to marry world-famous cancer researcher Dr. John MacClure. One day, the doctor's daughter, Eva, finds Karen with her throat cut in the writer's Washington Square home. Eva herself has no motive to kill Karen, but the evidence she finds at the scene suggests—even in her own mind—that no one else could have done it. The investigation by Ellery Queen confronts this puzzle and also turns up startling information about a long-vanished relative of Karen Leith. Queen pierces the veil of circumstantial evidence and finds out not only the method of the crime but, most importantly, its motivation.
After ten popular mystery novels and the first of many movies, the character of Ellery Queen was at this point firmly established. This period in the Ellery Queen canon signals a change in the type of story told, moving away from the intricate puzzle mystery format which had been a hallmark of nine previous novels, each with a nationality in their title and a "Challenge to the Reader" immediately before the solution was revealed. Both the "nationality title" and the "Challenge to the Reader" have disappeared from the novels at this point. "(Ellery Queen) gave up the Challenge and the close analysis of clues, and made Ellery a less omniscient and more human figure, in search of a wider significance and more interesting characterization. ... (The) first ten books represent a peak point in the history of the detective story between the wars." [1]
Aside from the novelette "The Lamp of God" and the later novel The King Is Dead,The Door Between is probably as close as an Ellery Queen novel ever came to a classic "locked room" or "impossible crime" mystery, in which the apparent facts of the case seem to defy logic.[ citation needed ]
The book was mentioned by Satyajit Ray in his Feluda series novel Baksho Rahashya .
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder mysteries. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character, and these books were among the most popular American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. Under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, they also edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime. Dannay founded, and for many years edited, the crime fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961 onwards, Dannay and Lee commissioned other authors to write thrillers using the pseudonym Ellery Queen, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; some such novels were juvenile and were credited to Ellery Queen Jr. They also wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, which featured the detective Drury Lane. Several movies, radio shows, and television shows were based on their works.
The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction. The crime in question, typically murder, is committed in circumstances under which it appeared impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene, commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example the original literal "locked room": a murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.
Clayton Rawson was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a minor character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it."
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is a bi-monthly American digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction, and mystery fiction. Launched in fall 1941 by Mercury Press, EQMM is named after the fictitious author Ellery Queen, who wrote novels and short stories about a fictional detective named Ellery Queen. From 1993, EQMM changed its cover title to be Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, but the table of contents still retains the full name.
Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, an English crime writer and a cousin of actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson. She also wrote fiction and a 1940 autobiography, Three-a-Penny, as Anne Meredith.
The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Roman Hat Mystery is a novel that was written in 1929 by Ellery Queen. It is the first of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The French Powder Mystery is a novel that was written in 1930 by Ellery Queen. It is the second of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The Dutch Shoe Mystery is a novel which was written in 1931 by Ellery Queen. It is the third of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The Greek Coffin Mystery is a 1932 novel by Ellery Queen. It is the fourth of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The Egyptian Cross Mystery is a novel that was written in 1932 by Ellery Queen. It is the fifth of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The American Gun Mystery is a novel that was written in 1933 by Ellery Queen. It is the sixth of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The Siamese Twin Mystery is an English language American novel written in 1933 by Ellery Queen. It is the seventh of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The Chinese Orange Mystery is a novel that was written in 1934 by Ellery Queen. It is the eighth of the Ellery Queen mysteries.
The Spanish Cape Mystery is a novel that was written by Ellery Queen as the ninth book of the Ellery Queen mysteries. Published in April in hardcover by Frederick A. Stokes, it also appeared as a "complete, book-length novel" in the April 1935 issue of Redbook.
The Lamp of God is a novella by Ellery Queen that was originally published in the Detective Story Magazine in 1935. Later, it was collected in the short story collection The New Adventures of Ellery Queen in 1940. Finally, it was published as a standalone book by Dell Books in 1950.
Halfway House is a novel that was written in 1936 by Ellery Queen. It is a mystery novel primarily set in New Jersey, United States.
Calamity Town is a mystery novel by American writers Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay, published in 1942 under the pseudonym of Ellery Queen. It is set in the fictional town of Wrightsville, a place that figures in several later Queen books.
Rintaro Norizuki is a Japanese mystery/crime writer. He is the President of Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan and one of the representative writers of the new traditionalist movement in Japanese mystery writing. His works are deeply influenced by Ellery Queen and Ross Macdonald.
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