THE BACKWARD REVIEWER
William F. Deeck


ELLERY QUEEN – The Siamese Twin Mystery. Ellery Queen #7. Frederick A. Stokes, hardcover, 1933. Pocket #109, paperback, 1941. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and paperback.

   Ellery Queen’s seventh novel, and, in my opinion, by far the weakest to this point in his career. Ellery and his father, Inspector Richard, are returning from a vacation in Canada. Ellery takes a short cut, and the two find themselves cut off by a raging (is there any other kind?) forest fire.

   The only refuge is the top of Arrow Mountain, where they come to the home of Dr. John Xavier, an eminent and retired surgeon, who has with him members of his family and other characters who act in the prescribed guilty manner before there is anything really to be guilty about.

   As the fire races toward the mountaintop, Dr Xavier is murdered while playing solitaire and is found clutching half of a playing card in his hand — the six of spades. Later, another character is murdered, and in his hand is half of the knave of diamonds. Ellery’s interpretation of these clues are, in the first instance, weak and in the second rather tortuous, but it’s fun watching him at work.

   This is the first Queen novel that does not have the usual “challenge to the reader.” Queen explains this in The Chinese Orange Mystery, without naming the novel missing the challenge, as merely an oversight, but since Ellery himself does not know who did it until the very end of The Siamese Twin Mystery — and the murderer is revealed through psychological trickery rather than ratiocination — any challenge to the reader would have been ludicrous.

   Some oddities in the novel: the forest fire knocks out the telephone line, but the electricity supply never falters. Even while the house itself is burning, the light bulb in the basement, though “feeble,” continues working. There is never any mention of a generator on the premises, nor is it likely, with the house at the top of a mountain very difficult of access, that the electrical wires would be underground.

   The Queens put the deck of cards from Xavier’s solitaire game in the house’s safe, but Ellery keeps the actual evidence, the six of spades, and describes the safe as a “sort of baited trap.” Yet when the murderer seems to try to get into the safe, both Ellery and his father are surprised.

   Why would the murderer, they wonder, try to get the evidence from the safe when the safe didn’t contain the evidence? It does not occur to them that perhaps they had neglected to tell the murderer the safe did not contain the evidence. Besides, the murderer’s attempt is an essential device to keep the plot going, not to help the reader solve the crime.

   Also, when the fire reaches the house and sets it afire, Ellery has all the characters go to the basement. Maybe this is the safest place to be when a two-story house is burning down above you and the ceiling of the basement, since we are not told otherwise, is wood, but it does seem a strange refuge.

   Is The Siamese Twin Mystery worth reading despite its problems? Any Queen is worth reading, however weak it might be.

— Reprinted from CADS 3 (April 1986) (slightly revised). Email Geoff Bradley for subscription information.