The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen

This was first published in 1929.  It is the first of the Ellery Queen mysteries.

 A shady lawyer, Monte Field, is poisoned in the Roman Theater in New York City.  Inspector Richard Queen is called in, and invites his son, Ellery to assist.

There are a number of suspects, as Field is reputed to be a blackmailer. His body was found before the play ended, and a policeman was notified immediately.  He shut down the exits of the theater, and sent for reinforcements.

Before the theater patrons can leave, they are thoroughly searched.  It is then discovered that the victim's top hat is missing, which possibly contained incriminating documents.  The theater is searched, but the top hat remains missing.

There were a couple of things that seemed odd to me.  One was that the theater and the actors are intertwined with a wealthy family.  One of the actors is engaged to the wealthy family's daughter, and several of the other actors are friends of both the daughter and her brother.  Seemed odd that these relationships were accepted by the wealthy family.

And even though the daughter's purse is discovered with the victim, when she is asked to explain she says the victim followed her out during the intermission and propositioned her, and she must have dropped her purse.  Ellery accepts that, and eliminates her as a suspect just like that.

However, after quite a bit of investigating, there are still several possible suspects.  At the end, after a "Challenge to the Reader", Ellery identifies the murderer using a bit of logical deduction.

The book seemed to move a bit slowly, and Ellery seemed a little annoying to me. Inspector Queen seems to be overly impressed with Ellery, bringing him in to assist early on, without even attempting to solve the crime himself.  Ellery himself seems arrogant and smug.  On the upside, I'm sure it improved my vocabulary!

There were also a lot of comments that would not be allowed in this type of book today.  A person is described as monkey-like, another is discovered to have blood with a "black taint" and has a "strain of negroid blood in his veins".  There were a lot of these type of comments.

I had  heard of Ellery Queen for years, and have even read several Ellery Queen Magazines over the years, so I thought it was time to read the original.  I was a bit disappointed.  I'm going to read a couple more, hoping that Ellery becomes less annoying.


This is in my 2014 Vintage Mystery BINGO Challenge--Golden--N--Written by author with Pseudonym.
It is also part of my Mt. TBR Reading Challenge--bought December, 2013.