Customer Reviews

The Dragon's Teeth

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What I like best about the Ellery Queen novels and short stories is the sense of fun with which they are infused. Here we have the usual tangle of contested unfair wills, dubious identities, attacks on a lovely lady who is then accused of murder herself, and all the while Ellery's keeping one step ahead of them all.

Now you can hear one of the goofiest of them all for yourself on the Audio Partners audiotape edition of "The Dragon's Teeth" (61197), a complete reading by actor Blain Fairman, whose voice nicely matches the lightweight tone of the text. There are six cassettes with a running time of 8 hours, 14 minutes. I will not go into the plot, because most mystery fans want to come in fresh, but I have to explain that the title refers to the myth of Cadmus sowing the teeth of the dragon to raise fighting men. Since an important character is named Cadmus Cole, Ellery draws the parallel between the situations; but truth to tell, it is a weak one and plays no part in the solution. I thought I had pinpointed the real murder halfway through, but I was wrong! Well, that's what makes books like this one so much fun.

Ellery Queen's early period, say 1929 thru 1935, introduced Ellery in such stories as The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Egyptian Cross Mystery, The Siamese Twin Mystery, and The Spanish Cape Mystery. This younger Ellery is perhaps overly intellectual, but his solutions to these eccentric crimes are simply dazzling.

The Dragon's Teeth (1939) dates from a transition period, roughly 1936 thru 1939, in which we readers frequently encounter more humor as well as some romance (often humorously cast). Also, reclusive, eccentric millionaires have a tendency to appear.

In The Dragon's Teeth Ellery's has established a detective agency (that's right, Ellery has gone commercial). His partner, humorously named Beau Rummell, complicates matters by becoming romantically entangled with an attractive, young murder suspect. The mystery itself centers around a Howard Hughes-like millionaire hidden away for twenty years at sea on his yacht. Despite the light-hearted humor, The Dragon's Teeth is first and foremost a mystery puzzle and won't disappoint Ellery's fans.

The Dragon's Teeth (1939) is not hard to find. I have two paperback editions. The older is a somewhat yellowed, 1971 reprint by Signet Book. My newer copy is a 1980 printing, a Signet Double Mystery containing both The Dragon's Teeth and Calamity Town (1942).

If you enjoy this particular tale, you will probably also like other Ellery mysteries from the same period.

In Halfway House (1936) one of Ellery's old college chums, now a struggling lawyer, becomes enamored with the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

Conversely, a friend of Ellery's in The Devil to Pay (1937) is now the suspect; he is in love with the daughter of yet another suspect. An unethical financier is murdered with an Italian dueling sword of the seventeenth century.

And unexpectedly, Ellery himself develops a romantic interest in a popular Hollywood gossip columnist in The Four of Hearts (1938). Ellery encounters an aging, mean-spirited millionaire living on an isolated ridge in the desert outside Los Angeles.