The Ellery Queen TV show got me interested, and though the character in the TV show and the book were not quite the same, I soon devoured the whole series – haunting libraries all over the area to find lesser known titles.

But after that first passionate year or two of reading, I haven’t actually looked at any of the Ellery Queen books since.  I had a vague memory of a very old-fashioned clue-based series, and maybe I was afraid that they wouldn’t stand up to my memory.  But recently I decided to go back and read them again, so I picked up one of the first Ellery Queen’s I had ever read – The Chinese Orange Mystery.

I was not disappointed.

Sure, the style was a little old-fashioned, an it was a little slow to get moving, but it was fun, and I was drawn once again to the great relationshop between the effete, bookish Ellery and his no nonsense father, Inspector Queen.  That relationship is the heart of this series and I have to say that Inspector Queen has a habit of stealing the show (especially when Ellery gets a little annoyingly coy about his conclusions.)

In The Chinese Orange Mystery, an strange little man no one can identify is murdered while waiting to see a wealthy publisher.  Everything in the room, from the man’s clothing to the furniture, has been carefully turned backwards.  Why?  This story drags a little as Queen grasps at straws, trying to find connectins between backwards elements of any sort.  Red Herrings pop up and go away, but soon Ellery and his father start to dig up all sorts of tangles in the relationships among the publisher’s friends and family.

If you are interested in classic mystery, this is the stellar example of the early Ellery Queen stories.