The Tragedy of Y: A Drury Lane Mystery

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. 1932. Reprint. Hardcover. [a lovely copy with no significant wear, would be Fine but for a couple of very slightly scrunched lower page corners and a one-time owner's name plus date & place of purchase and brief comment on front endpaper, just below which is a rubber-stamped name of a previous owner; the jacket is bright and attractive, showing very slight edgewear and a little ink-smudging on the front flap]. The second book in this tetralogy of mystery novels set in New York, featuring Drury Lane, "famous actor and criminal investigator, who, after retiring from the stage, lived in medieval splendor in his 'ancient' caste on the Hudson, and worked out his own theories of crime detection." This one concerns the Hatter family -- the "mad Hatters" -- whose "home on Washington Square came to be as famous in New York as the Wendell house or the home of Hetty Green. Then suddenly, just as the Hatter legends began to abate, there started a series of sinister attempts on the lives of members of the doomed family and concurrent publicity that spattered their names across the front pages of every newspaper." Enter Drury Lane, to solve the case. Although it wasn't yet publicly known that "Barnaby Ross" and "Ellery Queen" were one and the same author (two cousins from Brooklyn), attentive readers would have picked up on the fact that "Ross" employed the same "Challenge to the Reader" narrative device as "Queen" used in his early novels, that of presenting readers with all the known facts necessary for them to solve the mysteries themselves in advance of the book's protagonist. Reportedly, Dannay and Lee had some fun with their dual-dual pseudonyms at the time these books came out, appearing in a series of public debates in which Dannay impersonated "Ross" and Lee portrayed "Queen," both wearing masks to preserve their anonymity. (Although I've not seen it stated anywhere, it's possible that the character of Drury Lane and his "castle" may have been inspired by the actor William Gillette (1853-1937), famous for his stage portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, who constructed and lived in his retirement just such a dwelling, located on the Connecticut River.) Some years later, after the "Ross"/"Queen" masquerade was revealed, the four books in this group were reprinted under Queen's name; jacketed copies of the original "Ross" versions (even the G&D reprints) are exceedingly scarce. (The publisher of the first editions was the Viking Press, perhaps a calculated choice to further distance "Ross" from "Queen," who was published at that time by the Frederick A. Stokes Company.) NOTE that although I've dated this book as 1932 (the date that appears on the title page), that seems to have been a carry-over from the original Viking edition; this particular printing likely dates from the mid-1930s. .