The Tragedy of X: A Drury Lane Mystery

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Very Good+ in Good+ dj. 1932. Reprint. Hardcover. [nice copy with no significant wear but a slightly weak front hinge, very slight bump to upper rear corner, one-time owner's name plus date & place of purchase and brief comment on front endpaper, just below a previous owner's signature dated 1941; the jacket is nice-looking, but has a bit of surface wear and has been rather extensively tape-reinforced on the verso, with a few small bits of amateur paper "restoration" and a small amount of black-ink "touch-up" (still looks great in new mylar)]. The opening installment 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." 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. .