A fantastic read. A classic locked room mystery featuring a classic detective from a legendary writing team. It'll keep you guessing.

I am a huge fan of traditional mysteries, where the puzzle is more important than the actual crime. Add in an eccentric and preferably amateur detective and I’m usually hooked. Not so here. This was my first Ellery Queen story but it could well be the last. I found the writing style infuriating, in prose and dialogue there was an abundance of broken sentences and far too many ellipsis as though neither the characters nor the writer(s) were capable to finishing a thought or a sentence.

The story itself is irritatingly gimmicky. All of the theatrical complications were frankly ridiculous and I found them less entertaining than infuriating. It may be considered one of the best locked-room mysteries but I almost put it down with only a few pages of exposition to go, simply because I couldn’t bring myself to care. The balance between complication and convincing puzzle is simply off. It wasn’t difficult to work out who the murderer was but the how and the why were horribly contrived. The constant references to the old, tired ideas of the exotic, esoteric East were deeply trying.

Ellery’s irascible Police Inspector father was a welcome foil to all the showboating and folderol (and I normally like this feature on my mysteries!) and his men offered most of the more believable deductions. At one point he bemoans his son’s unlikely theorising, declaring
“I give up. Go the whole hog. Go puzzlin’ your brains about Chinese oranges and Mexican tamales and alligator pears and Spanish onions and English muffins, for all I care! All I say is—can’t a man eat an orange without some crackpot like you reading a mystery into it?”


I can’t help but agree. I did however enjoy the interactions between father and son.

Ellery has always been the master of the “whodunnit” and this reprinting is no exception. The victim found all back to,front in a room all back to front, the only way to solve it must be back to front!

Rare stamp causes chaos - enter Ellery Queen, detective extraordinaire. A perfect example of a most stimulating and convoluted murder mystery from the Golden Age. We have the clues - in true 'fair play ' tradition - but can we solve the crime? An excellent read.

Ellery Queen (both the name of the detective and the pseudonym of the authors) mysteries are puzzles first, with very strict rules. I personally only like the very best books of this type, but they were enormously popular at one time, even the mediocre ones.

The first thing to know is to ignore psychology, plausibility and procedure. The murderer is found by logical clues, and nothing else. Everyone but the murderer can do all kinds of ridiculous things which need not be explained. However, everything the murderer does much be logically required by the crime. The murderer's motive must have been mentioned by the author in a clue, but it need not be convincing, and in fact in most of these the author takes pains to make everything but logic point away from the murderer.

Another important fact is the author can describe internal thoughts of the murderer without mentioning other thoughts. For example, if you read "A's thoughts turned aimlessly toward what would be served at dinner in an hour," you might assume that A could not have just murdered his lover in a fit of jealous rage. But the rules allow the author to give selective accounts of characters' thoughts.

Finally, you are not allowed to go outside the clues. Ellery Queen will insist on their being only one solution. That's not true in general, you could imagine all kinds of other solutions. But most of them would not be supported by explicit clues in the text that demonstrate means, motive and opportunity. Whether or not an assumption is supported by a character's personality or situation is irrelevant, there must be an explicit statement of a clue.

The best Ellery Queens don't rely as heavily on the artificiality of the rules as this book does. Moreover, there is interesting action, whereas in this one the rare interesting bits are unrelated to the plot. Finally, although the characters are never given depth or allowed to develop, they are particularly thin and frozen here.

If you love this genre of puzzle mysteries, and have read all the Agatha Christies, and the few good Ellery Queens, and the few classics by other authors; you may find time to try The Chinese Orange Mystery.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penzler Publishing for a digital galley of this novel.

Otto Penzler is reissuing mystery and detective fiction novels from the Golden Age of crime fiction through his American Mystery Classics series. I was glad to choose The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen (actually cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee). This one was originally published in 1934 and is a very good example of the "fair-play" idea used to give readers all the clues they need to solve the crime problem presented in the story. In this one, between chapters 15 and 16, there is a section where the author tells the reader that at that point they could have picked up on all the clues necessary to solve the mystery. I had the "who" (guilty party) but only some pieces of the "why". Even so, I just wallowed in all this old fashioned goodness.

The story concerns a dead man found in a room with a door opening into a hotel corridor. The hotel attendant outside in the corridor didn't see anyone enter the room during the time the murder must have been committed. That was bad enough for Inspector Queen and his son, Ellery, but what in the world did all the changes to the room and the corpse mean? Everything, every single thing in the room, was turned backwards. Solving this murder means the Queens have to touch on a lot of sensitive spots for the Kirk family with secrets being uncovered right and left.

The Chinese Orange Mystery was a lot of fun to read. Combine this book with a comfortable place to sit, a good drink to satisfy your thirst, a little snack to satisfy your appetite, some quiet time away from "life" and you have the makings of a relaxing indulgence that will have you feeling really good!

Voted by a panel of mystery writers as the 8th best locked room mystery, this novel was written in 1934. This is the first reprint of it in thirty years. I thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read it in exchange for a fair review. It begins as an ordinary looking little man enters the office of publisher and noted stamp collector Donald Kirk. Kirk is not in, but the man insists on waiting so is shown into a small waiting room. When Kirk, along with friend and amateur sleuth, Ellery Queen, arrive a couple of hours later they are shocked to find this unknown man beaten to death in the locked waiting room. But the biggest mystery is why everything in the room has been turned backwards. The pictures and bookcases are turned to face the walls and every the victims clothes have been removed and replaced backwards on his body. Ellery assists his father, Inspector Richard Queen, in investigating this baffling case. Why was everything turned backwards? What was the killer trying to communicate. The investigation delves into publishing, stamp collecting, China, Hebrew documents, art, and jewels as the Queens try to solve the case. One neat feature is that about three quarters of the way through the author stops to challenge the reader to solve the mystery. All of the necessary clues are there. Nothing is hidden. But I was not able to put the clues together to solve it. I would have rated this higher except for a slow start and the jaded language which made it hard to follow at times. But it was still an excellent mystery and well worth reading.

"The Chinese Orange Mystery" is a mystery set in New York City and was originally published in 1934. The mystery was a clue-based puzzle that can be solved based on the clues. I was able to narrow my suspects down much more quickly than the detective or his clever son, Ellery Queen. Ellery got started down an odd, wrong track at the start. There really wasn't a lot more to go on by the time the author asked the reader to guess whodunit than there was shortly after the murder. Still, it was entertaining to see the results of Ellery following up on every "backward" lead.

I was able to guess whodunit after we're given the vague details of the experiments that Ellery performed AFTER the author suggested that the reader guess at whodunit. However, I could not guess how or why. There was no sex. There was occasional use of bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting mystery.

The first name that comes to mind when I think of American Golden Age mystery authors is Ellery Queen.  In a stroke of brilliance, the cousins who wrote the novels decided to have their pen name match the name of their detective.  The introduction to this reprint of The Chinese Orange, offers readers a glimpse into the world of Queen’s creators and some fascinating background material.  Two items make the Ellery Queen novels unique. 1) All of the clues that are available to Ellery Queen are also available to the reader. 2) There is a point in the novel where the detective directly addresses the reader and challenges the reader to solve the puzzle.  Afterwards Ellery Queen provides the solution.


The Chinese Orange Mystery is a classic locked room puzzle with a bizarre twist.  When the body is discovered, not only are his clothes on backwards, but most of the furniture and decorations.  Odder still, two spears are used to keep the body straight. Ellery Queen, the brilliant amateur detective, and his father, the dedicated and hardworking inspector, seek not only whodunnit, how and why, but also the identity of the victim.  


The novel is a bit dated in some of the language, and the presentation of Chinese culture is according to the stereotypes of the time it was written.  Ellery Queen is often egotistical and pedantic, at times flaunting his superior knowledge. At its core, however, The Chinese Orange Mystery is a puzzle that is unique and memorable, a definite sign that American authors were able to hold their own during the Golden Age of Mystery.


4 / 5


I received a copy of The Chinese Orange Mystery from the publisher and Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.


— Crittermom

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By: Ellery Queen
Inspector Queen and his son, Ellery, are drawn into the most puzzling murder case of their careers. A stranger is found murdered in the waiting room of NYC's The Mandarin Press Publishers. The body and furniture, and accessories in the room are turned backwards. The man's clothing is donned backwards. Furniture is pulled out and rearranged facing the walls rather than the room. Everything points to either some bizarre message left by the murderer or is the work of an insane maniac. The NYC city police are on the case spearheaded by Inspector Queen.. Rare stamp collectors, precious stone collectors, and a Hebrew scholar are among the cast of suspects in this most dastardly crime. All the suspects harbor damning secrets and none are willing to divulge these secrets. It takes the logical genius of Ellery Queen to at last decipher the message of the backwards scene and discover the diabolical killer. A most satisfying puzzling mystery. A delight to read.

A body is found in a locked room, everything including his clothers have been turned backwards. Who is he? What is he doing there? Why was he murdered? Ellery Queen hunts for clues and struggles to find out whodunnit! Of course Ellery also challenges his reader to work out the mystery before he divulges the murderer's identity and reason for committing the crime.

Classic detective series, it's a pity all of the Ellery Queen murder series aren't in print around the world. British Library Crime readers would love this series.