Mystery Review: The Roman Hat Mystery is the first case for dilettante sleuth Ellery Queen, whose adventures are vaguely patterned after Sherlock Holmes. Queen, a young mystery writer and amateur detective works closely with his father, a senior police Inspector who serves as a brighter Watson to his son's Holmes. The father-son relationship is central to the story, but is strangely co-dependent and definitely odd. At least one of the authors must've suffered from a pathological lack of patriarchal approval. Here they investigate what's essentially an elaborate locked room mystery set in a Broadway theater. The mystery itself is overly complex but not impenetrable, centering on a missing top hat (the hat of the title). The characters are only moderately interesting (though not up to even Agatha Christie standards) and not overly developed. The Roman Hat Mystery is mainly a puzzle story with some clues hidden from the reader. The son's implausible involvement in the investigation (no police department would tolerate it) just has to be swallowed as well as his condescension and occasionally supercilious mannerisms. He wears a pince-nez, and seems vaguely like an American Peter Wimsey. Author and protagonist are one and the same here, though actually the authors were two Brooklyn cousins who jointly wrote numerous books from 1929 to 1971. "Ellery Queen" (the author), was also an anthologist and magazine editor and has been called "after Poe, the most important American of mystery fiction." Today, however, he's largely unknown and apparently hasn't aged well. The writing can be cloying and there's a measurable amount of cringe-inducing racism. The Roman Hat Mystery was my first Ellery Queen, and an adequate but not great start to the long running series. [3★]
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