Interlude in Which the Reader’s Attention Is Respectfully Requested

Interlude in Which the Reader’s Attention Is Respectfully Requested

    The current vogue in detective literature is all for the practice of placing the reader in the position of chief sleuth. I have prevailed upon Mr. Ellery Queen to permit at this point in The Roman Hat Mystery the interpolation of a challenge to the reader.... “Who killed Monte Field?” “How was the murder accomplished?” ... Mr. Queen agrees with me that the alert student of mystery tales, now being in possession of all the pertinent facts, should at this stage of the story have reached definite conclusions on the questions propounded. The solution—or enough of it to point unerringly to the guilty character—may be reached by a series of logical deductions and psychological observations.... In closing my last personal appearance in the tale let me admonish the reader with a variation of the phrase Caveat Emptor: “Let the reader beware!”
    J. J. McC.

Part Four

    “The perfect criminal is a superman. He must be meticulous in his technique: unseen, unseeable, a Lone Wolf. He must have neither friends nor dependents. He must be careful to a fault, quick, of brain, hand and foot.... But these are nothing. There have been such men.... On the other hand, he must be a favored child of Fate—for circumstances over which he cannot have the remotest control must never contrive his downfall. This, I think, is more difficult to achieve.... But the last is most difficult of all. He must never repeat his crime, his weapon or his motive! ... In all my twoscore years as an official of the American police I have not once encountered the perfect criminal nor investigated the perfect crime.”
    —From American Crime and Methods of Detection,
    By Richard Queen.