Literary Significance & Criticism
(See Ellery Queen.) After nine popular mystery novels and the first of many movies, the character of Ellery Queen was at this point firmly established. This period in the Ellery Queen canon signals a change in the type of story told, moving away from the intricate puzzle mystery format which had been a hallmark of the nine previous novels, each with a nationality in their title and a "Challenge to the Reader" immediately before the solution was revealed. "Halfway House" is the last novel wherein Queen issues his "Challenge," and it is the first without a "nationality title," although it is remarked in the foreword that the story could have been called The Swedish Match Mystery. "(Ellery Queen) gave up the Challenge and the close analysis of clues, and made Ellery a less omniscient and more human figure, in search of a wider significance and more interesting characterization. ... (The) first ten books represent a peak point in the history of the detective story between the wars."
Read more about this topic: Halfway House (novel)
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