Literary Significance & Criticism
(See Ellery Queen.) After many popular mystery novels, a radio program and a number of movies, the character of Ellery Queen was at this point firmly established. The character of Djuna, the Queens' houseboy seen in earlier works, is not here present but the occasional character of their cleaning woman Mrs. Fabrikant is seen in the opening chapter set in the Queen's New York City apartment. An apparently tamed pet pigeon named Arsène Lupin is also seen in the first chapter but is not seen again. This novel is the final Ellery Queen novel set in Wrightsville, but only for a chapter. "There isn't too much mystery about whodunit -- it's more a question of howdidhedoit."
Read more about this topic: The King Is Dead (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“Plato—who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to “real” people and everyday events—knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
—John Vorster (1915–1983)