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 novella was among the first shorter fictional pieces to feature Ellery Queen. This period in the Ellery Queen canon signals a change in the type of story told, moving away from the intricate puzzle mystery format that 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. Both the "nationality title" and the "Challenge to the Reader" disappear at this point in the canon.
"The best of (Ellery Queen's) short stories belong to the early intensely ratiocinative period, and both The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1934) and The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (1940) are as absolutely fair and totally puzzling as the most passionate devotee of orthodoxy could wish. ... (Every) story in these books is composed with wonderful skill."
The "Dell 10¢ Book" series, of which this was #23, was a short-lived experiment by Dell Books in 1951. At 64 pages and a cover price of US10¢, this is a typical entry in the 36-title series. This novella has never again been published separately and is usually found contained in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (1940), a collection of shorter works.
This novella was included by John Dickson Carr in 1946 among the ten best mystery stories ever written.
Read more about this topic: The Lamp Of God
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)