The Player on the Other Side

Description

The game has begun... A playing card inscribed with the letter 'J' appears in Robert York's mail, and a day later he is dead. When another playing card shows up, this one for Emily York, all the police protection in New York can't save her. Ellery Queen knows he is up against a brilliant, twisted killer, one who makes a game of death. But with no clue to his identity, Ellery is in a race against time to stop this remorseless vendetta. A brilliant detective story from a classic master of the genre.

Ellery Queen is both a fictional detective and the pen name shared by his creators, Brooklyn-born cousins Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay. The character first appeared in a book that won a mystery-writing contest and was eventually published in 1928 as THE ROMAN HAT MYSTERY. The amateur detective character of Ellery Queen shared an apartment with and assisted his father, the NYPD's Inspector Queen. As well as dozens of Ellery Queen novels, the cousins wrote numerous radio scripts and short stories featuring their detective, and were the joint recipients of several EDGAR AWARDs from the Mystery Writers of America, including the 1960 GRAND MASTER AWARD. In their time Lee and Dannay were considered to be the foremost American writers of the Golden Age 'fair play' mystery, with Dannay said to have largely provided the plots and Lee most of the writing. The cousins also founded ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE in 1941, which is still considered one of the most influential crime fiction publications of all time. While Frederic Dannay outlived his cousin and co-author by 11 years, he retired from writing at the time of Lee's death.