EQMM 1951-12 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Newtonian egg

by Peter Godfrey

Remember Peter Godfrey’s perfectly wonderful riddle story, “The Lady and the Dragon” which won a special award in EQMM’s Fifth Annual Contest? If you read the story, you probably remember it: the last line was unforgettable.

In introducing “The Lady and the Dragon” we called it “a parcel of paradoxes… an almost unclassifiable story” Our comments set the author’s mind wording. Could he, consciously and deliberately, write a story that is absolutely unclassifiable, or that merits an entirely new classification? Well, Mr. Godfrey confesses that he did not succeed — at least, not on his first attempt; but in the process he conceived the idea of using a multiplicity of the different types of the detective story, mixing them well, and popping the result into what Mr. Godfrey calls “the testing oven at EQMM.”

So, here we have another prize-winning tale by Peter Godfrey, and for the life of him, the author doesn’t know how to classify his own story. It cannot be fully described as a whodunit, or a whydunit, or a howdunit — for the simple reason that the tale has in it solid elements of all three ’tec types. It is also an impossible-crime story, or to put it another way, a miracle problem. Similarly, it can be designated as a sealed-room story — in this instance, a sealed-egg; and from a completely different point of view it can be labeled a broken-alibi story. It even has, the author contends, attributes of the inverted detective story.

If Mr. Godfrey had in mind subtly persuading us to classify his story, he has failed. We pass. If pressed, however, we would forego all classifications and categories, and simply offer you what can be termed, without code or catalogue, an interesting story…

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