The offices of foreign literature publisher and renowned stamp collector
Donald Kirk are often host to strange activities, but the most recent
occurrence---the murder of an unknown caller, found dead in an empty
waiting room--is unlike any that has come before. Nobody, it seems,
entered or exited the room, and yet the crime scene clearly has been
manipulated, leaving everything in the room turned backwards and upside
down. Stuck through the back of the corpse's shirt are two long
spears--and a tangerine is missing from the fruit bowl. Enter amateur
sleuth Ellery Queen, who arrives just in time to witness the discovery
of the body, only to be immediately drawn into a complex case in which
no clue is too minor or too glaring to warrant careful consideration.
Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, The Chinese Orange
Mystery is revered to this day for its challenging conceit and
inventive solution. The book is a "fair-play" mystery in which readers
have all the clues needed to solve the crime. In 1981, the novel was
selected as one of the top ten locked room mysteries of all time by a
panel of mystery-world luminaries that included Julian Symons, Edward D.
Hoch, Howard Haycraft, and Otto Penzler.