Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

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After spending half a lifetime collecting the detective short story, your Editor has come to the conclusion that there are fifty key books in the field. By key books I mean those books which are outstanding for any of three reasons: sheer quality of contents, historical significance and/or rarity of first edition.

Your Editor has gone further in his bibliographic analysis and divided the fifty books into seven “periods” Chronologically these major periods could be named: Pre-Poe; Poe and Pre-Doyle; Doyle Era; 20th Century, First Decade; 20th Century, Second Decade; 20th Century, Moderns; and 20th Century, Contemporaries. The last group takes in the fourth decade to date — from 1930 to the present.

The books in this Contemporary Period have not, of course, had the opportunity to withstand the acid test of time. But there can be no doubt that one of them — Carter Dickson’s [John Dickson Carps] THE DEPARTMENT OF QUEER COMPLAINTS, published in 1940 — will pass every test and remain one of the important books of modern detective short stories. The volume contains eleven tales of which the first seven concern Colonel March, head of the Scotland Yard Department whose curious name serves as the tide of the book.

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