It is peppered with some literary allusions, and the occasional Latin phrase (to point out how erudite the father & son are).
The book is written without a single swear word, in fact I would call it "polite" much of the time because it is not meant as a series of shocks, but a series of clues to the reader. Ellery Queen is the son, who for all practical purposes is not a detective, but a book lover, but father & son are unusually close, and Ellery does a great deal of the "detecting" in the team. But not here-this is a book with "class". Richard Queen (the father) is a member of the homicide squad-greatly respected by all his peers and superiors (there's a different idea-modern detective stories so often have the main characters butting up against forces that do not support them-so they become lone wolves). If you know how to pay attention, you can solve the mystery (but fair warning-it is far from obvious and I won't say if I was smart enough to figure it out :-). Quite a fun book, really-like a giant cerebral murder puzzle. Toward the end, the author has an aside to the reader, stating that now, at this point, we know as much as the detectives do-there will be no surprises thrown in at the end-and invites the reader to use their own deductive powers to solve the murder/puzzle. (Clues are everywhere but few red herrings). Clues and suspects are plentiful, but the author has (now looking back on it) been very clever in creating a straightforward mystery that the reader could solve along with them.
This is the "fun" kind of mystery-where it is laid out as a pure logic problem for the reader from beginning to end.
Being a lover of mysteries from that time, so far as I can tell, this is about as good as it gets. (This one was originally published in 1929). Loving mysteries, I have long intended to get to these books because they're a significant part of the American contributions during the classic mystery writing period. Wonderful "logic puzzle"-great listen, great fun!
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