The Roman Hat Mystery
The Roman Hat Mystery, published in 1929, is the novel that introduced Ellery Queen, the amateur detective who would become one of the most popular sleuths of the golden age of crime fiction. A man is found poisoned in a crowded New York theatre during a performance, and the one puzzle that will not resolve is the whereabouts of the dead man’s missing top hat. Ellery Queen, working alongside his father, Inspector Richard Queen of the police, treats the case as a pure problem in deduction, laying every clue before the reader before the solution is revealed. It is a classic closed-circle mystery, fair, ingenious, and coolly logical. This free PDF and EPUB offers the complete first Ellery Queen novel.
Listen to The Roman Hat Mystery Audiobook Free
Listen to The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen free online. The full audiobook (10 hr 35 min, 23 chapters, read by Mark Nelson) streams free on this page.
The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) is a public domain work.
| # | Chapter | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foreword | 15:24 | |
| 2 | Chapter 1 - In Which Are Introduced a Theater-Audience and a Corpse | 17:03 | |
| 3 | Chapter 2 - In Which One Queen Works and Another Queen Watches | 32:37 | |
| 4 | Chapter 3 - In Which a "Parson" Comes to Grief | 34:23 | |
| 5 | Chapter 4 - In Which Many Are Called and Two Are Chosen | 16:30 | |
| 6 | Chapter 5 - In Which Inspector Quinn Conducts Some Legal Conversations | 45:40 | |
| 7 | Chapter 6 - In Which the District Attorney Turns Biographer | 21:34 | |
| 8 | Chapter 7 - The Queens Take Stock | 24:41 | |
| 9 | Chapter 8 - In Which the Queens Meet Mr. Field's Very Best Friend | 36:44 | |
| 10 | Chapter 9 - In Which the Mysterious Mr. Michaels Appears | 15:14 | |
| 11 | Chapter 10 - In Which Mr. Field's Tophats Begin to Assume Proportions | 25:36 | |
| 12 | Chapter 11 - In Which the Past Casts a Shadow | 27:07 | |
| 13 | Chapter 12 - In Which the Queens Invade Society | 31:44 | |
| 14 | Chapter 13 - Queen to Queen | 41:48 | |
| 15 | Chapter 14 - In Which the Hat Grows | 32:48 | |
| 16 | Chapter 15 - In Which an Accusation Is Made | 23:42 | |
| 17 | Chapter 16 - In Which the Queens Go to the Theater | 26:44 | |
| 18 | Chapter 17 - In Which More Hats Grow | 42:05 | |
| 19 | Chapter 18 - Stalemate | 18:11 | |
| 20 | Chapter 19 - In Which Inspector Queen Conducts More Legal Conversations | 24:02 | |
| 21 | Chapter 20 - In Which Mr. Michaels Writes a Letter | 7:55 | |
| 22 | Chapter 21 - In Which Inspector Queen Makes a Capture -- | 9:29 | |
| 23 | Chapter 22 - --And Explains | 1:03:54 |
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