Cop Out

Ellery Queen

Aug. 2015 · Open Road Media

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To escape a manhunt, a gang of killers takes a cop’s daughter hostage

After years of toil for Aztec Paper Products, Thomas Howland only makes $112.90 per week. When it comes time for the company to compensate its workers, he is in charge of carrying the payroll: $24,000 in cold hard cash. Eventually, Howland is overcome by temptation. In exchange for a promised cut of the spoils, he hands the payroll over to a gang of thieves—but they reward him with 3 bullets in the heart. The heat is on, and the killers take refuge in the only thing they can: crime.
 
Wesley Malone is a small-town cop, as tough and honest as they come. When the criminals kidnap his daughter as part of a desperate attempt to avoid the law, he feels afraid for the first time—not for himself, but for his little girl. Malone is determined to instill fear in this gang of thugs as well.

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Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age “fair play” mystery.
 
Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen’s first appearance came in 1928, when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that was later published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who uses his spare time to assist his police inspector uncle in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee’s death.