The Devil to Pay - Ellery Queen 1938 - Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York - First Edition First edition featuring Ellery Queen as he heads to Hollywood...

‘Some slight hints of what you will find’: ‘An exotic movie actress, the swivel-hipped blonde, Winni Moon, and her scented chimpanzee; a murder which, already precious, became a managing editor’s dream; Pink, who came from Flatbush, Brooklyn; Solly Spaeth who was spawned in New York...’
  Ellery Queen, and later Barnaby Ross, was the pseudonym shared by the writing team composed of cousins Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. Together, the pair wrote four Drury Lane mystery novels, starring a Shakespearean actor and detective, as well as the Ellery Queen mystery series. The pseudonym pair was all the rage in the 1920s and ‘30s, with one of the cousins, usually Dannay, donning a mask and appearing in public as Ellery Queen. The cousins carried on a fictional dialogue as Ross and Queen in print and ended the intrigue in 1932 when Ross was revealed to be Ellery Queen. Several years later, when the writers behind the pseudonyms were unmasked, the public was so enamoured of them that their work continued to enjoy great popularity for decades to come.

‘After Poe, I think it’s true that Ellery Queen was the most significant and important writer of mystery fiction in America.’ – Otto Penzler.

Reference: Reilly, ’
Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers’ (1980), 1225. Penguin Random House. Julian Symons, 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books, Sunday Times (1957).

Octavo (book size 19.3x13.5cm), pp. vi [2] 303 [1]. In publisher’s light straw-grey cloth, lettered in red to spine and upper board, all edges trimmed. Dust jacket priced ‘$2.00’ to upper corner of front panel, all corners with publisher’s decorative trim, and with colour touch-up to corners, spine ends and some small spots along spine, archival paper repairs along rear panel.
  Condition: Very good to near fine, offsetting to endpapers, toning to spine, and some small spots to boards, in near fine dust jacket with colour touch-up to corners, spine ends and some small spots along spine, archival paper repairs along rear panel.   Ref: 110573   Price: HK$ 5,500