A Close Call for Ellery Queen

Two mysterious seamen come from Alan Rogers' past to blackmail him as he seeks to locate his missing daughters. Ellery Queen is called in by Stewart Cole, Rogers' secretary. Queen goes to the estate and finds one daughter already there and the second one expected. When she arrives, it is Ellery's secretary Nikki Porter posing as the daughter as Ellery had her intercept the real heiress after learning of a plot to swindle Rogers. The blackmailing seamen are killed at a waterfront café after getting the blackmail money, Rogers is suspected and Inspector Queen arrives to arrest him, but he is also found dead.

Convoluted at times and a slight strain to keep up with the twist in the plot, however it's quite fun and imaginative with Margaret Lindsey going undercover. There's some humorous scenes.

This particular Ellery Queen film, which stars William Gargan, focuses on Ellery's secretary Nikki (Margaret Lindsay).

The secretary of a man (Ralph Morgan) wants Ellery to investigate why her boss is so terrified of two men who are staying with him. Guess what, this really doesn't have anything to do with the story.

The Morgan character is looking for his French daughter, whom he hasn't seen since birth. Nikki impersonates her, but the real daughter does appear after disappearing from her hotel. Nikki gets into all kinds of trouble.

It's quite funny. I wouldn't call it much of an Ellery Queen mystery. It's short anyway.

Ralph Morgan is a rich man, but a careless one. He's trying to locate his two missing daughters, and two men come to him to blackmail him.... so he starts the process of having his lawyer transfer all his property to the young women, and hires mystery writer Ellery Queen to investigate.

Almost exactly half of this late entry in producer Larry Darmour's series is spent in vamping, usually for comic effect, as William Gargan has his grammar corrected by girlfriend/secretary Margaret Lindsay, gets soaked in the shower, and other assorted hilarity, while Miss Lindsay goes undercover as a fake daughter. At that point the first corpse shows up under the care of series coroner Charles Lane, and Inspector Charley Grapewin goes to investigate while Gargan kibitzes.

The mystery is a fair one, with a gigantic red herring, but there's no more than a novella's worth of story in this one, comic relief aside. Gargan isn't well cast.

William Gargan takes over the role of Ellery Queen as the mystery writer turned detective in A Close Call For Ellery Queen. He has a couple of close calls, but it's Margaret Lindsay who really puts herself in jeopardy with a masquerade.

Edward Norris private secretary to millionaire Ralph Morgan asks for Ellery's help in getting rid of a pair of unwanted guests who have planted themselves at Morgan's estate. Norris suspects blackmail of some kind, but before Gargan can go to work the guests Andrew Toombes and Charles Judel wind up shot to death in the back room of a waterfront dive.

Lindsay insinuates herself in the case by masquerading as a long lost daughter who with her 'sister' Kay Linnaker stands to inherit a fortune from Morgan. Still yet another murder occurs before all is revealed.

A Close Call For Ellery Queen is one of the best of the series. Gargan acquits himself well in the part though I do like Ralph Bellamy better. Though none of the screen Queens fit the author's conception of the part as Jim Hutton did on television, I still like the structure and direction of this film and the performances the director got from his cast.

When William Gargan took over the role of 'Ellery Queen' from Ralph Bellamy (with the rest of the steady cast remaining the same), the series obviously became more serious again after the comical 'intermissions' especially of "Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring". Murder DID become a serious matter again - and not only for the people involved in the case Ellery for once takes over as a private investigator, but also for our beloved protagonists themselves...

An old country house on an isolated island is the ideal setting for a rather complicated plot with a father searching for his long-lost daughter - and just when Ellery is on his way there to start his investigations, the daughter DOES turn up, and tells her story to Nikki whom Ellery has left behind in his office. And Nikki, curious and fearless as ever, decides to play the daughter's part and head for the island by herself to see what's going on there; and not even SHE can imagine what perils are waiting for her there!

Although the story doesn't sound too convincing, it's still immensely imaginative - and suspenseful... And Nikki, with her false identity, becomes of course the center of interest - and of danger! This one's for mystery fans with strong nerves, no doubt; but it's absolutely worth watching - if you feel up to it...