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WILL ONE MAN STAND UP FOR JUSTICE
WITH HIS CHILD’S LIFE ON THE LINE?

The creation of two cousins from Brooklyn—Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971)—"Ellery Queen" became one of the most famous mystery writers, and one of the most beloved fictional detectives, of all time. Their novels sold over 125 million copies, inspired more than a dozen movies, TV series, and radio programs (not to mention Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, since 1941 the leading publisher of short crime fiction in the world), and earned them the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of their collaboration, the duo penned the novel COP OUT, a rare foray into suspense storytelling, about a small-town police officer forced to help a trio of desperate robbers get away with their crime when they take his young daughter captive. Hard Case Crime is proud to bring COP OUT back to bookstores for the first time in decades, in a special edition that also features two bonus stories: the ingenious "Child Missing!" and the powerful noir novelette "The Case Against Carroll."

• First publication in nearly half a century, and first time ever in combination with the added material
• Ellery Queen was one of the best-known and best-selling figures in mystery fiction for most of the 20th century, comparable to present-day authors such as James Patterson or Dan Brown
• Queen’s novels won acclaim from an astonishing array of literary and pop-culture luminaries and the Ellery Queen TV series, which was watched by more than 10 million households weekly, remains popular to this day

"I read all of Ellery Queen’s novels...and they were wonderful. I loved them all."

— Stephen King

"One of the supreme masters of the detective story."

— Dorothy L. Sayers

"Some of the best detective novels of our time."

— Jorge Luis Borges

"I loved...Ellery Queen."

— John Updike