The search for a pornographic film director draws Mike McCall into a chase for a killer The film is called The Wild Nymph, and it may be the finest pornographic movie ever made. A relic of the 1950s, when erotic cinema was more artistic than smutty, it was filmed on a shoestring budget by the enigmatic genius Sol Dahlman. But 20 years later, the film has been forgotten and Dahlman has become a recluse. Finding him will be a deadly proposition. A Hollywood producer comes to the state capital in search of Dahlman, hoping to capitalize on pornography’s growing mainstream acceptance. He meets Mike McCall, the governor’s top troubleshooter, whose only interest in pornography is in keeping women’s lib protestors from picketing the theaters. When Dahlman is found dead, it falls to McCall to stop the bloodshed. Sex can be controversial, but murder is always taboo.
Author
aka Barnaby Ross. "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 would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who used his spare time to assist his police inspector father 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. Several of the later "Ellery Queen" books were written by other authors, including Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, and Theodore Sturgeon.
