In the Clutches of the Devil

Kill as Directed (1963) by Ellery Queen is, let's be real here, a mostly linear and predictable crime novel unlike most other works published under the name of Queen and as far as quality of storytelling goes, it's certainly not comparable in any way.

The story has two sides to it, one that's superficial and one that's going on in the backgrounds and is explained when the story reaches towards its end - but anyone should be able to see through it.

Doctor Harry (Harrison) Brown. A man in rather good shape from his sports years, thirty years old and considers himself a failure. That's our main character for Kill as Directed. He graduated two years before the start of the story and set up his own office, a private clinic in Central Par, New York, as soon as he could all for the sake of one thing - money. You see, Harry Brown grew up surrounded by rich people, by money, and got caught up with a sickness as he likes to call it - the obsession towards money and becoming rich, obsessed about having to make people see him living like a doctor with money, and he needs it quickly. He needs money when he's still young.
The $30 000 he got from his father's life insurance - all gone, and what's more, he's in huge debts all because he absolutely needs to drive in a new car to please the people. He needs a costy and wealthy environment created in his office for the patients - which he has none! Day after day Harry gets all the way from a couple to zero patients - someone with dirt in eye, another with an injured finger... Far from the road to the riches which he had imagined a doctor to have in his younger days.

As Harrison Brown sits in his office waiting for a call from a friend of his, Tony Mitchell, he thinks about the past two years and considers them completely wasted. His father, Simon Brown, timid like him, father like son, was a lawyer; a judge, whom introduced Tony (Anthony) to him seven years before the start of the book and they became friends. Tony's and Harry's ways separated quickly until four months ago they met suddenly again and they befriended. Harry explained his debt problems and money problems to Tony who was a lawyer at the time and his world turned upside down. Tony paid his debts by giving him a loan of five digit numbers of dollars, and introduced Harry to to people: a very influential and wealthy man way past his heydays named Kurt Gresham and Kurt's beautiful young wife Karen. Before the start of the story Harry had already been wrapped under Karen's finger, of her always repeating the same sentence: I love you. I love you.

The story begins as Harry heads home from the restaurant Big Dipper where he, Tony and Karen ate a costy meal of $150 like rich people always do - Harry left Tony to pay for it though - and after taking the beautiful Karen home, beyond the locked door of his apartment he finds a woman dressed up in black, a woman whom he had never seen before - "Who are you? How'd you get in here?" Harry asks? Well, the woman, Lynne Maxwell, won't answer because she's dead.

Now because I'm not selling a book here or trying to make people buy this one, the explanation for Lynne's body beyond the locked room is just because. There is no mystery to be cracked here. The story is based on trying to see everything from the criminal's eyes, or maybe it's the dual nature of the Devils in whose clutches Harry's gotten himself to, I guess, so there's quite a bit of dialogue that repeats information that you should already be aware of at that point in time, information that the characters think Harry does not know.

I'd say that the book tells a story about trust, friendship and love built up around money: Can it be real?

There are pretty much only four important characters in this story:

Harry (Harrison) Brown, a doctor who gets stuck to being the private doctor of a multimillionaire.
Tony (Anthony) Mitchell, a friend of Harry and the lawyer of Greshams.
Kurt Gresham, the rich big bad who wants to own everything, even the people around him, has heart problems which is why he needs constant doctor check-ups. He tries to get Harry onto his side.
And Karen Gresham, the wife of Kurt and the lover of Harry.

It's really not hard to guess how these characters are used in the story. They eat and dine and try to live like rich people - money,money,money,money. The root of all evil... Or what was it again.

The main gist of the actual story is an eternal classic just like locked room murders. Except this time it's not the readers solving the murders, it's them seeing the planning of it play out. How does Harry Brown, a timid guy who obeys law to a T, come up to a situation where he makes up his mind to carry out a murder for the better future?
The planning of the case is really simple:
 Kill mr. Gresham or get killed.
 Avoid any suspicion, in other words avoid killing via a way any doctor could use.
 And plan out the perfect time to strike.

The Finnish cover certainly looks great

That's all there is. The information on things such as the place and time for the murder were presented in a lackluster way, it's nothing groundbreaking and it's easy to remember everything since the beginning, but the act of carrying out the murder is not even considered until pretty much too late into the book as the book itself is very short, ~160 pages. Still, since everything about it was rather simplistic, the way it was, which is a mediocre story, played out at a decent pace I guess.

  I'm not sure that the planning of the events of certain culprits actually makes sense, realistically speaking, and the handling of all the characters towards the end, as well as the wrapping up of the story, felt very lackluster and cheap.
Well, maybe it was seen differently in the past than how I see it now. You know, before the era of computers and all the TV dramas. I decided to read the novel in a day as it is quite short, but mostly I do believe I wanted to just get it over with as I had read it before around four or so years ago but never got around to actually thinking it through and writing about it. So it was a quick re-read. At first I felt like I did not remember much of it but, surprisingly enough, I did. I remembered lines before they even happened, and this novel's not that memorable at all.

I guess the author tried to make the readers to consider questions such as do we really act as human beings with morals? how much has money changed us from being humans? as after finishing the story, the story somewhat tries to point out that there was only one human in the story - a certain coward who was being manipulated by everyone.