In a few minutes this woman will be dead. The question is, “Who killed her?” Was it Carson McKell the philandering financier? Marion McKell the jealous wife? Tom, the son with a dangerous temper? The radio mystery star? The ambitious secretary? The chauffeur? The delivery boy? Match wits with Ellery Queen, and see if you can guess who done it!
- Actor Allusion: Tom McKell gets drunk at one point and when he returns doesn’t remember where he’s been. Ray Milland had previously won an Oscar for playing a blackout drunk in The Lost Weekend.
- Dying Clue: A regular feature of both the books by Ellery Queen and the series that would follow this pilot movie. Monica Gray leaves one by unplugging both her TV and an electric clock at the same time.
- Non-Indicative Name: Even counting blatant red herrings, there are actually fewer suspects here than in any episode that came after.
- Setting Update: Inverted. While it’s adapted from The Fourth Side of the Triangle, a novel published in 1965—and largely written by Avram Davidson—the pilot movie is set in 1947. In this it reverses Don’t Look Back, an EQ TV movie that had run a few years earlier and been a straightforward example, being set in the present despite being based on the 1949 novel Cat of Many Tails.
- Sleep Deprivation: Ellery yawns quite a bit and dozes off during a taping of Simon Brimmer’s radio show because he’s been up late trying to finish his new book.
- Unique Pilot Title Sequence: The only outing of the Jim Hutton series to use the opening titles with a magnifying glass enlarging names on a doodled-up notepad.
