Review of Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring

A very wealthy woman who owns a hospital asks for the police to secretly investigate the goings-on in that place, especially the suspicious doctor in charge. Ellery Queen, desperate for new ideas for his book, agrees to go undercover as a patient, but before he even settles in, the woman is also sent there after a car "accident", and although it doesn't look fatal, she dies after the operation. When the autopsy reveals that it was murder after all, Ellery and his father must uncover the guilty party, or parties. This is probably the weakest "Ellery Queen" film so far. It's really more of a comedy than a mystery: most of the time is taken up by a game of hide-and-seek inside the hospital between the police and some comic-relief gangsters. Ellery does almost NO detecting at all - it's Nikki Porter who saves the day, just as it's Margaret Lindsay who saves this static film. ** out of 4.