The character of Ellery Queen and the more-or-less locked room mystery format were probably suggested by the novels featuring detective Philo Vanceby S.S. Van Dine, which were very popular at the time. This novel was the second in a long series of novels featuring Ellery Queen, the first nine containing a nationality in the title.
The introduction to this novel contained some details which are now not considered part of the Ellery Queen canon. For instance, the introduction is written as by the anonymous "J.J. McC.", a friend of the Queens, and speaks of Ellery's marriage and child, and their life in Italy, and that the names of both Ellery Queen and his father are pseudonyms—none of these circumstances survived for long.
The novel, and the other "nationality" mysteries, had the unusual feature of a "Challenge to the Reader" just before the ending is revealed—the novel breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader. "I state without reservation that the reader is at this stage in the recounting of The French Powder Mystery fully cognizant of all the facts pertinent to the discovery of the criminal; and that a sufficiently diligent study of what has gone before should educe a clear understanding of what is to come."
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