Calamity Town - Softcover

Queen, Ellery

3.74

667 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060974370 ISBN 13: 9780060974374

Publisher: Perennial, 1992

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Looking for trouble, Ellery Queen descends on a small town

At the tail end of the long summer of 1940, there is nowhere in the country more charming than Wrightsville. The Depression has abated, and for the first time in years the city is booming. There is hope in Wrightsville, but Ellery Queen has come looking for death.

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The mystery author is hoping for fodder for a novel, and he senses the corruption that lurks beneath the apple pie façade. He rents a house owned by the town�€™s first family, whose three daughters star in most of the local gossip. One is fragile, left at the altar three years ago and never recovered. Another is engaged to the city�€™s rising political star, an upright man who�€™s already boring her. And then there�€™s Lola, the divorced, bohemian black sheep. Together, they make a volatile combination. Once he sees the ugliness in Wrightsville, Queen sits back�€”waiting for the crime to come to him.

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About the Author:

ELLERY QUEEN is a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn - Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee (1905-1971) - to write detective fiction. In a successful series of novels that covered 42 years, Ellery Queen served as both the author's name and that of the detective-hero. The cousins also co-founded and directed Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, generally considered one of the most influential English crime fiction magazines of the last sixty-five years. They were given the Grand Master Award for achievements in the field of the mystery story by the Mystery Writers of America in 1961.

Review:

''This book should make every detective story reader an Ellery Queen fan. He has never written a better book and very few people have written as good a detective novel.'' --Boston Globe

''A psychologically complex family tragedy . . . one of the series' finest installments.'' --Kirkus Reviews

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