The Adventures of Ellery Queen

The Ellery Queen Mysteries, Book 1934

By: Ellery Queen

Narrated by: Traber Burns

In these ripping short stories, the mystery genre's greatest sleuth shows his chops.

For Ellery Queen, there is no puzzle that reason cannot solve. In his time, he has faced down killers, thugs, and thieves, protected only by the might of his brain - and the odd bit of timely intervention by his father, a burly New York police inspector. But when a university professor asks Queen to teach a class, the detective finds there are people whom reason cannot touch: college students.

Queen's adventure on campus is only the first of this incomparable collection of short mysteries. In this audio, he tangles with a violent book thief, an assassin who targets acrobats, and New York's only cleanly shaven bearded lady. Criminals everywhere fear him, whether they work in mansions or back alleys. No mystery is too difficult for the man with the golden brain.

This story collection includes "The African Traveler", "The Mad Tea-Party", "The Seven Black Cats", "The Hanging Acrobat", "The Two-Headed Dog", "The One-Penny Black", "The Bearded Lady", "The Three Lame Men", "The Invisible Lover", "The Teakwood Case", and "The Glass-Domed Clock".

©1933, 1934 Ellery Queen. © renewed by Ellery Queen. (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

fingernails on chalkboard

I do cut the material some slack because of the timeframe of authorship. Nevertheless, the lack of political correctness in regard to race and occasionally to the dignity of female characters is grating and makes the material difficult to listen to. The stories are delightful and challenging period pieces, but they inspire an overwhelming urge to do a little 21st Century editing.

Excellent Ellery Queen

Excellent production of Ellery Queen stories. Good story choices, and audio quality, both volume and range.

Good stories

If you’re like me I like short stories I don’t always want to wait 10 hours for the answer to who did it.

wrong pronunciation

This is for the reader of the story; the word
Foyer is Not pronounced fo yet.
it is pronounced as Fo yaye.
.it is French

Antiseptic. But in a Fun Way.

In the first story in this collection, Ellery teaches a college seminar on crime detection by means of sheer, cold, observation and logic. In another, he disavows any interest in the moral aspects of the crimes he solves. While Holmes worked on much the same principles, Watson always supplied the requisite empathy and moral indignation. By contrast, an Ellery Queen story—especially these early iterations of him, circa 1934—can seem more than a little antiseptic.

So I’m at a loss to understand why I enjoy him so much. Perhaps it’s the buoyant humor that’s never very far from the surface. Or the authors’ easy familiarity with literature and history, both ancient and modern. It all helps create an atmosphere that I’ve likened elsewhere to an intellectual parlor game. For a minimal emotional investment, we can derive the maximum of whodunnit-style entertainment; a pleasure very much akin to watching the early Nick and Nora films. And having Traber Burns at the mic never fails to heighten that pleasure.