Calamity Town

Ellery Queen, Book 16

By: Ellery Queen

Narrated by: Richard Waterhouse

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.

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 prior, never to recover. 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 blacksheep. Together, they make a volatile combination. Once he sees the ugliness in Wrightsville, Queen sits back - waiting for the crime to come to him.

©2014 Ellery Queen (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Not your usual Ellery Queen

Not the usual smug Queen. This book has an intriguing and convoluted plot, full of emotional highs and lows. Stay with it to the very end.

New location new version of storytelling

Enjoyable & while I was enjoying the newness of the changed environm ent I was able to puzzle out parts of the main puzzle but was left fuzzy on motives. Only at the end did it seem somewhat draw out.

A bit similar to Agatha Christie

This was a good start to Queen’s little block of books set in Wrightsville but contains a solution like his own but has an old Christie solution added. Not bad but too typical

Great!

Thought i had it figured out pretty early but too many twist and turns later i was still guessing.

narration just might fit this story

I am in the first chapter and may not go on. This narrator is awful. He sounds like a high school kid auditioning for a part in a play. I hope the story will

carry his regrettable performance. I will edit my review . I finished. Not what I like.To each.his known.