Showing results by author "Ellery Queen" in All Categories

Frightfully rich and awesomely respectable, the McKells had never been touched by scandal. At least, not until the handsome Dane McKell discovered his father's secret affair. Determined to protect his mother, he forced a meeting with the other woman.

But Dane didn't count on falling in love with her himself. Nor did he count on the front page murder that engulfed them all. Sheila, exotic young international leader of haute couture, is found murdered in her Park Avenue penthouse.

During the 11 nights before Christmas, the strange gifts and the warnings came. Ellery Queen was there. The police were there. But no one saw the messenger. Ellery Queen knew that the sinister gifts held the clue to the mystery. But what did they mean, and who was the intended victim? Then on the 12th night of Christmas, the last clue led straight to the corpse....

The silent rush of footsteps, the muffled shriek, the ever-tightening noose of exotic silk…the mark of the Cat. The Cat had claimed number nine.

The Cat had nine kills, but Ellery Queen found number ten alive and offered the victim temptingly to the killer. The trap was baited, and Ellery and the police poised for the strike that had to come. But the strangler struck elsewhere - and Queen's heart chilled at the thought of what he would find.

A card with the letter "J" on it appeared in Robert York's mail, and a day later he was dead. Then another card showed up, and Ellery Queen knew he was up against a brilliant killer who made a game of death by warning his victims. The only clue was the signature "Y" and Ellery had to find him and stop his remorseless vendetta before "Y" won his mad game.

When there's a bank robbery in the country village where Djuna lives, and one of his dog's best friends gets shot in the escape, the boy makes up his mind he'll find out who did it. His chum and his dog, Champ, are in on the hunt, and two heads and a keen nose are better than one. The boys remember something queer they noticed about a truck with a covered load that passed them on the road when they were going fishing.

Eccentric multimillionaire Cadmus Cole hires Ellery Queen to investigate a case but won't say what it is. When Cole dies mysteriously at sea, Queen and his partner, Beau Rummell, must navigate a thicket of complications that includes a fifty-million-dollar legacy, two beautiful but avaricious women vying for the inheritance, a will with some odd provisions, and even a phony Ellery Queen.

Trapped on a burning mountain, the Queens take refuge with a killer. Dashing detective Ellery Queen and his father are driving over the pothole-scarred Arrow Mountain Road when they come face to face with a wall of flame. They tear back in the other direction, fire at their fenders, and finally find safety in a clearing, at the home of Dr. Xavier, a renowned surgeon. He is a genial man, but his distracted, mysterious smile conceals dark secrets.

This rare volume is a collection of some of Queen's best, containing three novelettes and two short stories. The stories include "The Death of Don Juan", "The Wrightsville Heirs", "The Case Against Carroll", "E = Murder", and "Diamonds in Paradise". Ellery Queen stars in all of them, making this collection a must-listen for mystery fans.

Could murder really be hereditary? Davy Fox certainly thinks so. When he was only a boy, his father, Bayard Fox,was convicted of murdering Davy's mother in the small town of Wrightsville. Now that Davy has grown up and returned home from the war, he fears that it is onlya matter of time until he kills his own wife. But could he really do such athing? Desperate to find out the truth, Davy's wife, Linda, calls on Ellery Queen to investigate the twelve-year-old murder of Jessica Fox.

Dr. Harry Brown is a competent, respectable practitioner of the time-honored art of medicine--until the day old man Gresham, with his millions of dollars, failing heart, and young spouse, hires him. Suddenly it's money, luxury, and love. But what happens to a doctor when someone slips a corpse into his locked apartment? What can a man say when he finds himself a member of an organized crime ring? How can Harry tell his richest patient he's having an affair with a man's wife?

In the merry month of May, Ellery Queen made a trek to Gettysburg to witness an annual celebration - and an annual murder. February found the ingenious Ellery locked in a furious battle of wits with a dead US president. These are but two of the 12 appointments with crime that make up Queen's baffling calendar of conundrums. Each elegant enigma ticks off all the surprise and excitement that have made Queen the dean of American detective fiction.

It was a script that could only have come from Hollywood: the wedding of two superstars after a scandal-filled courtship... a wild trip by private plane to a hideaway... a deadly double overdose of drugs... These corpses weren't play-acting. Once again, Ellery was cast in the role of master detective, as he found nothing was quite what it seemed in the never-never land of moviedom - except sudden, violent death...

Disc jockey Tutter King has it made. Every time he spins a platter on King's Session, gold comes out: TV earnings, returns on his secret holdings in recording companies - the old payola that some bright young men think only their rightful due. Tutter is a gay young man-around-town who has the world dancing to his tune. He is also involved in some hanky-panky with his pretty blond assistant, Lola Arkwright.

Ellery had a simple case. A few days of discreet snooping, some choice advice, and the inimitable sleuth would blithely restore domestic harmony to the millionaire couple Dirk and Martha Lawrence. Then came the scarlet letters. And finally the cryptic clue, scrawled in a murdered man’s blood. A simple case? Unless Ellery did some super-fast sleuthing, he’d have nothing to show but a very scarlet face. The case will drag him all over New York as he hunts for the truth.

The victim had lived two lives, but a single knife thrust ended both of them. The trail of suspicion led into the guilt-edged world of the beautiful people - and climaxed in a vicious courtroom battle that ended with a shattering verdict. It seemed that for the first time Ellery had met his match - until the sleuth blended his usual impeccable logic with a most unusual fling.…

Ellery Queen returned to Wrightsville to solve the mystery of a rich man - believed poor - who died of "old age," a poor man - believed rich - who committed suicide, and a scholarly drunk who disappeared. Shortly it occurred to Queen that the puzzle had a pattern. A twisted mind was committing murder according to an old nursery rhyme! Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief…and to at least one person in town, the chief was Ellery Queen.

Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes are the undisputed masters of analytical deduction - their talents and methods strikingly, almost uncannily, alike. Through the strange interlocking of events past and present, the two celebrated detectives meet to focus their razor-sharp intellects - and their brilliant powers of observation - on the mystery of…Jack the Ripper.

The nine-word clue was one of nine cryptic notes that had been sent to taunt Inspector Queen and his son Ellery nine days after the murder. Nino Importuna had been obsessed with the number. He had lived by it. Now the killer who brought a trio of gory deaths to Nino's ninth-floor penthouse at Number 99 East was camouflaging his identity in a jungle of nines - and daring Ellery to find him. The case was destined to be a dazzling contest of wits - to the ninth degree!

Someone is threatening to kill the King, and Ellery must take on the task of saving his hated life. Virtual prisoners, Ellery and his father are whisked away to an island "somewhere in the Atlantic." In a frightening atmosphere of industrial slavery and brute militarism, Ellery comes to grips with a baffling murderer who calmly announces the exact moment of the assassination. The trouble is, Ellery is with the confessed murderer at the time of the crime - so how could he have possibly done it?

When Barney Street, the fixer, was in Holland in World War II, his life had been saved by a German soldier. Now Barney is dead and his two million dollar estate is left entirely to the soldier who saved him, Milo Hacha. But that fortune comes with a death sentence, for Barney's widow, Estelle, won't rest until she gets back everything that is rightfully hers.