Product Description
The editor-in-chief of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Janet Hutchings, brings us mystery novellas from five masters of the mystery genre: Joyce Carol Oates' Tell Me You Forgive Me?; Clark Howard's Blood Paths; Edgar Grand Master Ruth Rendell's new story, Piranha to Scurfy; Robert Barnard's The Lost Boy; and Out There in the Darkness by Ed Gorman. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

five strong crime thrillers
"Tell Me You Forgive Me by Joyce Carol Oates.Almost fifty, Dr. Mary Lynde visits her mother Elsie who shares more than the mother-daughter relationship; murder is part of their distant past.

"Blood Paths" by Clark Howard.Warden Grant and Teacher Elaine Kenner argue over the job their daughter Susie has taken.The mother wants Susie to be a teacher like her, but Susie is a chip off the old man's block.

"Piranha to Scurfy" by Ruth Rendell.Ambrose Ribbon is a pro at pointing out errors in other people's lives such as writing letters to authors.However, he receives a unique critique from a writer who holds him to his standard of nasty criticism.

"The Lost Boy" by Robert Bernard.Malcolm flees town with his son Randall leaving his wife Selena behind.His nanosecond calls to her only increase her concern for her son, but it appears there is not much she can do unless Selena chooses a drastic route outside the law.

"Out There in the Darkness" by Ed Gorman.The five friends who make up the Midwest neighborhood watch are playing cards when two intruders break into the home.They catch one and kill him, but his friend escaped.One by one he enacts vengeance on the quintet.

These five strong crime thrillers are filled with suspense and surprising endings that explain why the Ellery Queen pack proudly presents them to readers to enjoy.

Harriet Klausner
... Read more

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Collection of mystery stories. Red gold embossed cover. ... Read more

Product Description
Even before her launch RMS Queen Mary earned a special place in history. Job number 534, as the new Cunard liner was known, was Britain's largest passenger ship by far. In 1930 construction was begun, but as the stranglehold of The Depression tightened, Cunard announced that work was to cease. The half-finished hull sat on Clydebank for over two years, but was far from forgotten.

For the people of Britain, 534 became a beacon of hope; a barometer of the nation's economy. And so it was no coincidence that on the day work at John Brown's shipyard resumed, prices on the London Stock Exchange shot up. A new age had dawned. Without so much as entering the water, the new ship had won the hearts and minds of the British public. A few months later the first of a long line of 'firsts' began for the new liner. Britain's first ship over 1000 feet in length was ready to be launched. It would be the first occasion of its kind it to be reported live by BBC radio; and for the first time the consort of a reigning British monarch would do the honors.

The liner's 31-year ocean-going career would break countless records and re-write history. And her popularity soon spread across the Atlantic as she won the affection of America. Today she is enjoying retirement in the sun in Pier J, Long Beach, California as a floating hotel and events centre. Author David Ellery poses the 101 most crucial questions about her, from design, construction and machinery to stories concerning her name, interior design, and retirement, and provides detailed but concise answers to each one.

How fast was Queen Mary? Is it true the Queen Mary is haunted? Is the new Queen Mary 2 anything like the original Queen Mary? The result is a thoroughly engaging and informative book that provides the essential information to the world's very last remaining 1930s superliner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Queen Mary 101 Review.
Great book giving facts and figures and I did like the format it used in asking questions one would ask if given the chahnce.Read it from cover to cover and found it very good reading and due the fact I had travelled on this ship way back Dec 1950 as a young lad coming to this country for this first time it meant a lot to me to refreash my memory of that trip. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Classic!
One of the great classics of detective story criticism, Queen's Quorum belongs in the library of every fan who wants to know about the growth and development of the genre. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Case of the Human T's
I would have given this a higher rank but, as God is my witness, I just can't stand the way Ellery talks sometimes.And that Professor Yardley, his college mentor, is just as bad.In fact if Yardley is responsible for Ellery's affacted mannerisms, then he should be made a public example of.It's like James Stewart in ROPE and his evil effect on the two innocent boys John Dall and Farley Granger whom he turned into killers with his Nietzschean philosophy.Here it's Yardley's ridiculous circumlocutions and archaic oaths and painful bon mots.

The story puzzled me and i was genuinely surprised by how it came out, but after my glow of surprise I had second thoughts about the whole enterprise.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

It seems almost criminal that we had to waste so much time keeping up with the nudist colony and the convoluted love lives of the Brads amd the Lincolns and those British people.Chapter after chapter of just plain garbage, and none of it germane to the story or the plotting--just plain old padding.Padding's too good a word for it.

Also, Ellery and Yardley sure make a lot of deductions based on the "fact" that no man would put another man's pipe in his mouth if he could possibly help it.Where'd all this homosexual panic come from?

SPOILERS OVER.

I don't know what's more risible, but the hillbilly dialect is an insult to realism.But it's like reading Hemingway compared to the way the sailors talk."What time did that happen, Cap'n Swift?" "Seven bells.""Oh, I see, eleven-thirty."

Nevertheless, I liked the bloody and grim Montenegro story, maybe because I'm a guy--seems like all the reviewers are male--a chromosomal thing?I wonder how Qyueen was actually able to get away with so much blood and guts--it's like TALES FROM THE CRYPT squared.More vomiting than you'd see on choppy waters on a liferaft.It's just swimming with fluids.

Convoluted
I think this is a good example of the Golden Age mystery, and typical for an Ellery Queen story.

The plot twists and turns and stretched my patience once in a while. I didn't find some things really feasable; however, it was an enjoyable read in the "they-don't-write-them-anymore" vein.

Vintage Ellery Queen - Good Plot and Eccentric Characters
I quite enjoyed The Egyptian Cross Mystery. I developed several plausible solutions, but none which I could clearly prove through a sequence of logical deductions. I had possibilities, I had partial solutions, and I had pieces of evidence, but I was unable to establish an irrefutable chain of logic. And as fans of Ellery Queen know, deduction requires the application of impeccable logic. For the record: none of my possibilities, nor partial solutions, were correct. I was surprised by the solution.

The Egyptian Cross Mystery offers a fast-paced unpredictable plot, a plethora of eccentric characters, and brilliant deductions by Ellery himself. I give it five stars.

The Egyptian Cross Mystery is a good introduction to Ellery Queen. In this fifth novel the young Ellery Queen can still be insufferable on occasion, although the presence of his college professor, Dr. Yardley, checks his impulse to exhibit his erudition. Ellery remains baffled by the bizarre murders as does the reader. A final clue hidden among detail suddenly provides Ellery, and the particularly observant reader (not me, however), the key to the mystery. Stay alert for the final clue, despite deliberate distractions and misdirection.

Ellery Queen's investigations take him on long, tiring road trips in his beloved Duesenberg. Each destination is a gruesome murder site. A decapitated victim is found lashed to a post. A capital letter T is scrawled in blood nearby. Using more guesswork than logic, Ellery senses some obscure connection to ancient Egyptian myth.

I always enjoy the early Ellery Queen stories, those mysteries dating from 1929 through 1939. My other early favorites, for comparison purposes, include The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Siamese Twin Mystery, The Spanish Cape Mystery, and two Drury Lane mysteries, The Tragedy of X and The Tragedy of Y.

Ankhs For the Memories
Are the bizarre murders, beginning with a decapitation in an obscure West Virginia village, the acts of an ages-old religious cult or a revenge plot festering for decades?Ellery Queen travels thousands of miles, trying to anticipate the killer, until his quarry makes one final slip... ... Read more

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Ellery Queen Mystery ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

More Inspector Queen's case than Ellery's
This is a fun read, using one of the basic mystery plots...an ill-assorted group of characters brought together by a promise of wealth and of course somebody ends up dead.True authorship of this novel is murky being one of those written during the time of the TV series.However, it is snappy writing and well worth the reading.

Snappy Writing
This paperback edition is a good entry in the Ellery Queen series, although Ellery himself doesn't put in an appearance until near the end of the book. It's left up to his father to do most of the preliminary work of confronting the mysteries of this house.

The premise is a staple of classic murder mysteries. What initially seems like a randomly assorted group of people receive invitations to a house party at the eccentric mansion of an equally eccentric old man. However after the guests arrive, they discover that they have some connection in common with the old man after all.

Having been promised his fortune of millions if they can find it, they first assume the obvious - that he must have converted all his money into brass. Everything in the house is brass. Brass tables, brass chairs, brass lamps, brass beds. However the guests soon realize that claiming their fortune is not going to be that easy. Maybe the old man was lying. Maybe he had no fortune and was just entertaining himself by dangling the prospect of wealth in front of these people. As it turns out, there's more than just murder to solve here.

The writing in this book is characteristically snappy, inventive - with some sentences having twist-endings of their own - as in, "Bill said nothing, eloquently."

The house itself and its foundry where all the brass plating was done are described as being "... rather like a Walt Disney conception of Vulcan's forge, dim and blackened and peopled with the ghosts of busy little men."

Other sentences that paint a picture, conjure a feeling are:
"He made a secret of his mouth."
It was a day "as crisp as peanut brittle."

Writing a book is usually thought of as being the quintessentially solo task. The Ellery Queen mysteries present one of the few exceptions to the generally necessary loneliness of producing a novel, since the byline of "Ellery Queen" actually stood for the collaboration of two men - Lee Bennington and his cousin Frederic Dannay. I'm not absolutely sure though that this particular Queen mystery was in fact a collaboration of these two men, since it's jacket advertises the book's connection to the TV series starring Jim Hutton. However, whether this book was partially re-written by a TV scriptwriter or whether it's all the work of the classic team of Bennington/Dannay - it will be apparent fairly soon that there are some real riches between these covers. Unlike Ellery and father in "House of Brass," you won't be faced with any arduous task of hunting high and low for the goods.

Will the goose lay an egg of gold, or brass?
This sequel to INSPECTOR QUEEN'S OWN CASE: NOVEMBER SONG *can* be read without first reading its predecessor (I did that myself), but you'll get more out of the two books if you read them in order, so if you haven't read NOVEMBER SONG, shoo.

Picking up where NOVEMBER SONG left off, Ellery almost goes into cardiac arrest when he receives Richard's telegram announcing his engagement to Jessie Sherwood, but after he flies home in a panic from Istanbul, he and Jessie each find that their fears are groundless, and Ellery gets to give his father away during the ceremony. :) But by the time the Queens return from their honeymoon, Ellery has taken off again, so when Jessie receives a mysterious invitation to Hendrik Brass' country home, containing $100 and half a $1000 bill, Jessie and Richard once again get to tackle a case on their own. (This time, though, Ellery returns for the last chapter and wraps up the final loose ends in the grand finale.)

Hendrik Brass is an old man now, but he once ran a Fifth Avenue jewelry store - the House of Brass, specializing in gold. Richard's first reaction is to steer clear, but Jessie wants a little adventure, so after checking up with a few phone calls, they accept the invitation to the house party upstate. (Yes, this is an American version of the classic country house-party murder.)

Apart from Jessie Queen, retired nurse, the other guests are a mixed bag. The Alistairs are con artists. Dr. Thornton is the GP of his medical practice, too soft-hearted to make real money. Cornelia Openshaw is a stereotypical old maid. Keith Palmer can't settle back into civilian life after too many copter crashes in Vietnam. Lynn O'Neill seems like a good egg, but as a layoff victim she needs money. According to old man Brass, each of them is the son or daughter of someone who did him a good turn once, having been unearthed by a private investigator, and he intends to return the favor by at least supplying the missing half of each $1000 bill. If they'll stay for a few weeks and let him get to know them, he'll decide which of them should be in his will.

The only catch is, Jessie (after hearing her supposed connection to Brass) knows that she's not the woman he's looking for. At that point, Richard Queen starts getting interested in just how much is rotten about this setup, and how many ringers have been invited to the party... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Queen's Vacation in Murder
Frederic Danny & Manfred B. Lee were at the top of their game as Ellery Queen in 1969 when they published THE LAST WOMAN IN HIS LIFE. They has won five Edgars and the Grand Master.
Ellery and his father Inspector Queen after a rotten case want a few days of quiet fishing in Wrightsville steams. A college pal, Johnny Benedict offers them a cottage on his estate. Later Johnny gives the elder Queen a holographic will to hold for him until a new formal will can be drawn up the next day.
Ellery does a bit of snooping and listens as Johnny tells his three ex-wives, in the presence of his lawyer, he is revoking his promise to leave them a million dollars each in his will.
Later that night Ellery gets a frantic phone call from the dying Johnny, who has been attacked in his bed room. By the time Ellery and his father reach the house Johnny is dead.
The baffling case runs from the Vermont hills to New York with a search for the woman named in the new will, but clues are few.
Just the book for a dip into the past of great detective fiction.
Nash Black, author whose books are also available in Kindle editions.
Qualifying Laps: A Brewster County NovelWriting as a Small BusinessNatchez Above The River: A Family's Survival In The Civil War

Ellery Queen's Queerest Case
While not as good as the classic middle period Queen, which include the very best mystery stories ever written, this is one of the better, and more surprising, of the later Queen mysteries, with an ending that is particularly satisfying, whether you pick up on the frequent hints or not.

Good Entertainment, Reads Fast
It has been a while since I've read an Ellery Queen novel.These mysteries are generally fast-moving, rather light in tone, and with ingenious plots.I was not disappointed."Ellery Queen" is the pen name of a two-man team who actually wrote the books.They were at the top of their mystery-writing game at mid-century, the approximate time this book saw publication.

"The Last Woman in his Life" would make a great novel to take aboard a plane.The style is not too challenging, and reads fast. It is "fun." The ending, although prepared for carefully by the writer throughout the novel, is still quite a surprise.And yet, one ponders the final pages and says, "of course!"

Much of the fun of this book comes in the three prime suspects, all of them ex-wives of the murdered man.Johnny, a wealthy playboy, loved gorgeous, full-figured bimbos -- chorus line dancers, strippers, and minor (to forever remain very minor!) starlets. These girls have remarkable physical endowments, but are not particularly bright.The authors do a good job of playing these "dizzy blonde" type showgirls for sexiness as well as for laughs. One or two other female characters seem quite intelligent, thus offsetting what might otherwise be taken as a patronizing or sexist portrayal of women.

Surprisingly, the book addresses some social themes.It was published in 1969, at a time when woman's rights, racial rights, and gay pride were all being forged in the fires of conflict here in America.Ellery Queen is able to play with these themes, reminding us who are old enough to remember of the revolutionary flavor of the 60's and 70's here in America.I have to give the book extra points for that.Don't get me wrong-- this book is not a deep treatise on the rights of man, of course.It's a light, entertaining novel.But some central themes of the book will surprise you.(I have to be guarded or I will "spoil" the book for readers.)

Enjoying this book has given me incentive to watch for other novels by Ellery Queen.I've read a number of them.Perhaps it is time to find a couple more and enjoy them. ... Read more

Product Description
The Adventure of the Circus Train is one of many wonderful radio scripts left over from the Golden Age of Radio! ... Read more