Showing results by author "Ellery Queen" in All Categories

Ellery Queen challenges you to solve these clues to death. A thin envelope - worth a man's life. A shattered display case - whose stolen contents a thief replaced with a strange manuscript. The murder symbol: 3HS wM …the queer cipher found to be an old mark of death. These are but a few of the baffling signs Drury Lane follows down a path of deception and murder to one of the most startling climaxes in mystery fiction.

When a Western star is gunned down at a rodeo, Ellery Queen saddles up to solve the mystery.

Buck Horne has roped thousands of cattle, slugged his way out of dozens of saloons, and shot plenty of men dead in the street - but always on the back lot. He's a celluloid cowboy, and his career is nearly kaput. The real box-office draw is his daughter, Kit, a brawling beauty who can out shoot any rascal the studio has to offer. Desperate for a comeback, Buck joins Wild Bill Grant's traveling rodeo for a show in New York, hoping to land one last movie contract.

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 killer is an expert. He has climbed 10 stories in the Manhattan blackout and found and dispatched his victim amid the men and women trapped in the building. The night drags on. Nerves wear thin, and inhibitions disappear. Anyone, including a beautiful secretary with a yen for eye-patched detective Tim Corrigan, could be the lurking killer.

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.

John Vallancourt, the cool, calm diplomat, is worried stiff. A dear friend is dead and his daughter Nancy is missing. John fears the worst – and the worst is Nancy's sweetheart Keith Rollins. Keith is the prime suspect in the case and he is running scared, dragging Nancy into danger with him. If Keith is a murderer, John is certain of one thing: He has to catch Keith before the cops do, or he might find himself with one very dead daughter!

Senator Fawcett, a man with many enemies, is found stabbed to death in his study. Patience and her father, Inspector Thumm, try to unravel the web of circumstantial evidence that has enmeshed an innocent man. Patience refuses to be beaten by a lack of evidence and, with the help of Drury Lane, finally stops an execution and brings the true criminal to justice.

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.

Previously part of a collection, this rare Ellery Queen mystery is available as a standalone audiobook for the first time.

Is the lovely young heiress hiding somewhere among the shiny steel towers of Manhattan? Or is she the horribly mutilated corpse hauled up from the sewers of the city? Captain Timothy Corrigan, the cool cop with the eye patch, sets out to solve the puzzle and finds himself playing a fantastic game of hide-and-seek in a glittering world where everything is make-believe - except sudden, shocking death.

The Tragedy of Errors is the lengthy and detailed plot outline for the final but never published Ellery Queen novel, containing all the hallmarks of the greatest Queen mysteries - the dying message, the succession of false solutions before the astonishing truth is revealed, and scrupulous fair play to the listener. And the theme is one that Queen had been developing for many years: the manipulation of events in a world going mad by people who aspire to the power of gods.

The four of them had only two things in common - their name and a love for the ladies. John Boce was a no-account accountant who lusted after food, drink, cars, and women. John Thompson was a secretive librarian who liked his books and his women well-stacked. John Viviano was a fashion photographer with a great feel for a body - any body! And John Pilgrim was a poetic bum who had the girls hanging on his every stanza. All of them wanted the same woman, but which one wanted her enough to kill?

Previously part of a collection, this rare Ellery Queen mystery is available as a standalone audiobook for the first time. In "The Honest Swindler", Ellery is challenged to solve an imaginary riddle devised by three members of the Puzzle Club. He must explain how an old prospector could have spent five years on a fruitless uranium hunt and still have returned every penny of his backers' money.

John Lovering Benedict had more than most men - more money, more mansions, more cars, but most of all more women, including three ex-wives with little in common but their extraordinary physiques. For Ellery Queen the question was which one of them had bashed in Benedict's skull with a hunk of iron statuary? The clues were many…but puzzling. All had been planted at the scene of the crime, but by whom, and for what purpose? And who was the last woman in John Benedict's life?

Having escaped New York with the hopes of finishing his latest mystery novel in peace in Los Angeles, Ellery Queen is shocked when a knock on his door lands him right in the middle of yet another mystery. Leander Hill, a prominent Hollywood jeweler, recently died of a heart attack after receiving a package containing a dead dog, a sight that literally frightened him to death. Hill's daughter is convinced the act was premeditated murder and enlists Queen's help to catch the killer

Free passes to the circus seemed pretty exiting to Djuna and his friend, Tommy Williams, and things promised to be even more exiting when they met their old friends, Socker and Cannonball, at the entrance gate, but they were only the start of a hair-raising experience. The boys soon learned that the newspaper reporter and the state trooper were trying to uncover a pack of tricksters who were cheating the circus audiences.

Previously part of a collection, this rare Ellery Queen mystery is available as a standalone audiobook for the first time. In "The Three Students", Ellery is challenged to solve an imaginary riddle devised by three members of the Puzzle Club. He must decide which of the titular trio (handily named Adams, Barnes, and Carver) stole a valuable ring from a university president's desk.

In Terror Town, the small New England town of Northfield is deftly sketched as the background for a series of violent deaths, all on the exact same spot: the muddy gravesite where the first body, that of a farmer's son, had been found.

Previously part of a collection, this rare Ellery Queen mystery is available as a standalone audiobook for the first time. In Wedding Anniversary, Ellery returns to Wrightsville just in time to witness the poisoning of his kindly host, the jeweler Ernst Bauenfel. To solve the puzzle of Ernst's death, Ellery must carefully analyze the dying man's last words.

This is the wonderful adventure story of Djuna, a young boy who uses his eyes, his head, and his little Scottie dog, Champ, who uses his nose to sniff out clues. There is also Mr. Scissors, the traveling knife grinder, who is driving though the country in a wonderful caravan with his young granddaughter, Joan. There are also two wicked men who are cruel to Mr. Scissors; a reporter named Socker Furlong; and Miss Annie Ellery, who plays a surprising part at the end.