Calamity Town cover art

Calamity Town

Ellery Queen, Book 16

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Calamity Town

By: Ellery Queen
Narrated by: Richard Waterhouse
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About this listen

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. Amateur Sleuths Mystery Traditional Detectives

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All stars
Most relevant
The plot is everything you wish for. The solution, when revealed at the end, was so obvious I wondered how I had missed it, yet I was guessing till close to the end.

The characters are well drawn, and the performance solid.

One of the best Ellery Queens I have listened to

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I particularly liked the Courtroom chapters which, oddly, reminded me in some ways of Courtroom scenes in Anatomy of a Murder

A long but rewarding listen

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