Showing results by author "Ellery Queen" in All Categories

Queen's Bureau of Investigation is now open for business - and in each department of this new enterprise Ellery finds ample opportunity to exercise the brilliant, ingenious, and at times startling talents of his crime-lab mind. For to the bureau come some of the most plaguey cases in Queen's career.

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...

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

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.

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!

Gloria Guild is the singing "glory" of the thirties and the millionairess wife of Count Carlos Armando, renowned only for his succession of wealthy wives. When she is murdered, her husband is the obvious suspect, but he has a perfect alibi. So who could he have got to do it for him? The only clue is the word "face," penned in her dying scrawl. But whose face? And why? Ellery Queen pursues the glory riddle from the Bowery to a way-out wedding - and a surprise climax that will jolt you into cold shock. Anyone whonails this killer before Queen is either a genius or a cheat.

Mysteries have a way of finding Djuna, and this time a missing page from an old ship's log and the dead captain's haunted house start the ball rolling. Djuna has learned that Captain Beekman brought a treasure from his whaling trips. Who can have an interest in letting the boy get lost? Was Djuna close to the answer of the mystery?

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.

Ellery Queen is persuaded to accompany an old friend and sculptor to his ancestral home when the latter arrives at Ellery's house covered in blood and unable to remember anything from the past few weeks. Once there, tensions erupt and foul play results in the murder of one of the household's members. Among the many transgressions Ellery will uncover are adultery, blackmail, and deceit.

All police sergeant Burt March wanted was a chance to recover from a recent brush with the Grim Reaper. Sun, fun, and a willing broad - that was all he needed. But the broad had along a sugar daddy with his own private squad of goons with guns. And when the fun began, Burt found himself the gunmen's number one target.

In The Yellow Cat Mystery, amateur sleuth Djuna visits his friend, Tommy, in Florida. His yellow cat has a sore tooth, and they set off to see the dentist. The dentist is new to the town and doesn't seem to be able to help them. They do, however, notice two persons who came from a mysterious black-lacquered ship at sea - and a normal day suddenly becomes an unusual adventure.

When Hollywood bigwig Solly Spaeth is murdered, thousands cheer. He is a most popular corpse, for Solly's stock manipulations have ruined many, including his partner. A cut-and-dried case - or so it appears. Enter master detective Ellery Queen, whose embarrassing questions uncover a maze of conflicting alibis and motives, and ultimately reveal a deadly face lurking beneath the glittering mask of Tinseltown.

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.

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.

When Ellery Queen first meets the award-winning novelist Karen Leith, it is at a party held to celebrate her most recent prize in literature. The next time he hears of her, she is dead - murdered, so the police suspect, by the daughter of her fiancé, the eminent cancer researcher Dr. John MacClure. With no other suspects and only circumstantial evidence at hand, master detective Ellery Queen delves into the reclusive writer's past to uncover the startling method and motive of an intricate crime.

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.

For years, Inspector Richard Queen had been outshone by his writer son. Now, with Ellery away, he had a case all his own - or did he? The verdict had been accidental death, and only the victim's nurse had seen the one thing that made it murder. Recruiting a senior citizens corps of retired cops, Dick Queen tracked a murderer - and found himself courting his only witness! No wonder he kept muttering, "What's Ellery going to say…?"

Djuna and Ben weren't sure they believed in ghosts. The little girl who opened the door of the haunted house didn't look like a ghost, yet she vanished into thin air. They had to find out what happened to her. And they had to rescue Waterbury, the time-telling turtle who walked into the deserted house - and didn't walk out. Djuna found clues, and he added them all up to solve a case the secret service couldn't crack!

Previously part of a collection, this rare Ellery Queen mystery is available as a standalone audiobook for the first time. In "The Odd Man", Ellery is challenged to solve an imaginary riddle devised by three members of the Puzzle Club. With very little information to go on, he must correctly answer to his confreres which of their three imagined suspects is a secret criminal.

When mere accusation takes the place of evidence, freedom is in peril. What happens after the murder is the story of what Johnny Shinn—late of Army Intelligence and veteran of two wars—in spite of himself, does about it. The tense lynch trial that is the focus of the action is really the trial of Johnny Shinn as an American.