Queens Full: 3 Novelets and a Pair of Short Shorts

by Ellery Queen

Paperback, 1965

Status

Available

Call number

813.52

Publication

Signet

Description

"Three novellas and two short stories featuring the prince of American detective fiction . . . He's one of the great who never palls" (Kirkus Reviews). The amateur theater company of Wrightsville is dying a slow and painful death. Every production is worse than the last, and the backers are about to pull the plug when the director reaches for his ace in the hole: the always-reliable production TheDeath of Don Juan. For the lead, he digs up faded Broadway star Foster Benedict, whose name is enough to sell out the run. But on opening night, Benedict makes a hash of the first act, and doesn't show up for the second. When he's found in his dressing room with a knife buried in his back, it's clear that the libertine's death has come a bit too soon. World-famous detective Ellery Queen is in the audience, and in this novella--as well as in the other stories collected in Queens Full--he proves that Don Juan doesn't have a monopoly on adventure. … (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member antiquary

AS I've said elsewhere, I usually prefer Queen's short stories to his novels, and I really like these stories, notably "The Death of Don Juan" a theatrical mystey (something I usually enjoy) in which the rather over-the-hill glamorous star playing (and behaving) like Don Juan, is murdered, leaving

a cleverly misleading dying message. Of the other stories, E =Murder involves the death of a physicist involved in a critical government project. This also involves a very simple dying message. "The Wrightsville Heirs" involves the three unloving heirs of a wealthy man who left each of them a million dollars (which they wasted) and the rest of his property to his second wife (their stepmother, whom one of them may have smothered when she began talking of leaving the money to her hired companion. "Diamonds in Paradise" concerns a former Broadway star whose diamond earrings are stolen in a high-class gambling house the night Inspector Queen happens to raid it. THe thief jumps out a window and dies, leaving yet another dying message revealing where he hid the diamonds. "The Case against Carroll" involves a lawyer whose partner is murdered just after finding that the lawyer (for honorable reasons) has embezzled money from a trust in the firm's care. This case does not involve a dying message, and ultimately Ellery Queen is not able to save the lawyer.

Show Less