Wrightsville Murders: An Ellery Queen Omnibus

Here, were have an omnibus edition of three Ellery Queen mysteries, (about 200 pages each, small fonts), all taking place in the fictional town of Wrightsville, where the young writer-detective visits, initially by chance.

I've read all three entries and these are good, solid examples of middle-period Queen mysteries. They're not the best ever, but they're clearly mature works with nothing silly or hokey about them.

I'll give you the descriptions straight off the dust jacket, as I can not summarize these tales any better myself:

In CALAMITY TOWN, Ellery Queen makes his first appearance in Wrightsville, selecting it as a typical American village, placid, uncomplicated, an ideal spot in which to settle down and write a book. But soon, he finds himself personally involved in a particularly bizarre puzzle -- the case of young Nora Wright whose husband seems determined to kill her by poison. Nora laughs scornfully at the suspicions voiced by her doting family, until a shocking occurence at a New Year's Eve party proves without question that a killer does lurk in their midst.

THE MURDERER IS A FOX finds Queen in Wrightsville once again, this time summoned to attempt to solve a twelve-year-old murder, the scandalous shadow of which threatens the happiness of war hero Davy Fox and his new bride. Bayard Fox returns to the village with Ellery. He is Davy's father, and he is currently serving a life sentence for a murder he swears he did not commit. And death comes along too, provoking Ellery to find two completely different solutions for the tragedy of a dozen years earlier.

TEN DAYS' WONDER concerns the Van Horns: vital, massive Diederich [Van Horn], self-created tycoon, who has spent a fortune in making a famous sculptor of his adopted son, Howard, and who has transformed Sally Mason from a ragged child of the slums into a cultured, extremely desireable beauty. When Diederich Van Horn marries Sally, and Howard falls in love with her, Ellery is called in for a third time, to cope with a curious case of amnesia and blackmail. He predicts one death, but is powerless to prevent another, and, in a night of terror, he is compelled to track a suspected madman to a desolate storm-swept cemetery, and to witness the frightening desecration of a crumbling tomb.

These three stories, (each a book in itself), were written in 1942, 1945, and 1948, respectively. They were re-issued in omnibus form, with a yellow cardboard cover (hardcover) by Little, Brown and Company in this Book Club edition. The dust jacket is black with yellow, white, and red lettering.

If you can find an old copy of this book at a junk store or anywhere else for $3 or $4 bucks, you're getting a worthwhile deal -- it's a nice mystery anthology.

This omnibus edition consists of the first 3 Ellery Queen novels set in Wrightsville, namely, CALAMITY TOWN (1942), THE MURDERER IS A FOX (1945), and TEN DAYS' WONDER (1948). For more detailed discussion of each individual story, consult reviews of the individual books; here I'll be considering them in general terms.

First published in 1948, this omnibus volume at that time covered all the Wrightsville stories, but quite a few more were added to the list in later years, including a number of short stories (consult Listmania for a more complete list of Wrightsville tales).

When referring to "Ellery Queen" in the rest of this review, I'll be referring to the character, rather than to his creators (the team of Fred Dannay and Manfred Lee).

In CALAMITY TOWN, Ellery's on his own; Inspector Queen and the Centre Street team don't appear. Ellery's character has grown out of the annoying dilettante phase of the earliest books, and as a working writer, he's about to begin his next book. Since the book will be set in a small town, city-dwelling Ellery intends to rent a house incognito for six months in none other than Wrightsville, Wright County, New York. Upon hearing the story of "jinxed" Calamity House - built by the Wrights for their middle daughter's marriage, which never took place - he promptly takes the lease, feeling that it would make just as much sense to call Wrightsville Calamity Town. Little did he know where this small town would lead him - or how devastating small town gossip can be.

While CALAMITY TOWN was published in 1942 and would normally have been set in 1941, one of the major events in the story revolves around a New Year's Eve party - so the entire story is very carefully noted to have taken place between August 1940 - May 1941 - anything including December 7, 1941 would have required a re-write of the ending of the book. As it is, Ellery avoids having his identity exposed by draft registration by quietly registering in his native New York City instead.

In THE MURDERER IS A FOX, Davy Fox returns from the China-Burma-India theater with a Medal of Honor, and a bad case of what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder. But the worst damage was done not when he carried a fellow pilot and close friend across most of southern China only to watch him die, but when his father was convicted of his mother's murder when he was a child. His wife Linda, a friend of one of the Wright sisters, and knowing that Army psychologists haven't been able to help, makes an appointment with Ellery Queen, bringing him to Wrightsville for the second time.

In this second visit to Wrightsville, the recurring cast of characters is deployed in what comes to be typical of Wrightsville stories, but isn't a pattern: Wrightsville, like a real-life small town, changes over time, as prosecutors run for higher office, old friends retire, and businesses close or change. Unfortunately, Emmeline DuPre, the worst of the town's gossips, never changes: a typical sample of her work is that she sent an anonymous packet of clippings to Davy in China, implying that Linda is cheating on him.

Finally, Ellery's third but far from last visit to Wrightsville in TEN DAYS' WONDER begins with Howard Van Horn, the son of one of Wrightsville's new-money families - and hence someone social lioness Hermione Wright didn't introduce Ellery to on his first triumphal progress of Wrightsville. Howard's been having blackouts, and is terrified that he's committed some crime that he can't remember. Or has he committed only *one* crime?