The Scarlet Letters by Ellery Queen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I love the Queen series. i just picked up another clump of them. This is one of them. However, this is not an example of the reason i picked up so many.

This Queen tale is waaaaaaay too prolonged with an involved MaGuffin that seems orderly enough, but gets monotonous quickly as little else happens involving, what appears to be, a domestic dispute. The story doesn’t make sense unless Queen jumps to too many assumptions. which is something he warns not to do in many of the Queen novels. This is a repeated inconsistency that is the only way the writers could link events, but a flimsy one and one that had me find the entire tale ridiculous.

Due to the prolonged trip through the alphabet, the few characters are very well identified. Odd that the few settings, that are repeated many times, did not have the detail they could have.

The ending is very unsatisfying considering all it took to get to the point. All proving this would have been a far better short story.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 5 out of 5 points.

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There Was an Old Woman by Ellery Queen
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It was a couple dozen pages in that I knew I was in trouble. This Queen “mystery” is an unfortunate one where it’s clear the author’s knew the ending and then forced the poor constructed story.

There really is no excuse for how bad this is. Something happens very early that the Queen character would never have missed. Of course, that oversight was what the authors had to use to continue the story. Then a series of characters act as if police procedure is determined by the public. Again all to build the story. The worse part is that it’s do damned obvious. How did the duo, known as Ellery Queen, let this happen. Why did an editor not flag it. Sounds like an issue of speeding a contracted book out.

If you can view this more as a fairy tale, which isn’t hard once into the contents, then this book has some very distinct characters. Queen et al of the regular cast are written per usual with the exception that they are otherwise entirely inept in this book.

This really comes down to the horrible , obvious ending that is written as if Queen was a brilliant genius. Certainly this is the worse book I’ve read in the series.

Nevertheless, if all could be ignored, the writing is good…

Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book. 3 out of ten points.

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A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a great deal of fun! I love Ellery Queen and having this unorthodox way of presenting a Sherlock Holmes story within a Queen tale made a Queen book all the more fun! There is a bit of awkwardness about it all, but quite a change of pace for a Queen novel.

Apparently there were three authors involved. The two cousins who masquerade as Queen and the another who wrote the Holmes part of the book. The styles are obviously very different, but also well reflect the change of time period and location, as it should.

Seems to me the representation of the Holmes character gallery is extremely well done. The Queen characters are handled as the Queen characters are always.

Setting is far better rendered on the Holmes side. You can well feel the foggy, dreary setting.

I have not seen the film the book is based on, thought that is neither here nor there. The book story stand on it’s own without outside influence of other depictions.

Bottom line: i recommend this book. 7 of 10 points.

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Golden Goose by Ellery Queen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this book! Definitely one of my favorite books of all time! It’s also outstanding in writing, plotting and full of fun!

This is presented as a mystery that would better be described as a Faulkner-esque study of odd characters in an odd town that happens to have a mystery involved. And it’s a great mystery! Especially the end!

The characters are outstanding. Each with their individual voice and extremely well defined. The writer(s) did a fantastic job with the setting. I do wonder if this was written by the duo known as Ellery Queen or was someone else. This book has a far lighter and better written than other Queen books.

This is just a terrific and fun book!

Bottom line: A must read. 10 of 10.

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Above are the last 9 books I read through November and December. I went to simpler fiction to get to the 52 number. Quite different from the start of the year where the bulk of my reading was non-fiction. I’m aiming for 55 in 2010. Let’s see if I can make it.