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A nursery rhyme leads Ellery Queen to a killer—from the author who took "the formal detective novel to greater heights than any American writer" (The Weekly Standard).Ellery Queen was raised in New York City, but his heart belongs to the village of Wrightsville. An idyllic New England hamlet, it was the site of some of the world-famous detective's most remarkable investigations. After years of solving murder cases in Wrightsville's coziest parlors, Queen was sure the community did not show more have any further mysteries to offer. But an anonymous letter draws him back to the most dangerous small town in America.
Luke MacCaby's sagging old Victorian mansion sits on the edge of a respectable Wrightsville district as a fading reminder of the area's long-vanished heyday. When the owner—a seemingly impoverished hermit—passes away, the town is shocked to learn that he was a partner in the local dye works and left behind a fortune worth millions. To find MacCaby's killer, Queen must peel away the surface of the place he so dearly loves.
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Ellery Queen returns to Wrightsville to investigate a series of seemingly connected murders. He is tempted into the case by a childlike woman called Rima. Her father is one of the victims it seems and she begs the initially sceptical Queen to discover the killer. The case turns on an old rhyme - "Rich man,poor man,beggar man,thief".
A clever crime and an even cleverer solution.
Recommended to all lovers of traditional crime and mystery stories c. 1950.
A clever crime and an even cleverer solution.
Recommended to all lovers of traditional crime and mystery stories c. 1950.
Serial killer at large in Wrightville, and EQ is on the list of those marked for murder. I somehow missed this one in all my EQ reading, so it was a treat to read a new EQ for me. However, it wasn't one of the major works. Certainly not in the mold of Cat of Many Tails, which deals with some of the same subject matter.
COLLECTION UN MYSTERE
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Books mentioned in Julian Symons’ Bloody Murder
438 works; 6 members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Double, Double
- Original title
- Double, Double
- Alternate titles
- The Case of the Seven Murders
- Original publication date
- 1950
- People/Characters
- Ellery Queen; Rima Anderson; Dr. Sebastian Dodd; Chief Dakin; Malvina Prentiss; Nick Jacquard (show all 8); Otis Holderfield; Ken Winship
- Important places
- USA; New York, USA; Wrightsville, New York, USA
- First words
- Ellery had thought he was through with Wrightsville.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The color of something alive entered her face, and as Ellery took Rima outside to where Ed Hotchkiss was waiting in his hack he kept thinking, not ver originally, that it was like seeing the sun come up on a darkened world.
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- Members
- 283
- Popularity
- 113,301
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.80)
- Languages
- 9 — Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 27
- ASINs
- 17
