The Westing Game

A motley crew of long-time Milwaukeeans get suspiciously good deals on apartments in a new building next to the haunted old Westing mansion. This proves very convenient when millionaire Sam Westing turns up dead and all of the building residents are named as potential heirs. One pair of them will inherit two million dollars, if they can figure out which one of them is the murderer. But Sam Westing and the apartment residents have a lot more secrets than just that.

Having read this many times as a kid, it has lost some oomph. But I still appreciate the double-triple-quadruple twists, and the constantly changing point of view. The characters are diverse, interesting, and endearing. The views on gender roles and race hold up well (at the show more end of the book a black woman is appointed to the Supreme Court .... a thing which is still nowhere close to happening 45 years later) but the views on disability, particularly intellectual disability, definitely do not. Read with caution. I enjoyed revisiting this story as an adult, but now that I know all the secrets I don't think I need to read it again without good reason. show less

Several great hooks occur right off the bat, setting the tone and starting the mystery. This leads up to sixteen might-be-heirs being informed of the late Sam Westing's game he left in his will that will determine who inherits his $200 million estate. They are divided into eight pairings, and each pair receives four clues. Only Sam Westing and we the readers know what all of the clues are. If I was in the target age I can well imagine trying to sort and arrange all the clues into some kind of sense before the mystery's solution is revealed. It's a good gimmick.

Among the many secrets in play there is (or is there?) also a murderer, a bomber and a thief in this mix of sixteen people, as well as someone who doesn't belong at all. The show more amount of diversity among them is incredible for its time - I looked in vain to see whether the text has been updated in the intervening decades but nope, this appears to be the original. There's more going on in this story that meets the eye, with several surprise revelations along the way, and the pace is rapid-fire. With sixteen suspects/detectives, all of them clever and each of them developing their own pet theory about what's going on, it's almost impossible to track and remember what everybody knows or doesn't know or thinks they know, until they do the next thing that reminds you. It's best not to try keeping it all straight but just let it wash over you. Most theories are quickly discarded in any case as contrary evidence arises.

I liked several of the characters. Chris is excellently depicted, and though his condition is never defined it's almost better that way. Angela and Turtle are both well drawn, sisters who care for and envy one another at the same time. Everyone in fact is well drawn, but with having so many people to shift between and all of them made sympathetic, it is nearly impossible to root for any one team. Some readers come away feeling they didn't get close to anyone in particular, because Raskin would rather have you become close with all of them at once. I suppose that's a weak point. That ending, though. That gets this book its five stars. show less

With a large cast of characters and an intricate game and a puzzling mystery, Raskin's novel is so deftly composed, cunningly plotted, and briskly paced, such the reader is constantly jumping back to make sure they haven;t missed something - they usually haven't, it's all there. I'm not sure I've ever read a kids' book that that could challenge most adult books for complexity of plot, yet it all skims along lightly until the final unexpected twists and satisfying turns. A small masterpiece, perhaps even a work of witty genius.

I first read this as a kid probably not long after it was published (which was in 1978, so I'm clearly dating myself). I was a quiet, shy, introvert who spent more time in books than in the real world, or so it seemed. Or so I preferred. I picked this up at the library and took it home. Read it cover to cover, over and over. I checked it out many times. I loved this book. As an adult, I ordered my own hardcover copy because I wanted to have it nearby whenever I felt like re-reading it again, as I have just now in 2025, nearly 45 years later. Recently a friend of mine asked me if there was any book that I've ever read that I wish I had written myself. For my own personal and philosophical reasons, that's a difficult question to answer. show more But this one came to mind as an easy answer. Maybe it's because I love the intricate plot that was cleverly woven together to give us interesting characters, a vibrant setting, and a mystery that blew me away when I first read it (I suspect my adult mind would have unraveled it well before the last page, but I'll never know). Maybe it's because it has aged well; written in a "different time" it nonetheless embraces diversity and progressive themes that would make a modern author proud. Or maybe it's just because I would love to have written a book that so captivated a young reader it made him wish he could write books himself and thus spent the rest of his life trying and contemplating that possibility. show less

The Westing Game is a fun children’s mystery story about an eccentric millionaire called Sam Westing, who gathers 16 potential heirs to his $200 million estate to compete in a mysterious game to discover who among them murdered him. This is a book that I would have loved as a child and, even as an adult, found to be a very clever read.

More of a puzzle than a mystery, the book is filled with quirky characters that are all just slightly off normal. The potential heirs are mysteriously hand-picked to be tenants of a new apartment building within sight of the old Westing mansion. Like an Agatha Christie story, they are gathered together to be presented with the information that one of them is a murderer. They are put into pairs, given show more some very strange clues and told to solve the mystery. What follows is plenty of scheming, plotting and detecting as they scramble to make sense of the enigmatic clues.

This complicated game or puzzle within a novel makes for a very inventive and creative story that had me wishing that I had a child nearby to both read it with me and help me unravel the clues. show less

This book is actually well written. It was a small book, but it took time to read, partly because I loved it so much and took time, and partly because you have to be smart to figure it all out! It's good for a rainy day, and I loved the characters, but if I were you, I wouldn't read the epilogue, just because it kind of ruined some of them in a way, and I kind of wish I got a little more attached to the characters, like I do in other books. But, really loved the character Turtle and how smart she was, and the humor you find in each character that got me laughing a lot of the time. Also really loved the puzzle-written style of this book, and how literally everything had a purpose and connected at the end, (which blew me away!!!.) Again, show more well written, the author put together a golden classic. Five stars!!! show less

Reading this for maybe the tenth time (the first nine times were during my childhood), I was struck by a few things:

1. This book still rocks my socks off.

2. The 1970s is long enough ago that there were a few cringers. For example, "She had a retarded daughter...a Mongoloid child." And, "Proud of her liberalism, Grace Windsor Wexler stood and leaned over the table to shake the black woman's hand." These are not deal-breakers, but they take some historical context explaining.

3. 16 characters and 16 pieces on a chess board! The chess theme was not apparent to me as a kid, but it's was glaringly obvious this time. You've got to anticipate your opponents' moves.

4. I totally thought the Wexlers and the Hoos were headed towards a wife-swap show more situation. Grace Wexler starts calling James Hoo "Jimmy" and Jake Wexler eats at the Hoo's restaurant every day and helps Sun Lin learn English. It really seemed like they were with the wrong people, right? There's a grown-up reading of a kid's book for you.

5. Berthe Crow is really very truly creepy. show less