The Egyptian Cross Mystery
£3.80
‘Murder on Christmas day’ is the newspaper headline no one wanted to read…
A true classic from the golden age of crime fiction.
‘Brilliant’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When a small-town schoolteacher is discovered dead, beheaded, and tied to a T-shaped cross on December 25th, Ellery Queen is intrigued enough to take a closer look. But when he arrives, Queen is met with too few clues and too little evidence to produce a satisfactory verdict, even for a master sleuth such as himself, and so returns home, defeated.
But when an identical murder occurs – followed by several more – Queen discovers a horrific connection to a strange cult. This is a disturbing puzzle unlike anything he’s encountered before, and it will take all of his powers of deduction to uncover the killer.
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Additional information
| Publisher | The Murder Room (25 Nov. 2021) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 3968 KB |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Not Enabled |
| Word Wise | Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 354 pages |
by michael proffitt
This book was excellent reading.
by Credit Man
The Ellery Queen novels follow a certain format. The solution at the end is contrived, but suffice try satisfying given that the enjoyment of the books is how the plot unrolls.
Unfortunately in this book the solution is so contrived, and illogical, as to be ridiculous.
If you are new to a EQ, start with the first, and best: The Roman Hat Mystery.
by A PARSONS
great
by Jane
……with a less exotic setting than some Ellery Queens, and the “Egyptian” tau cross thing rather a red herring – brought in , I think to match titles with, e.g. the American Gun Mystery, the Chinese Orange Mystery etc..
by J Bannion
I have always liked reading books from Ellery Queen as he is a great classic murder mystery writer. I love his way of reasoning in explaining to the reader how everything happened. In many of his books you also get a challenge (this book included), where the reader gets a chance to think and decide who the murderer is, having in his possession the same facts as the writer. It is not always easy to find the guilty party, but Ellery Queen’s books are always such a joy to read. Reccommended to anybody who likes classic, well thought, mystery murder books.
by NJ
It’s difficult to get more celebrated in the annals of American crime fiction than Ellery Queen – as authors, editors, anthologists and compilers Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee were better known. I doubt anyone would attempt to repugn their impact on the development of the genre; from the exemplary complexity of their fair play novels to the leg-up given to so many other authors in the pages of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, their stature is assured.
For all the brilliance and insight displayed across their combined careers, however, The Egyptian Cross Mystery does feel a little like someone struggling to make a plot fill a specified number of pages, and the kicker is that they’d probably get away with it were there not an absolutely blistering period of play just after the halfway mark reminding you that you’re in the hands of slightly-off-their-game professionals.
The start meanders, the follow-up meanders – everyone has something to hide, naturally, but most of these intrigues are dismissed in an almost desultory manner; Muddying The Waters 101 – and then just as I was about to pack it in suddenly everything kicked over into the type of wonderfully dizzy whirligig that I would expect from this typewriter. When Queen (detective and authors alike) is in this kind of form he’s a world-beater, like Sherlock Holmes with a peculiarly focussed form of ADHD, and the next quarter of the book tore by in no time at all.
Alas, not to last. The ‘Challenge to the Reader’ is always a lovely moment – you’ve seen the clues I’ve seen and I know who the guilty party is…do you? – but after another dredge of characters running around to little or no effect I personally found it hard to get too excited. The solution is as fair as they come, no doubt about that, but it would be more affecting at the end of a shorter and more tightly-coiled book. That midway brilliance remains, though, and is almost worth the price of admission alone.
by Colin McG
A convoluted puzzler with double-bluff following on from bluff as Ellery Queen finds himself drawn into a case with grotesque, grand guignol features. A series of hideous murders take place, all involving the crucifixion of headless corpses, leading to the uncovering of an old blood feud originating in Montenegro.
It’s a complex, twisty and gory mystery which is resolved with the characteristic application of EQ logic.
by Rob Falconer
Having read so much modern rubbish, it’s refreshing to get back to something written with thought. Very good.