Fri 25 May 2012
Reviewed by Ray O’Leary: ELLERY QUEEN – Calamity Town.
Posted by Steve under Covers , Reviews[8] Comments
ELLERY QUEEN – Calamity Town. Little Brown, hardcover, 1942. Pocket 283, paperback, 1945. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft.
When I first started reading Mysteries, back in the mid-60s, I pretty much devoured the earlier titles of the acknowledged “masters” of the Classic Detective Story (except for Erle Stanley Gardner, whom I ignored until the late 70s) so I probably first read this about a quarter-century ago. I turned to it again, just recently, because it was the only Ellery Queen selected by H. R. F. Keating in his 100 Best Books of Crime and Mystery.
Ellery “Smith” comes to the New England town of Wrightsville to work on his new novel, and stays — due to Wartime housing shortages — in a house built by Mr. Wright for his daughter Nora, when she was going to be married … only just before the Wedding, her fiance, one Jim Haight, disappeared.
Shortly after Ellery takes up residence, however, the missing Haight returns, and it isn’t long before he and Nora are re-betrothed and then married. Ellery gives up the house, but as he and Nora’s sister are moving some of Jim’s things in, they discover three letters, dated for the forthcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, in which he describes Nora’s illness and death.
Sure enough, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Nora is ill, but come New Year’s Day, it’s someone completely else who buys the farm, a victim of Arsenic poisoning.
Hard to say whether I figured out the solution of this one or just remembered it from my Salad Days, since the idea has been used since. The characters are credible, if not terribly deep, and the prose serviceable. Not as memorable as the three Queen novels on my list, but pretty good nonetheless.
Editorial Comment: The top image is that of the hardcover First Edition. The lower one is one of the later Pocket reprints. I chose it because of the rare split-screen effect, one that I don’t believe was used very often by paperback publishers, then or now.
May 25th, 2012 at 10:58 pm
I would have read this one back in the mid-1950s. It was included in a three-in-one omnibus volume titled THE WRIGHTSVILLE MURDERS, which I bought soon after I joined the Dollar Mystery Guild.
It was one of the books that convinced me at a young age that mysteries were even better than Science Fiction, but do I remember it today?
No. Not at all.
But I still own that copy of WRIGHTSVILLE MURDERS, and I even know where it is.
May 26th, 2012 at 11:40 am
The 3 Ellery Queen novels that were on my list of 20 favorite mystery novels were DRURY LANE’S LAST CASE, THE GREEK COFFIN MYSTERY and THE GLASS VILLAGE.
May 26th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
I’d go along with two of those for sure. I’d have to read the third one again before I could say yea or nay.
May 26th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Steve – Here are some more reactions to CALAMITY TOWN, some quite divergent:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GAdetection/message/28989
May 26th, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Whew! Thanks, Mike, for putting that symposium of views and comments together.
Here’s another, a retro review on Kirkus by J. Kingston Pierce:
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/mysteries-and-thrillers/rap-sheet-calamity-town-ellery-queen/
which ends with the following two lines:
“Yet, intriguingly, it’s our hero’s inability to spot clues here that leads to heartbreak and catastrophe, and makes this one of the series’ finest installments.
“After the events in Calamity Town, it’s a wonder Ellery Queen was ever allowed into Wrightsville again.”
The original Kirkus review from 1942 is here:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ellery-queen-2/calamity-town/#review
with the warning that I think the reviewer says more than I think s/he should have.
May 26th, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Thinking that anyone who’s not a member of the Yahoo “Golden Age of Detection” group may not be able to access Mike’s link, I’ve decided to repeat it here:
“This situation [marking a change in EQ’s modus
operandi as an amateur sleuth] is made even more
extreme in the Wrightsville novels that followed
‘Calamity Town.’ I confess that today I regret all
of these changes in EQ’s approach. I like the old
EQ better, in general. I am impressed with the
minimalism of EQ’s 1940’s novels; it is a one time
tour de force, and somebody had to do it. But as
a whole, my heart is more with complexity, and I
would have preferred many more of the old style
early EQ novels.
” ‘Calamity Town’ is the best of the Wrightsville
books. This tragic novel has a remarkable sense
of structure. The whole novel seems to built on
railroad tracks, with events leading on with
powerful logic.”
— Mike Grost
http://mikegrost.com/queen1.htm#Minimalism
“Very intelligently, Dannay and Lee used this change in
locale to loosen the structure of their stories. More
emphasis was placed on personal relationships, and less
on the details of investigation. For a time this worked
well. ‘Calamity Town’ (1942) and ‘The Murderer is a
Fox’ (1945) are two books in which the transition from
one kind of crime story to another is successfully
managed, although a feeling lingers that they would be
even better books if Ellery did not appear in them.”
— Julian Symons, ‘Bloody Murder’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamity_Town
“One of the less irritating works of the author. Ellery
leaves Manhattan for ‘Wrightsville’, where he falls in
love and gets entangled in various concerns culminat-
ing in murder; he is for a time himself a suspect. The
town with its gossip and cliques is well done; the
narrative is sober, and there are good courtroom
scenes. Ellery is, as usual, more oracular than active.”
— Barzun and Taylor, ‘A Catalogue of Crime’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamity_Town
” ‘Calamity Town,’ you see, is very good. Not the
masterpiece it’s often trotted out as, but very good
all the same. Ellery ‘Smith,’ a well-known detective
novelist, buys a house in the small town of Wrights-
ville and finds himself involved in the lives of the
Wrights, which develops from the suspicion that
Jim Haight is planning to murder his wife into
actual murder.
“One of the most striking things about the book is
how well it’s characterised and written. The early
Queens were ingenious and sometimes brilliant
problems with rather cardboard characters
(‘Tragedy of X,’ ‘Siamese Twin’ and ‘Spanish Cape’
excepted). The story here, though, is character-
driven. Ellery (and the reader) sees the characters
from the inside, as human beings first and as
suspects second. Tellingly, Ellery falls in love with
a nice young thing; offers himself up as a possible
murderer in order to raise doubts about the guilt of
Jim Haight; and is distraught when a double tragedy
envelops the Wrights at the end of the novel.
“The most interesting character is the eponymous
Wrightsville. I tend to remember settings as much
as I do plots (one of the reasons why I’m such a
fan of Mitchell, I suppose) so it’s nice to have such
a well-drawn community as Wrightsville – decent
and law-abiding on the outside, seething with
paranoid spite and resentment inside and demanding
that their prime suspect be lynched without benefit
of a fair trial. (I should find a copy of ‘The Glass
Village,’ which is supposed to take this metaphor
for America even further.)
“Where the book fails to reach classic status is in
the vital department of plot. It’s good, but not
brilliant. Perhaps my disappointment with it is the
fact that it was one of the few Queens I’ve solved
(the others are ‘Halfway House’ and ‘The Dragon’s
Teeth,’ although I did have my doubts about
‘Roman Hat,’ ‘Spanish Cape’ and ‘There Was an
Old Woman’). Of course, the truth dawned upon
me forty pages before the end (largely because of
the ‘impossibility’ of the crime – if it wasn’t done
that way, then it must have been done this way –
and the provenance of certain documents) rather
than halfway through Chapter 3 as has been the
case with nearly every other detective story I’ve
read this year. That’s one of the problems with
writers whom one relies upon for surprises (‘Greek
Coffin,’ ‘Tragedy of X’). When I spot the murderer
before the author means me to, it’s very hard to
resist feeling disappointed. In this case, however,
the characterisation (and the fact that I got the
motive wrong!) is good enough to make the ending
work.
“On the whole, a very good book that may well have
been a classic if the authors had made the ending
more surprising.”
— Nicholas Fuller, ‘Golden Age Mysteries’
http://tinyurl.com/87teb4d
“… the reason I’ve never felt CALAMITY TOWN
belongs in the pantheon of great Golden Age who-
dunits — the individual clues are interesting, the
characterization and milieu wonderful, but the
central ploy I have always found far too transparent
(especially if one is familiar with other Queen
variations of what Francis Nevins refers to as the
‘Birlstone Gambit’).
“Indeed, I probably prefer CALAMITY TOWN
to CAT OF MANY TAILS in all those other
respects … but its plot transparency ultimately
forces me to rate it far below CAT.”
— Archer Brisbane, ‘Golden Age Mysteries’
http://jdcarr.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1767
“Wrightsville USA! Sounds like something out of
the pop industry … Indeed every Queen fan’s heart
misses a beat whenever our sleuth enters the
fictional city of Wrightsville, most common small
town in America with a distinct seamy side. All
Wrightsville-murders are well written as more
attention is given to character development and
humor. The way some Wrightsville stories interlink
only adds to the fun, readers almost experience a
feeling of homecoming. This is the era wherein
Ellery Queen experiments with minimalism as his
work is stripped down to its most fundamental
features. A Hercules labour seldom seen, certainly
in the field of detective literature.
” ‘The Four of Hearts’ (1938), ‘Calamity Town’ (1942)
and ‘The Murderer is a Fox’ (1945) all have common
grounds. Three times we are confronted with poison-
ings, each time it is hard to figure out how the crime
took place. Furthermore in Wrightsville Ellery gets
invariably separated from the New York Police Depart-
ment and thus his normal modus operandi. He has to
rely on his reputation as sleuth to give him access to
any police investigations.The more fallible side to
Ellery is especially emphasized. Nowhere else is the
limitation of reason better shown than in ‘Ten Days
Wonder’ (1948). Ellery went through the turmoil of
extreme self-doubt, almost giving up on being a
detective.
“… The first Wrightsville story is a masterpiece of
character and scene. But the key points of the
mystery aren’t that difficult to figure out. Still, a
deservedly recognized classic. Movie: made into
a Japanese film ‘The Three Undelivered Letters’
in 1979.”
— ‘Ellery Queen: A Website on Deduction’
http://neptune.spaceports.com/~queen/QBI_6.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204360/
“CALAMITY TOWN – Ellery Queen – (Little, Brown: $2.)
“Crime, Place, and Sleuth:
Mr. Queen, rusticating incog., enmeshes self in small-town
family tangle and writes finis to mysterious arsenical
poisonings.
“Summing Up:
Premeditated murder tracked to its astounding
source in the most astute Queen fashion with
reverse English finish that springs real surprise.
“Verdict:
Ace-high.”
— ‘The Saturday Review of Literature,’ May 2, 1942
http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1942may02-00020?View=PDF
“CALAMITY TOWN, by Ellery Queen. $2.00. Little, Brown.
Ellery, posing as a ‘Mr. Smith,’ comes to Wrightsville to do some
writing, but is soon involved with the town’s best family and an
arsenic murder. Mr. Queen’s first novel in three years and well
worth waiting for.”
— ‘The American Mercury,’ July 1942
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1942jul-00123?View=PDF
May 26th, 2012 at 8:57 pm
CALAMITY TOWN is my favorite of the Queen mysteries. I have fond feelings for the early Queens, but it was time for Dannay and Lee to make a shift and they did it brilliantly, IMHO.
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