The Chinese Orange Mysteryby Ellery Queen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the first Ellery Queen mystery I have read. I liked the style which was similar to the classic noir writers, but was not as bleak and gritty. Queen (the character) was a bit of a Sherlock Holmes type. This mystery was a locked-room puzzle with a very limited cast of suspects, but most of them had great potential due to their various secrets. Almost at the end Queen (the author) inserts a challenge telling the reader they have all the info now and asking if they can solve the puzzle. I couldn't. I did figure out who the victim was from the clue of the backwardness (everything in the room where the victim was found, including his clothes, had been turned around backwards) before it was revealed. Overall it was a complex but fair puzzle.
This book counts towards the Colorful Reading Challenge and the Vintage Mysteries Challenge (Yankee Doodle Dandy: one mystery set in the United States).
I like Sherlock Holmes. This sounds cool!
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