Library's review
Davy Fox has returned as a decorated war hero to his hometown of Wrightsville, that bucolic village in upstate New York that so enraptured Ellery Queen on his first visit to [Calamity Town]. What the town doesn't know is that Davy is not the same young man he was when he left. He gets the shakes,
Exacerbating Davy's condition are the traumatic events of his childhood, when he abruptly (for reasons that are withheld from the reader until much later in the book) went to live with his Uncle Talbot Fox and Aunt Emily, adoptive parents of young Linda. Whatever it was that happened to his family when he was 10 years old, it's been eating at him ever since, and the trauma of war has only deepened his distress. He's determined to leave Linda and Wrightsville far behind, since he can't trust himself not to do her harm. But before he can make his escape, Lindy gets him to agree to talk to Ellery Queen, to see if that eminent detective can help him sort out his issues and save their marriage.
Many of the characters from [Calamity Town] are present here, too, though some of them have lamentably brief cameos. The author doesn't spare the town busybodies and ne'er-do-wells from censure, even as he waxes rhapsodic about the gentle pace of small-town life. As Ellery sets about trying to solve the mystery, it seems hopeless, and typically of a Queen case, there's more than one version of the truth ...
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has flashbacks to some of his most brutal air battles against the Japanese enemy, and involuntarily fantasizes about killing his beloved wife, Linda. It's a classic case of what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder, though in 1944 it was simply "a case of nerves."Exacerbating Davy's condition are the traumatic events of his childhood, when he abruptly (for reasons that are withheld from the reader until much later in the book) went to live with his Uncle Talbot Fox and Aunt Emily, adoptive parents of young Linda. Whatever it was that happened to his family when he was 10 years old, it's been eating at him ever since, and the trauma of war has only deepened his distress. He's determined to leave Linda and Wrightsville far behind, since he can't trust himself not to do her harm. But before he can make his escape, Lindy gets him to agree to talk to Ellery Queen, to see if that eminent detective can help him sort out his issues and save their marriage.
Many of the characters from [Calamity Town] are present here, too, though some of them have lamentably brief cameos. The author doesn't spare the town busybodies and ne'er-do-wells from censure, even as he waxes rhapsodic about the gentle pace of small-town life. As Ellery sets about trying to solve the mystery, it seems hopeless, and typically of a Queen case, there's more than one version of the truth ...
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Fiction. Mystery. HTML: Could the act of murder really be hereditary? Davy Fox certainly thinks so. When he was only a boy, his father, Bayard Fox, was convicted of murdering his mother in the small town of Wrightsville. Now that Davy has grown up and returned home from the war, he fears that it is only a matter of time until he kills his own wife. But could he really do such a thing? Desperate to find out the truth, Davy's wife Linda calls on Ellery Queen to investigate the twelve year old murder of Jessica Fox..
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1945