The Egyptian Cross Mystery
About this audiobook
The Queens are intrigued when a grisly murder mars a small town's Christmas.
It's Christmas in Chicago, and Detective Richard Queen is enjoying a busman's holiday at a conference on gangland violence—but his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, is bored silly. Until, that is, Ellery reads of an unusual killing in rural Arroyo, West Virginia. A schoolmaster has been found beheaded and crucified. Ellery hustles his father into his roadster and heads east, since there is nothing he'd like better for Christmas than a juicy, gruesome puzzle.
When the Queens arrive in Arroyo, they learn that the victim was an eccentric atheist, but not the sort to make enemies. What initially looks to be the work of a sadistic cult turns out to be something far more sinister. In the months ahead, more victims will turn up all over the world—all killed in the same horrifying manner. It will take several bodies before Ellery divines the clue that unlocks the mystery of the Christmas crucifixion.
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About the author
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn—Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay (1905–1982), and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971)—to write detective fiction. In a successful series of novels that covered forty-two years, Ellery Queen served as both the authors’ name and that of the detective-hero. The cousins also cofounded and directed Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential English crime-fiction magazines of the twentieth century. They were given the Grand Master Award for achievements in the field of the mystery story by the Mystery Writers of America in 1961.
Richard Waterhouse is an actor, teacher, director, and producer who is featured in the Hallmark Christmas classic Moonlight and Mistletoe and the independent feature Karl Rove, I Love You. He lives with his partner in Newbury, Vermont.
