Reviews

The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen

nettelou's review against another edition

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slow-paced

3.0

liahecht's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

mwgerard's review against another edition

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4.0

As a nerdy child who read just about any mystery she could get her hands on, I often picked up musty copies of the Ellery Queen Magazine with stories by dozens of contributing writers at yard sales. And in recent years I’ve watched some episodes of the show starring Jim Hutton. But somehow, I had never read an original Ellery Queen novel.

Based on the pulpiness of the magazine (in both content and printing material), I presumed the novel would have that hard-boiled grittiness to it. I expected dames and car chases and gun battles and alley fights. In reality, the novel is very constructed and the prose is dense.


Please support independent reviews and read my full post here: http://mwgerard.com/review-the-greek-coffin-mystery-by-ellery-queen/

joctrem's review against another edition

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medium-paced

4.25


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sadieruin's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

3.0

school_librarian60's review against another edition

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5.0

This book had an amazing twist that I did not see coming. For the first time in a while I was blown away by a book's ending.

allieperkins's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

swathi_narasimhan's review against another edition

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4.0

This is quite a fat book for a cozy mystery. I picked it up after googling for authors similar to Christie who writes cozy mysteries. Strongly being recommended for me, I started this book. This is my first read of the author and I look forward to more.

Ellery Queen is the son of inspector Richard Queen who assist in solving murders. There are lot of characters in the book and it took quite sometime to get to know them. Honestly, it took quite some time to get to know the psychology of the characters. The ending came as a surprise to me. And the last shot where Ellery 'takes the dias' to explain the whole mess is fantastic. It reminded me of Poirot, though he explains before revealing the murderer and Queen does it after.

It has quite a bit of humour and the plot is woven nicely. All the clues are put-forth to the reader as well. And it perfectly sums up.

I was right in guessing half of the mystery, the other half needed much more attention to even the minutest of the detail.

If you are a cozy-mystery lover, go for it!

natalie_and_company's review against another edition

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2.75

A refreshing Detective Mystery that is quite a bit less dry than something you might read about Sherlock Holmes. I very much enjoyed it and thought the full cast of characters was well-written and considered an enormous amount of details put in to make the mystery misleading in just the right way. Although by the fourth monologue given by the main character stating they had the answer I was a bit tired. I was pages away from finding out the answer and was rapidly losing interest because the main character was once again monologuing and stating he had indeed found the actual answer.  Its unfortunate because I was really enjoying it all the way up until that point. 

jfontan1066's review against another edition

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mysterious fast-paced

3.75