CALAMITY TOWN: A NOVEL - INSCRIBED by Queen, Ellery (pseud. of Frederic Dannay & Manfred Bennington Lee) - 1942

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942. First American Edition. A psychologically complex family tragedy, and the first of four novels that took Ellery Queen beyond Manhattan to the a quiet hamlet called Wrightsville. "Needing a place to stay where he can write a novel, he rents a house from Wrightsville's first family, a house that is reputed to be a jinx, and becomes entagled in the emotional problems of the Wrights and their daughter's erratic new husband. Then comes murder: At the family's New Year's Eve party, one of the drinks with which the birth of 1941 is toasted has been laced with poison. The crime tears apart the family and the town; and subsequent events - the police investigation, the sensational trial, and more deaths - are treated not as pieces of a puzzle (though a neat plot is hidden among them) but as nightmares happening to real people, with Ellery powerless to help and contributing nothing until the last chapter" (Pronzini & Muller p.656). An attractive copy of this Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone, and uncommon inscribed (the Florence & Edward Kaye copy being the only inscribed example in the auction record). Barzun & Taylor 2747; Hubin p.335. First Printing. Octavo (20.25cm); orange cloth, with titling and decorative elements stamped in dark green on spine and front cover; dustjacket; vi,318pp. Inscribed on an inserted leaf, preceding the half-title page: "To Raymond Knight / with the best wishes of Ellery Queen." Hint of sunning to spine, spine ends gently nudged, with some faint dust-soil and foxing to upper edge of textblock; Near Fine. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $2.00), gently spine-sunned, with modest wear to extremities, and a small ink number at upper margin of rear flap; Very Good+.