Cat of Many Tails [Mass Market Paperback]

Ellery Queen (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Penguin (1966)
• ASIN: B000PCD3YI
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cat of Many Tails - Among Ellery Queen's Best Stories, May 28, 2008

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: CAT OF MANY TAILS (Ellery Queen) (Paperback)

Cat of Many Tails is Ellery Queen at his best. Written in 1949, this suspenseful story, as much a thriller as a mystery, sits almost exactly midway in the Ellery Queen canon.

Cat of Many Tales illustrates the willingness of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee to take risks by deviating from their highly successful formula, that of the Ellery Queen deductive puzzler. In this story Dannay and Lee focus more on the victims as actual individuals, and not simply as pieces in a puzzle. Each victim is realistically described; these vignettes add a strong emotional dimension to the story.

The middle chapters examine New York City itself, not the geographical entity, but the living, breathing metropolis of seven and one-half million people. Dannay and Lee offer a fascinating sociological study of collective fear as thousands of individuals become terrorized by the actions of a single, unknown assailant. Contrastingly, the later chapters shift focus from mass psychology to the motivation and psychology of a single, disturbed individual.

Despite this somewhat atypical structure, Cat Of Many Tails is a solid example of Ellery Queen's remarkable deductive skills. Without giving too much away, Cat of Many Tails is an example of one of Ellery Queen's challenging solutions within a solution, a multi-layered conclusion.

Cat of Many Tails ranks among the best Ellery Queen mysteries, worthy of five stars.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cat of Many Tails - Among Ellery Queen's Best Stories, February 9, 2006

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cat of Many Tails (Mass Market Paperback)

Cat of Many Tails is Ellery Queen at his best. Written in 1949, this suspenseful story, as much a thriller as a mystery, sits almost exactly midway in the Ellery Queen canon.

Cat of Many Tales illustrates the willingness of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee to take risks by deviating from their highly successful formula, that of the Ellery Queen deductive puzzler. In this story Dannay and Lee focus more on the victims as actual individuals, and not simply as pieces in a puzzle. Each victim is realistically described; these vignettes add a strong emotional dimension to the story.

The middle chapters examine New York City itself, not the geographical entity, but the living, breathing metropolis of seven and one-half million people. Dannay and Lee offer a fascinating sociological study of collective fear as thousands of individuals become terrorized by the actions of a single, unknown assailant. Contrastingly, the later chapters shift focus from mass psychology to the motivation and psychology of a single, disturbed individual.

Despite this somewhat atypical structure, Cat Of Many Tails is a solid example of Ellery Queen's remarkable deductive skills. Without giving too much away, Cat of Many Tails is an example of one of Ellery Queen's challenging solutions within a solution, a multi-layered conclusion.

Cat of Many Tails ranks among the best Ellery Queen mysteries, worthy of five stars.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars first class whodunit, March 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat of Many Tails (Mass Market Paperback)

This book belongs certainly to the best books by Queen.
Once again the reader is stunned by the solution which is as usual strictly logical enriched by psychoanalysis.
An extraordinary mix of thriller (the description of New York
under fear) and whodunit.