The King Is Dead was a 50-cent thrift store buy, so I wasn't expecting too much, nor did I want that much from it. As long as I got a quick read with some violent crimes, I was sure I'd be pleased. In terms of violent crimes, The King Is Dead comes up slightly short, but it makes up for that by being massively entertaining. I'd never read an Ellery Queen book before, as the other one I own is so fragile I'm afraid to take it out of its plastic bag, but the tone and style shifts were done here in expert fashion, with the additional bonus of detailed descriptions that were parsed out well enough to avoid bogging down the narrative. This is also a lurid story of post-WWII dirty politics, which certainly didn't hurt matters, with an improbable crime that somehow comes together fairly well at the end. If this is a representative example of Ellery Queen mysteries, I'll have to find more of them in the future. This book was massively entertaining.
