This one was the only Ellery Queen story to appear in the short-lived Today’s Family magazine (February 15, 1953), titled “The Accused,” and renamed, for QBI, “Holdup Dept: The Robber of Wrightsville.” And, yes, Ellery is in Wrightsville, and has been asked to find an accused killer innocent. Incidentally, this is the longest story in QBI, and one of the best. Without the space restrictions of This Week, the cousins were able to develop the story and characters a little bit more. The story re-introduces some minor characters from the Wrightsville novels, and uses some of the usual hallmarks of the Queen’s stories. Basically, though, a poor boy is accused of a crime, which Ellery determines was actually committed by a Wrightsville authority figure.
A nice read, with one quibble: the story opens claiming “Wrightsville is a New England industrial town famous for nothing.” Not even the Bendigos of The King is Dead? Hard to believe…
Reading Ellery Queen 