How long does it take to read Calamity Town?
Calamity Town by Ellery Queen takes about 5 hours 14 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 14 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1942. 285 pages, about 78,375 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 43 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 14 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 16 minutes |
The page count is the median across 34 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Ellery Queen moves into the small town of Wrightsville, somewhere in New England, in order to get some peace and quiet so that he can write a book. As a result of renting a furnished house, he becomes peripherally involved in the story of Jim Haight and Nora Wright. Nora's father is president of the Wrightsville National bank, "oldest family in town", and when the head cashier Jim Haight became engaged to his daughter Nora, he built and furnished a house for them as a wedding present. That was three years ago—the day before the wedding, Jim Haight disappeared, the wedding was called off, and the "jinxed" house became known as "Calamity House". Ellery rents it, just before the return of Jim Haight, and the wedding is soon on again. Ellery finds some evidence that Jim is planning to poison Nora and, after the wedding, she does display some symptoms of arsenic poisoning. But it is Jim's sister Rosemary who dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail. Jim is tried for the murder and it is only after some startling and tragic events that Ellery reveals the identity of the murderer.
Subjects: Mystery, Detective and mystery stories, Novelists, City and town life, Fiction, Fiction, mystery & detective, general
