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How long does it take to read The Egyptian Cross Mystery?

Ellery Queen

The Egyptian Cross Mystery by Ellery Queen takes about 5 hours 43 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Part of Ellery Queen

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About 5 hours 43 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1932. 312 pages, about 85,800 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 32 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 43 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 35 minutes

The page count is the median across 19 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

It’s Christmas in Chicago, and Inspector Richard Queen is enjoying a busman’s holiday at a conference on gangland violence—but his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, is bored silly. Until, that is, Ellery reads of an unusual killing in rural Arroyo, West Virginia: A schoolmaster has been found beheaded and crucified. Ellery hustles his father into his roadster and heads east, since there is nothing he’d like better for Christmas than a juicy, gruesome puzzle. When the Queens arrive in Arroyo, they learn that the victim was an eccentric atheist, but not the sort to make enemies. What initially looks to be the work of a sadistic cult turns out to be something far more sinister. In the months ahead, more victims will turn up all over the world—all killed in the same horrifying manner. It will take several bodies before Queen divines the clue that unlocks the mystery of the Christmas crucifixion.

Subjects: Fiction, Police, Detective and mystery stories, American, American Detective and mystery stories, Novelists

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