The American Gun Mystery cover art

The American Gun Mystery

The Ellery Queen Mysteries

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The American Gun Mystery

By: Ellery Queen
Narrated by: Dan Butler
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About this listen

When a Western star is gunned down at a rodeo, Ellery Queen saddles up to solve the mystery.

Buck Horne has roped thousands of cattle, slugged his way out of dozens of saloons, and shot plenty of men dead in the street - but always on the back lot. He's a celluloid cowboy, and his career is nearly kaput. The real box-office draw is his daughter, Kit, a brawling beauty who can out shoot any rascal the studio has to offer. Desperate for a comeback, Buck joins Wild Bill Grant's traveling rodeo for a show in New York, hoping to land one last movie contract. But he has scarcely mounted his horse when he falls to the dirt. It wasn't age that made him slip - it was the bullet in his heart. Watching from the stands are Ellery Queen, debonair sleuth, and his police detective father. They are New Yorkers through and through, but to solve the rodeo killing, the Queens must learn to talk cowboy.

©1960 Ellery Queen (P)2013 AudioGO Amateur Sleuths Detective Mystery Traditional Detectives Fiction cowboy Heartfelt Sports Animal Sports Western Fiction

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All stars
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Went on a bit long. Quite a good story with an interesting twist but it was not the best one in the Ellery Queen series that I’ve listened to.

A decent storyline

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Of all the readers of Ellery Queen novels, this is easily the best, with clear character definition and a smooth flow.

Best reader

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A typical Ellery Queen mystery, spoiled by poor narration. The depiction of Richard Queen a an Irish American was spoiled by a very poor attempt at an Irish accent. In some places I simply could not understand what the narrator was saying . The narrator also attempted to impose others with somewhat strange accents which actually jarred on the ear. A good story spoiled by poor narration..

Beware of this narrator

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A pity the readers version of Inspector Queen’s accent is so terrible. But it doesn’t spoil the overall experience.?

Great story and listening experience as usual

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I like the puzzles and that all of the clues are given to you. Not that I get all the answers - I think some of the context is missing to do that for a modern reader.
But the filling in of the context of the time in between the world wars and also close to previous wars within the US is fascinating. A glimpse of things that are likely not there now.
I like the slowness. It makes good bedtime listening for me - just balanced right between over exciting and boring.
What I don’t like are the inevitable biases in a book written by people who would have been very privileged at the time. This book isn’t as bad as the one about the top hat though, and so I can see myself returning to it one day.

Interesting description of bygone era.

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By far the least satisfying of the EQ mysteries that I’ve read. The plot collapses into nonsense at the denouement. For the sake of those who want to avoid spoilers, I’ll only say that the ends sought by the murderer could have been met in a thousand ways more likely to have been successful while escaping detection. I cannot imagine a scheme less likely to fail. The shot could have went astray & had a less lethal effect being second only to picking a location that not only had 20,000 witnesses, but was televised! I’d have to conclude that the culprit’s “saddle was commencing to slip”.
A second point that seemed glaringly obvious to me was the angle of entry of the bullet. How they wouldn’t have reasoned that it couldn’t be easy to determine the posture of a man on a galloping horse was beyond me…. a point only brought out like a prize by Queen during his summation.
The story had its compensations, some good dialogue, and excellent work by the narrator. Overall, I’d recommend skipping this one.

Complicated for the sake of complication

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Another good Ellery Queen story but woeful continuity with the previous books. Why change the accents of many of the characters from the earlier books? And some of the mispronunciations I’m definitely going to ascribe to ignorance.

Enjoyable story but poor narration

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Loser-reader ruins book by reading his retarded irish uncle's accent into Richard Queen's character. What sort of evil pervert willfully affects rustic Scottish or rural Irish dialects and impose them on an established American literary figure? Dan Butler, sir, you are an evil, stupid loser.

Loser-reader ruins book

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These “Ellery Queen mysteries “ must be potboilers written by uncredited hacks. Queen junior is a tedious, conceited and generally unbelievable character who spots tiny clues others miss doesn’t share his ideas with his brain dead police colleagues then in a superior condescending tedious manner takes what feels like hours, certainly pages and pages slowly revealing how clever he is. None of the other one dimensional characters have any reality and their dialogue could have been written by a computer. Queens explanations are ridiculous- eg “there are only two ways a playing card can be torn in half therefore the killer is left handed!!! “ I’ve tried two and both times After hours of this mind numbing stuff I’ve had to bale out. I no longer cared who did it or why or how. If you enjoy this stuff you’d probably be happy listening to someone reading the Yellow Pages. There are hundreds of Good detective stories on Audible don’t waste credits on this junk. Yes I am angry, mostly with myself for paying for a second Ellery Queen after shortening my life with the first.

Second Queen I’ve had to abandon

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