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I'm the real live nephew of my Uncle Sam
Feb. 27th, 2014 07:29 pmThis past week I read Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game along with the lovely Mark Reads community. Apparently this book was huge with people slightly older than me; I’m actually a bit surprised I’ve never heard of it, since I did go through a mystery phase in late elementary school (I spent many, many hours of fourth grade working out the puzzles in the Clue, Jr. books on the chalkboard).
The Westing Game is a murder mystery, although it is a bit iffy whether or not anyone has been murdered, which made me think of that odd old movie with Truman Capote, Murder by Death. Other than that… well, it’s not very much like Murder by Death at all, so ignore me.
Sam Westing is the prototypical American self-made man, the son of immigrants who worked himself up from a poor background to found and grow a multi-million-dollar paper products corporation. Nobody has seen him in years, ever since his terrible car accident. He apparently just stays in his mansion and leaves the running of the corporation to its chairman of the board, Julian Eastman.
Sunset Towers is a shiny new apartment building that has just been built within view of the Westing house. A bunch of carefully hand-selected people are invited to move into it. Shortly afterwards, Sam Westing is found dead in the Westing house, and sixteen people—most of the apartment denizens, plus the building’s doorman and its delivery boy—are invited to the Westing house and told they are all Sam Westing’s heirs. They are also told that one of them is responsible for Westing’s death, and whoever figures out who the murderer is will inherit the entire Westing fortune.
Cue a whole fabulous complex puzzle game, where the heirs are paired off and given cryptic clues, and much character building ensues as the heirs all try to find stuff out about each other. They are a very diverse bunch and they all (except one) have some sort of connection to Sam Westing. I’d give a rundown of the heirs but there are sixteen of them. (Turtle and Judge Ford are the best ones, though.)
This is a very difficult book to talk about without giving stuff away because the puzzle unfolds in very particular ways and I don’t want to discuss any of the clues! I will say that I did very abysmally at trying to guess what came next or what most of the clues meant, although I called a few key things shortly before they were revealed.
While I am always impressed at an intricate puzzley plot—mainly because I suck at coming up with them—the thing I am actually most impressed about in this book is how much character development there is. I mean, there are sixteen main characters, which is kind of a lot for a children’s book. (But it is the necessary amount because there is an ongoing theme about chess.) (Not in an Alice Through the Looking-Glass kind of way, though—this theme about chess makes sense.) But they all have their own story—and all of their stories tie into the Westing murder mystery game. They’ve all got some sort of personal problem, and all of them learn stuff through the game that helps them change their lives and start being happier and/or better people. (For some of the characters, their problem is basically that they are terrible shallow people. I am looking at you, Grace Windsor-Wexler, and also you, Dr. Denton Deere.) Somehow none of this is trite or twee; it all fits very neatly together but because it’s so complicated the neatness is very impressive rather than sounding like a cop-out. Overall it may be the happiest murder mystery I’ve ever read! It’s full of small children playing the stock market and possibly nobody being murdered at all.
Reading this with a group was extra fun; watching other people also fail at puzzling out the clues made me feel less silly (although probably the people who had read it before who were cackling at the rest of us had the most fun. They certainly sounded like it!) Also, one of the mods provided us with daily logic puzzles, of which I only did the last few because I came to the discussion a bit late.
The Westing Game is a murder mystery, although it is a bit iffy whether or not anyone has been murdered, which made me think of that odd old movie with Truman Capote, Murder by Death. Other than that… well, it’s not very much like Murder by Death at all, so ignore me.
Sam Westing is the prototypical American self-made man, the son of immigrants who worked himself up from a poor background to found and grow a multi-million-dollar paper products corporation. Nobody has seen him in years, ever since his terrible car accident. He apparently just stays in his mansion and leaves the running of the corporation to its chairman of the board, Julian Eastman.
Sunset Towers is a shiny new apartment building that has just been built within view of the Westing house. A bunch of carefully hand-selected people are invited to move into it. Shortly afterwards, Sam Westing is found dead in the Westing house, and sixteen people—most of the apartment denizens, plus the building’s doorman and its delivery boy—are invited to the Westing house and told they are all Sam Westing’s heirs. They are also told that one of them is responsible for Westing’s death, and whoever figures out who the murderer is will inherit the entire Westing fortune.
Cue a whole fabulous complex puzzle game, where the heirs are paired off and given cryptic clues, and much character building ensues as the heirs all try to find stuff out about each other. They are a very diverse bunch and they all (except one) have some sort of connection to Sam Westing. I’d give a rundown of the heirs but there are sixteen of them. (Turtle and Judge Ford are the best ones, though.)
This is a very difficult book to talk about without giving stuff away because the puzzle unfolds in very particular ways and I don’t want to discuss any of the clues! I will say that I did very abysmally at trying to guess what came next or what most of the clues meant, although I called a few key things shortly before they were revealed.
While I am always impressed at an intricate puzzley plot—mainly because I suck at coming up with them—the thing I am actually most impressed about in this book is how much character development there is. I mean, there are sixteen main characters, which is kind of a lot for a children’s book. (But it is the necessary amount because there is an ongoing theme about chess.) (Not in an Alice Through the Looking-Glass kind of way, though—this theme about chess makes sense.) But they all have their own story—and all of their stories tie into the Westing murder mystery game. They’ve all got some sort of personal problem, and all of them learn stuff through the game that helps them change their lives and start being happier and/or better people. (For some of the characters, their problem is basically that they are terrible shallow people. I am looking at you, Grace Windsor-Wexler, and also you, Dr. Denton Deere.) Somehow none of this is trite or twee; it all fits very neatly together but because it’s so complicated the neatness is very impressive rather than sounding like a cop-out. Overall it may be the happiest murder mystery I’ve ever read! It’s full of small children playing the stock market and possibly nobody being murdered at all.
Reading this with a group was extra fun; watching other people also fail at puzzling out the clues made me feel less silly (although probably the people who had read it before who were cackling at the rest of us had the most fun. They certainly sounded like it!) Also, one of the mods provided us with daily logic puzzles, of which I only did the last few because I came to the discussion a bit late.