THE WESTING GAME

THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin

The Newberry Winner from 1979, The Westing Game, is a murder mystery book of who-done-it surrounded by left behind puzzle clues.Set on the shores of Lake Michigan, the book opens with the completion of an expensive apartment building by the name of Sunset Towers. Sixteen people have been specifically chosen to live in the building. Barney Northrup has sent each of them a letter inviting them to come and tour the modern structure. The only thing is there is no such person as Barney Winthrop. Thus begins The Westing Game.

Set above Sunset Towers, nestled in the cliffs, the old Westing House rises up to the sky. Home to millionaire Samuel W. Westing, the house has been abandoned for fifteen years. Rumors abound, however, that his corpse is in there, sprawled out on his Oriental rug rotting. On Halloween night, a dare is given to creep up and peer inside the monstrosity. There's no rotting corpse on the floor, but there is a dead man laid out on one of the beds, and it's Samuel Westing.

At noon the next day sixteen letters are delivered to the tenants of Sunset Towers. They have been summoned by attorney E.J. Plum to the south library of Westing House the following day. They have each been named in Westing's will worth 200 million dollars. The only catch? Westing claims in his will that one of them is the murderer, and the one who figures it out stands to inherit the sizable fortune.

This is a clean read with lots of twists and turns. While it is mentioned that Westing's corpse is rotting in his mansion with "maggots crawling through his eye sockets and out his nose holes" this is really just kid exaggeration, and the book is not a gruesome read.