Ellen Raskin - The Westing Game: A Puzzle Mystery

In my quest to rediscover childhood favorites, I remembered Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game as being one of the quirky standouts. I was never very good at solving mysteries. Encyclopedia Brown beat me every time. Sherlock Holmes floored me. Putting the clues together wasn't my strong point, but I loved surprises, so Raskin's novel was a big hit with me. As an adult, I still liked its weird characters and the whole air of mystery to the mystery...


The Story

"The Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan shore five stories high. Five empty stories high.

Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed _Barney Northrup_.

The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup."


As The Westing Game begins, you already know that something is going on, but that things aren't quite what they seem. Isn't that the beginning to every great mystery?

The novel has a large cast. There are the Wexlers, Mr. Wexler the podiatrist, his wife the would-be interior decorator and grasping heiress, his perfect daughter Angela, and the young, shin-kicking terror, Tabitha Ruth, nicknamed Turtle. Flora Baumbach is a dressmaker, a kindly older woman who befriends Turtle and becomes like a second mother to her. The Theodorakis family runs a coffee shop downstairs, with son Theo who dreams of being a writer and son Chris in a wheelchair with a condition that sounds like cerebral palsy. (It isn't clear the specific nature of his illness.)

Sydelle Pulaski is a secretary on a sabbatical of sorts, an odd, lonely soul who makes silly bids for attention with her crutches and fake leg injury. The Hoos are a Chinese family who own a restaurant on the top floor, with son Doug a champion high school runner and Mrs. Hoo a young bride from China who longs to return home. J.J. Ford is a judge, fully aware of her status as the first black and the first woman to be elected to a judgeship in the entire state. Unofficial residents are Sandy McSouthers, the doorman, and Mrs. Crowd, the maid. It turns out that all the tenants have been selected for a special purpose, and all will have their own unique role to play in the Westing Game.

Sunset Towers is owned by the rich paper magnate, Samuel W. Westing, who is discovered dead in his spooky mansion just up the hill from the Towers. To their surprise, all the tenants find out that they are potential heirs to the immense Westing fortune, but...they must first play Westing's game, outlined in his last will and testament. The game requires each tenant to be matched up with another, with each pair receiving $10,000 and a set of clues--words on paper whose meanings the tenants must decipher. With their unlikely partnerships and weird clues, they must figure out who is responsible for the death of Samuel W. Westing and claim his fortune.


The Good Stuff

The novel begins rather enigmatically and continues rather enigmatically. After you get brief sketches of the residents, Raskin writes:

"They were mothers and fathers and children. A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. And oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake. Barney Northrup had rented one of the apartments to the wrong person."

It's like a giant game of Clue. Very few people are truly what they seem, and most everyone has something to hide. The greatest fun is simply reading the text closely, trying to figure who is who. It definitely kept me guessing as a kid, and if I hadn't remembered a few basic things, I would've still been kept guessing as an adult. As it was, the book still contained surprises for me, things I had forgotten.

I also loved the characters. Mrs. Wexler stands out in my mind, not because she's likeable, but because she's unlikeable. Fussy and partial to her angel of an eldest daughter, she's superficial and horribly insensitive to her youngest, who doesn't measure up to Angela in her mother's eyes. She's so conscious of her supposed good breeding that it's hilarious to see her brain constantly working on ways to claw her way up the social ladder.

Sydelle Pulaski is similar in that it's her repelling qualities that make her so fun to read about. She's downright odd and rather needy, the kind of person who makes up ludicrous stories about deadly illnesses to get sympathy, yet hates the idea of people pitying or laughing at her. Judge Ford is also another intriguing character. On the one hand, she's super-conscious about issues of race and gender. On the other hand, she's got a few prejudices herself which don't quite mesh with her sense of fairness. Of all the people involved, she's the most no-nonsense, and the least willing to play Westing's Game.

Not all the characters are well-developed, but many are surprisingly varied in terms of their motivations and reasoning. Raskin's novel does manage to show their perspectives very well, and reveal what ties (if any) each one had to the mysterious Mr. Westing.


What doesn't work...

There are some things about the book that don't quite work... For starters, the large cast of characters would be challenging in a lengthier novel, nevermind a children's book. Again, I could compare it to Clue in that many of the characters are fairly stock stereotypes. I don't expect great complexity in a book of this length, but there are an awful lot of people in it, and that means an awful lot of stereotypes--Mrs. Wexler, the social climber is one, Turtle, the bratty, precocious kid is another. And I can't help but wince a bit at the portrayal of Mrs. Hoo, the lovely, non-English speaking wife of Mr. Hoo, shipped over from China to be a bride.

The ending is a bit weak, too. I felt a little let down to find out who was finally implicated in Westing's will, mainly because it seemed like much ado about nothing back then...and it still does. I also didn't think telling us what happened to all the characters afterwards added much to the story.

And yes, it's a bit far-fetched to think a millionaire would play around with peoples' lives post-mortem, never mind the wacky results that follow. But for the most part, it's outrageously good fun, and the credibility issues didn't bother me a bit as a kid.


Recommendations

Raskin's style is quick-paced and funny. I love her exchanges between characters, like the interactions between grumpy Mr. Hoo and the uppity Grace Windsor-Wexler. At one point, Mrs. Wexler delivers what she believes is a compliment, calling Mrs. Hoo "quite lovely, you know, so doll-like and inscrutable". Mr. Hoo eats his chocolate bar and silently grumps that with all he must put up with, he has to put up with a bigot, too. My reaction was to guffaw. Some might find this scene to be a bit inflammatory. Maybe it's because Mrs. Wexler is so obliviously insensitive, or maybe it's because I actually know people just like her... but I thought it was hilarious. The scene also illustrates both their personalities so well--particularly Mrs. Wexler's, who is one of those love-to-hate characters.

Ellen Raskin has written other children's books including Nothing Ever Happens on My Block, The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel), Figgs and Phantoms (which was a Newberry Honor Book), and The Tattooed Potato and other clues. Sadly, this is the only novel of hers I've read, an error I should remedy soon.

I'd recommend it for older children just because of the complexity of the mystery (it's more fun if the kids have a chance of figuring it out themselves) and because there are a few scary parts in here, like the finding of a dead body in the Westing Mansion. I do, however, think adults would enjoy this story, too. There's enough basic mystery in there to keep would-be sleuths happy, although more observant readers will no doubt have a better chance at figuring out the ending than I did. There were also minor issues and clashes on race and social class that I appreciated more as an adult.

The Westing Game was published in 1978, but doesn't strike me as being too terribly dated. Not every children or YA book can stand the test of time, but I think this classic (and crazy) story will still have a wide modern appeal.