The Westing Game

by Ellen Raskin

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.

Theo Theodorakis and Doug Hoo. The small, wiry man pointing to the house on the hill was Otis Amber, the sixty-two-year-old delivery boy.

Someone (he could not tell if the person was a man or a woman) came out of the shadows on the lawn, unlocked the French doors, and disappeared into the Westing house. Someone with a limp. Minutes later smoke began to rise from the chimney.

“No one ever notices Sydelle Pulaski,” she muttered, “but now they will. Now they will.”

The rules are simple: • Number of Players: 16, divided into 8 pairs. • Each pair will receive $10,000. • Each pair will receive one set of clues. • Forfeits: If any player drops out, the partner must leave the game. The pair must return the money. Absent pairs forfeit the $10,000; their clues will be held until the next session. • Players will be given two days’ notice of the next session. Each pair may then give one answer. • Object of the game: to win.

It is not what you have, it’s what you don’t have that counts.

ELEVENTH • Senseless, you say? Death is senseless yet makes way for the living. Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows. So on with the game. The solution is simple if you know whom you are looking for. But heirs, beware! Be aware! Some are not who they say they are, and some are not who they seem to be. Whoever you are, it’s time to go home. God bless you all and remember this: Buy Westing Paper Products!

Sam Westing was not murdered, but one of his heirs was guilty—guilty of some offense against a relentless man. And that heir was in danger. From his grave Westing would stalk his enemy, and through his heirs he would wreak his revenge. Which one? Which heir was the target of Westing’s vindictiveness? In the name of justice she would have to find Westing’s victim before the others did. She would have to learn everything she could about each one of the heirs. Who are they, and how did their lives touch Westing’s, these sixteen strangers whose only connection with one another was Sunset Towers? Sunset Towers—she’d start from there.

But the Wexler apartment was exactly where the bomber planned to set the next bomb.

Her partner, Sandy McSouthers, was the only heir she had not investigated. Her partner, Sandy McSouthers, was Sam Westing.