Broadway Books Detection Club to Meet At the New Camayo Arcade Location

Broadway Books Detection Club to Meet

At the New Camayo Arcade Location

Rebecca Hemlock

The Ashland Beacon

Mystery fans in Ashland have a fresh reason to gather this winter as the Detection Club returns to downtown’s literary scene. On January 15, 2026, at 6:00 p.m., the group will meet in Broadway’s new location inside the Camayo Arcade, a historic shopping center that’s quickly becoming a hub for local culture.

The evening promises engaging conversation, friendly competition of ideas among fellow sleuths, and a chance to connect with readers who share a love of clever plotting and classic whodunits. It’s all part of a broader push to enliven Ashland’s independent bookselling community.

This meetup is open to fans of classic mysteries and to anyone who enjoys putting on their own detective hat for a little mystery-solving at home. The organizers emphasize inclusivity and fun, inviting armchair investigators, casual readers, and die-hard genre enthusiasts alike to come and join the fun.

Beyond simply a book club, the event is framed as a celebration of the enduring appeal of mystery fiction and a practical way to support a cherished local bookstore. Attendees can expect lively discussion, recommendations, and the kind of warm, in-person connection that can be hard to find in a digital age.

For this session, the Detection Club has chosen Ten Days’ Wonder by Ellery Queen as the focal point of the discussion. Published in 1949, the novel remains a striking example of the era’s sophisticated puzzle storytelling.

Participants will have the opportunity to explore the reasons behind its enduring appeal and to consider how its intricate clues and fair-play mystery ethos continue to influence readers and writers today. The choice also offers a gateway into the broader history of Ellery Queen as a literary project and a lens through which to view mid-20th-century American crime fiction.

The discussion will also shed light on the enduring legacy behind the Ellery Queen name. Ellery Queen was not a single writer, but a pen name shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971).

The duo created the most famous detective who bears their shared name and established themselves as leading figures in what is often called the Golden Age of detective fiction. Their collaboration produced a prolific body of work and helped define the “fair play” mystery, a standard that invites readers to test their deductive reasoning against the clues laid out in the text.

Beyond novels, the partners cofounded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time, shaping readers’ expectations and inspiring generations of writers.

The relationship between Dannay and Lee, including Dannay’s retirement of the Queen persona after Lee’s death in 1971, is a fascinating footnote in mystery history—proof of how deeply intertwined their creative partnership was with the art form itself. As fans gather at the Camayo Arcade, they’ll not only revisit a beloved story but also pay tribute to a pivotal moment in American mystery literature. The January 15 gathering promises to be more than a meeting of minds; it’s a celebration of community, history, and the timeless thrill of a well-turned clue.