Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Friday, August 22, 2014

FORGOTTEN BOOK: BLOOD RELATIONS: THE SELECTED LETTERS OF ELLERY QUEEN, 1947-1950

Blood Relations:  The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen, 1947-1950, edited by Joseph Goodrich (2012)

I'm stretching things by calling this a forgotten book:  it's a niche book, neither known to many nor read by many.  And it's fascinating.

First off, let me say that I have always been a fan of Ellery Queen.  The writings and the character developed and changed over the years but, to me, always remained crisp, well-plotted, and ingenious.  Queen, of course, is the pseudonymn of two cousins -- Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee -- and their partnership is legendary for locked horns, arguments, and hurt feelings.  As Dannay put it in one of his letters to Lee, "If the situation between us were put into a book, it would be damned as utterly incredible."

The cousins were both born in Brooklyn in 1905.  Dannay grew up in a small town atmosphere in Elmira, New York, while Lee remained in the tough streets of Brooklyn.  Both cousins were highly competitive and both were prone to feel under appreciated.  Dannay loved mysteries and was a student and a collector of the genre;  Lee was not a big mystery fan and preferred a more realistic and "literary king of writing.  Their collaboration was split was meant to be strictly divided with Dannay devising detailed plotting and Lee doing the actual writing, but Dannay resented when Lee would deviate from his instructions in order to produce his manuscript, and Lee resented Dannay for insisting the outline not be deviated.  Each thought the other undervalued his work in the partnership.  Thus, the fireworks.

Truth be told, both were too sensitive, reading things into their interactions that were not there or blowing things out of proportion.  They were the old married couple who fought bitterly but, at heart, loved each other.  The letters reveal their hypersensitivities and their jealousy while also reveling their deep respect and concern for each other.

The letters included in this volume were culled from the Frederic Dannay Papers in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University.  The years covered are from the middle years of their so-called Third Period (1942-1958), which began with the publication of Calamity Town and ended twelve books later with The Finishing Stroke.  The letters specifically cover the plotting and writing of Ten Days Wonder, Cat of Many Tails, and The Origin of Evil, with very brief mention of Double, Double.  During most of this time the cousins were separated by a continent, with Lee living in California while Dannay lived in New York.  Both cousins were undergoing health problems that they either downplayed or tried to hide from the other.  Dannay, a widower, had just remarried and in 1948 a son, Stephen, was born with severe disabilities (Stephen died in 1954 at age six).  Lee was undergoing severe depression, had married his second wife and was struggling with integrating two families while medical bills were draining his resources.

The letters in Blood Relations cover all this while detailing what goes into plotting and writing a book.  (Well, not just any book, an Ellery Queen book!)  For anyone interested in the process of creation, these letters are a goldmine.  For anyone interested in one of the most unique relationships in literature, This book is a must.

And, for an Ellery Queen fan (me!), this book is a sad reminder that much of their work is out of print and that many of today's readers have never had the joy of matching wits with Ellery Queen.

9 comments:

  1. I recently read an essay on Ellery Queen by Ed Hoch in 100 GREAT DETECTIVES. I wanted to drop everything and read some Ellery Queen. I have THE ELLERY QUEEN OMNIBUS tempting me.

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    1. The stories in the EQ OMNIBUS are extremely tempting, George, especially for someone with discerning tastes such as you.

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  2. Ellery Queen was one of my first introductions to crime fiction, their books handed down to me from my librarian mother. I think they were a fine introduction, truth be told! This book of letters sounds like a worthwhile read. FYI, Jerry, I'm collecting the links for Patti Abbott's FFB this week. Here is the permalink:

    http://inreferencetomurder.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/08/ffb-.html

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  3. Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason was my introduction, Bonnie, followed by Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen. (In fact, I think I was reading EQMM before I read EQ.) It was Ellery Queen who was more consistently on target than any of the others I was reading. My favorite authors were EQ and Richard S. Prather -- an interesting dicotomy but perfectly understandable because I was a teenager.

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  4. Is there any mention in these letters that, apparently, Danny and Lee did not write all of the novels which appear under the name Ellery Queen? In fact, I don't believe that they wrote any of the EQ novels which followed,"The Finishing Stroke."
    Jim Meals

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  5. Lee suffered from a five-year writing block during which several EQ books were plotted by Dannay and written by such authors as Theodore Sturgeon and Avram Davidson. Following this writing block, Lee polished one of these manuscripts and the partnership continued until Lee's death. A series of original paperbacks by "Ellery Queen" were written by various authors -- Jack Vance, Edward D. Hoch, Henry Kane, Talmadge Powell, Richard Deming, Gil Brewer, Charles Runyon, Fletcher Flora, Walt Sheldon, and Stephen Marlowe. The few books novelized from early EQ movies that featured Ralph Bellemy appeared under the EQ name but were written by anonymous writers. The Ellery Queen, Jr. novels were written by Samuel Duff McCoy, Frank Belknap Long, Jr., and James Powell. Six historical novels published by Pocketbooks in the 1960s under the Barnaby Ross name were written by Don Tracy. The two collections of true crime articles under the EQ name were written by Lee, who also was responsible for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and it's precursor Mystery League, as well as the anthologies. Both cousins were involved writing the radio series The Adventures of Ellery Queen, again with Dannay plotting and Lee doing the writing; Anthony Boucher took over the script writing in 1945 when Lee was unable to do it.

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    1. Mea culpa. Blame my fumble fingers and tired brain. The true crime books were written by Lee, but the magazines and the anthologies were Dannay's work.

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  6. Thanks Jerry, for the very interesting information. I started reading EQ when I was 12. The novels got me hooked on a EQ TV series which first starred George Nader who was replaced at mid-season by Lee Phillips. The show only ran for one season. Apologies for spelling Mr. Dannay's name wrong.

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  7. A very interesting piece, as always. Joe Goodrich, the author, has also written a theatrical version of "Calamity House," which played for a few nights in Clermont, New Hampshire, under the directing hand of Arthur Vidro, another Queen fanatic. Lengthy discussions of who wrote which of the Ellery Queen volumes can be found on Kurt Sercu's encyclopedic website Ellery Queen: A Website on Deduction, http://queen.spaceports.com/ And (finally!) my own article on Blood Relations, which was posted on SleuthSayers a couple years back, is available at http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2012/03/blood-relations.html

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