‘It became plain in his first few days in Hollywood and environs that what the crape-hangers back East were erroneously bewailing was not the death of the angelic city but its exuberant rebirth in another shape. However, Hollywood is not a place of glamour in this novel, but more of an anathema to good taste and Queen initially seems to be regretting his decision to move there: A few re-reads makes me plumb for the latter, although it does seem Queen has temporarily moved to Hollywood to write his new detective novel. Several of the later "Ellery Queen" books were written by other authors, including Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, and Theodore Sturgeon.The Hollywood setting of The Origin of Evil (1951) is implied from the first pages in the cast list which mimics film blurb descriptions, which try to create intrigue such as ‘Crowe MacGowan: Delia’s strapping son by a former marriage, and a Nature Boy who took the phrase seriously – even when he wasn’t in his tree house.’ I found the beginning of the story a little ambiguous in that the text doesn’t make it clear whether Ellery Queen is pondering and visualising an actual corpse or one for his new book.
Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee's death. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Their character was an amateur detective who used his spare time to assist his police inspector father in solving baffling crimes. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age "fair play" mystery.Īlthough eventually famous on television and radio, Queen's first appearance came in 1928 when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Lee (1905-1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. "Ellery Queen" was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B.
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