Books
Blood Relations: the Selected Letters of Ellery Queen, 1947-1950

by Joseph Goodrich, ed.
Perfect Crime, January 2012, $14.95

In the collection of Frederic Dannay’s papers at Columbia University are copies of the Ellery Queen team’s correspondence when Manfred B. Lee was living on the West Coast and they were developing three of their finest novels: Ten Days’ Wonder, Cat of Many Tails, and The Origin of Evil. Edgar-winning playwright Goodrich has done a superb job of editing and annotating the letters, which reveal the painful-to-contemplate combativeness and mutual recrimination of the Queens’ professional relationship. That they could work together for 40 years, creating America’s finest body of classical detective fiction, is nothing short of a miracle. Lee to Dannay in 1948: “You get sick after you open my letters. I get sick before I open yours. The mere sight of your handwriting on the envelope upsets me.” Fortunately, the letters also reflect enough of the cousins’ genuine concern for each other and empathy for their difficult family lives to balance the incredible level of bile, insult, and willful misunderstanding.

Jon L. Breen

goodrich_bloodrelationsEditor Joseph Goodrich has done a superb job of editing and annotating the Queen team's correspondence.

Teri Duerr
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by Joseph Goodrich, ed.
Perfect Crime, January 2012, $14.95

Goodrich, ed.
January 2012
blood-relations-the-selected-letters-of-ellery-queen-1947-1950
14.95
Perfect Crime