If you have read and enjoyed Ellery Queen's The Origin of Evil, which we discussed here and on the Classic Mysteries podcast this week, you might also enjoy a fascinating book which reveals how the two men who made up "Ellery Queen", Fred Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, worked together on this book in particular, as well as three other EQ books from the same general time period. To put it mildly, it wasn't easy for either of the collaborators. They did most of their work on this one while living a continent apart, communicating through long and elaborate letters. Joseph Goodrich has edited those letters. along with commentary and additional insights, into an absolutely fascinating book called Blood Relations: The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen, 1947-1950. Frankly, it's nearly as exciting as the Queen books themselves - an astonishing look into the process which created some of the brilliant books which came out of that collaboration. I wrote about them several years ago on this blog, and I recommend my own comments to you. If you enjoy some of the mid-career classics and wonder how these complex mysteries came to be, then read this book. I'm delighted to see that it's still in print in paper, as well as in electronic editions.
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