Ellery Queen, sexy clothes and The Origin of Evil

The Origin of Evil by Ellery Queen

published 1951

 

Someone recommended this book to me, as usual I can’t remember who.

I have read and blogged on a few EQ books, always jumping around in the oeuvre, not trying to read them in order. For those in the know (ie not me) this is a Period 3 book in the list. Curtis Evans (of course) explains all this in an excellent post on this book at his Passing Tramp blog. (Fascinating comments too, though containing spoilers, which the post itself obviously doesn’t contain).

This one has Ellery Queen (who is both author and protagonist) in Hollywood, writing a novel, and getting involved in a strange case involving a pair of business partners, jewellers: they received a mysterious message, and now one is dead and the other is under threat.

Ellery is pulled into the case by Laurel, the daughter of the dead man, and Delia, the wife of the survivor. Laurel is young and naïve, Delia is older and a woman of the world. Their clothes are much-described, which is part of the reason for my taking on this book. Here is young Laurel:

She was dressed in zebra-striped culottes and bolero over a bra-like doodad of bright green suede. Green open-toed sandals on her tiny feet. A matching suede jockey cap on her cinnamon hair.

A most unlikely outfit and impossible to find, but I liked this zebra-striped top.

Queen is attracted and repelled by the sexy Delia - top picture:

Delia Priam was big game; one glance told him that. His doorway framed the most superbly proportioned woman he had ever seen. She was dressed in a tawny peasant blouse of some sheer material and a California print skirt of bold colours. Her heavy black hair was massed to one side of her head, sleekly, in the Polynesian fashion; she wore plain broad hoops of gold in her ears. Head, shoulders, bust, hips — he could not decide which pleased him more. She stood there not so much in an attitude as in an atmosphere — an atmosphere of intense repose, watchful and disquieting.

The picture is from the NYPL collection, fashion of the 1940s.

Now, when I posted on

The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side by Agatha Christie

I said this:

As usual, there are limited but sometimes odd details of clothes and appearances. One visiting filmstar has Fiji Islander hair – I feel this was cultural appropriation and perhaps not a real thing.

But maybe it is. This photo is I think shows Rihanna, (who is of course from Barbados, not Polynesia) but has been perhaps photoshopped, it is not real.

 

The story rattles along, with setpiece scenes about eg a man living up a tree in a loincloth. The threats keep arriving, staged as physical events: a plague of frogs, a burnt book, some worthless stock certificates. Everyone tries to work out the meaning behind these clues, and to track down how they were obtained.

Then there is a massive dump of previously wholly-unknown information, and then a couple of reversals.

It is completely impossible to believe in anyone’s motives in this, let alone their ways of accomplishing their objectives, but once you let that go, it does rattle along.

Ellery Queen is unnecessarily vile about Delia, obviously because he is having trouble resisting her wiles.

There she was in the doorway. She had changed to a hostess gown of golden silk which clung as if it loved her. It was slit to the knee. She was glancing coolly from her husband to Ellery.

Slit to the knee! That one was older than the pyramids. And how old was his stupidity? It probably went back to the primordial slime.

This dress if modern and not a hostess gown, more of a cheongsam, but I thought it had the look.

On another occasion: She was in brief tight shorts and a strip of sun halter. Her thighs were long and heavy and swelled to her trunk; her breasts spilled over the halter.

You don’t have to be Freud to think this is all telling us more about Ellery Queen than about Delia.

One more feature of this femme fatale:

Seating himself beside her, he took one of her hands. It was cool and secretive.

I think I’m going to aim for secretive hands myself #squadgoals

[Though perhaps I am wrong to mock: in Alistair MacLean's seminal work, Where Eagles Dare, a not-very-good secret agent is caught out after chatting with a German officer in the bar: "She doesn’t know enough not to let people hold her hand when she’s telling lies—as she does most of the time.”’ He released the girl and half-turned her round, smiling down at her. “A delightful hand, my dear—but what a fascinating variation of pulse rates.”]

I also liked Laurel ‘smoking with energy’. 

The Korean War unexpectedly intrudes into the book, and two characters end up joining up.

The man living up a tree has the remarkable name of Crowe MacGowan, from which I assume you are meant to take Cro-Magnon man. In general names can be important.

Here is one of my patent #spoilernotspoiler links: there is a key (and just guessable early on for an odd reason) connection with this author – but don’t look if you want to read Origin of Evil soon.

Delia possesses a white duvetyne coat – I had to look this up on Wiki:

Duvetyne, or duvetyn is a twill fabric with a velvet-like nap on one side. Duvetyne has a matte finish and its high opacity makes it ideal for blocking light.

Although it is most commonly used in the motion picture industry, early sources list duvetyne as a common fabric for dresses, suits, and coats. By the 1930s, however, it was widely noted for its use in constructing theatrical cycloramas and theater curtains.

 My final verdict is that the book was completely nonsensical, but had its own logic, and was highly enjoyable.