The Origin of Evil

Ellery Queen Detective #22

by Ellery Queen

Ellery Queen visits Hollywood, and looks into a nasty prank that sent a man to his grave . . . Ellery Queen stands naked by the window, sipping rum from a frosted glass, a corpse at his feet. The deceased is Hollywood, and the cause of death is television. Queen has come to Los Angeles in search of a plot for his latest mystery, but the moribund movie business offers nothing more than nostalgia for better days. He’s about to give up and go home when a pretty girl appears and offers a mystery far stranger than anything a filmmaker has ever produced.   The woman’s name is Laurel, and her father has been murdered by a dead dog. The canine was sent as a gift—1 in a series of vile, cryptic packages—and it scared her father to death. The deceased pet is the most peculiar murder weapon Queen has ever come across, and unless he’s quick, this story will not have a Hollywood ending.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Detective, Golden Age Mystery, Mystery Thriller

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

aka Barnaby Ross.
(Pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee)
"Ellery Queen" was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. 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.

Although 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. Their character was an amateur detective who used his spare time to assist his police inspector father in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee's death.

Several of the later "Ellery Queen" books were written by other authors, including Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, and Theodore Sturgeon.

Reviews

[Glen U · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Origin of Evil" is a typical Ellery Queen novel but with the addition of a component not really seen before in the Queen detective novels. Written in the early 1950's, the cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee, must have seen the success of the rawer and edgier Mickey Spillane's books and introduced a slice of sex appeal to their story. For the first time, our hero Ellery showed a lust for one of the female characters in the book. Before, romance was implied, now sexual tension was blatantly exhibited. A new departure for the series. The book is still wonderfully plotted with a twist in the conclusion (a hallmark of the Queen books) and the cousin's writings are still among the best for the American mystery genre. A very good read and it will be interesting to see if "Ellery Queen's" stories continue in this new vein. On to #23, the hard to find "The King is Dead".

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feh. The puzzle and plot are intricate, and the solution interesting, if a bit arid. But Ellery’s obsession with the Miss VaVoom-like Delia Priam is tiresome to the extreme. Not to mention that said obsession is All Her Fault. Double feh.

[Jeffrey Marks · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite Queens, it has all the charm and the clues that I expect from these authors. The cluing is fascinating and I can't add much more without spoilers, but always a great read.

[Tommy Verhaegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een grotendeels prettig lezen verhaal met een grootse Ellery Queen in de hoofdrol. Het sex-appeal druipt van de bladzijden door de 2 tegengestelde vrouwen waar hij uiteindelijk helemaal niks mee heeft, hij behoudt zijn reputatie als kluizenaar.
Ellery werkt nauw samen met inspekteur Keats en komt stapsgewijs heel wat te weten. Toch duurt het tot op het einde voor alles in mekaar past en het raadsel van de "geschenken" zijn ingenieuze oplossing krijgt. De ontmaskering van de dader is zoals gebruikelijk een gebeuren waar iedereen samenkomt en Ellery de onthullingen doet.
Maar... daarmee is het nog niet afgelopen. Er komt een stukje over de verdere levensloop van de deelnemers met toch wel twee onverwachte onthullingen.
Het allerlaaste laat een onvoldaan gevoel achter, net alsof daar iets niet klopt.
Spanning, humor, ingenieuze deducties en snelle dialogen met veel emoties... de typsiche kenmerken van een grote Queen.

[Deborah Stoiber · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is okay, but completely fell apart at the end, making the entire book ridiculous. Disappointing to the series.

[Raquel Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este autor (co-autoria de dois primos) é o meu preferido deste período de romance policial americano.
Este é dos melhores que li dele.
Não é da nova colecção da Vampiro, é dos antigos. O que é vintage, é bom :)

[Michele bookloverforever · Rating 2 out of 5]

changed my rating after trying to re-read this. although I loved it when I read it at 22...found I couldn't even finish this drivel at 66. Re-read again at 75.

[Dane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first Ellery Queen, and it was such good reading, so subtly funny, such a fascinating plot, that I'm going to read the entire series.

[Rick Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

Major characters:
Leander Hill, jeweler, deceased
Laurel Hill, his daughter
Roger Priam, jeweler, paraplegic
Delia Priam, his femme fatale wife
Crowe "Mac" Macgowen, Delia's son, who lives in a treehouse
Alfred Wallace, assistant to Roger Priam, and Delia's lover
-- Collier, Delia's father
Lt. Keats of the police

Locale: Los Angeles, CA

Synopsis: Ellery Queen travels to Los Angeles to relax and write a book. Laurel Hill locates him and asks him to investigate the untimely death of her father, Leander Hill. Leander and Roger Priam are partners in a jewelry business. Hill had found a dead dog and a warning note on his doorstep, and the fright causes a heart attack and his death. Priam, a paraplegic with a femme fatale wife Delia, lives nearby and has a secretary/assistant Alfred Wallace who helps care for him. Priam receives a sealed box which also frightens him.

Someone is on a revenge trip against them, and with the death of Leander, the threats now focus on Roger Priam. Additional warnings follow.

Ellery finds a blank - nothing can be found about Leander's or Roger's past, or even Alfred's.

Delia makes come-ons to Ellery. The story comes out that Roger hired Alfred to not only assist him, also to service Delia in his 'absence'.

Leander's daughter Laurel takes the initiative to chase down clues, and enlists Delia's son Crowe Macgowen as well, even sleeping with him to obtain a key to Delia's.

Review: This was written in 1951, at the height of the mid-century modern movement, and this book reflects it. Chapter 1 starts out with a lot of abstraction, and run-on sentences that fill nearly a page each. The first sentence refers to Ellery Queen having a corpse at his feet, and it took a while to realize that the corpse is not a literal corpse, but a metaphor for the city of Los Angeles. I know, quite a stretch. I almost gave up before getting to Chapter 2. Things starting settling down at the end of Chapter 1, and we finally had some Facts: a death under suspicious circumstances.

There is a sexual undercurrent throughout the story, which is unnecessary to the plot and distracting. Delia makes overtures to any male she encounters, and Laurel does not hesitate to use sex to get what she wants from Macgowen. And why does Ellery question witnesses about their sex lives? None of this is relevant, or part of the plot.

The reveal at the end is incredibly obscure and complex, does the job, but leaves me scratching my head at believability.

[Simone Saberhagen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really unsure: three stars or four starts? The book, with the way it started and the way it introduced the characters of the story makes me want to say it’s a three stars rated book. As always, the way Ellery Queen’s (the two authors) wrote this book intrigued me to keep going but it was the strange characters - the petite Laurel Hill, the beautiful Delia Priam, the angry Leander Hill and the weird Crowe MacGrowan -
and they relationship, was something that didn’t help me to get into the book: Crowe MacGrowan, an atipica man who lives in a tree and practice nudity, madly in love with the petite Laurel who doesn’t like him but at the end she falls for him… I mean, it’s not the first time that the author’s run when it comes to relationships or less important things, almost like they don’t really care or want to speak about minor stuff because the main focus has to go towards the bigger things (which, at the end of the day, it’s always giving a solution to the murder). And even though the books push me to give three stars, my mind changed idea when I finished the book. The idea, the solution seems so imaginative that nobody can actually read this book and think that is rational but that’s what makes this book beautiful. I loved the idea of the name “the origine of Evil”: this title is everything but mysterious, yet you still don’t understand the meaning till you finish to read the book.
The thing that really got into my head - still now! - for how elaborate and good it is, it’s the final chapter, the beautiful speech that was held between Ellery and Wallace. Oh, “Wallace”… what a character! His idea, this character, is a big reason of the “way” I decide to give four stars. A man, with a memory loss, who’s Leander Hill’s assistant - the old man is disable - and… the conclusion. Something I wouldn’t have expected or anticipated, to be honest. The ending really took me out of guard, which doesn’t happen easily with Ellery Queen’s books.

[Conni Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the plot. The mystery was deliciously mysterious, and the ending was once again as twisty and unexpected as Ellery is able to make them. I guess my biggest problem with the ending is that the real murderer is now Ellery's secretary? And Ellery has literally (in the past) convinced murderers to kill themselves, but this guy he hires, knowing fully the guy's the murderer. Sure, it's to keep an eye on him since he has no proof that the guy is the killer, not enough to convict him, but still. Besides that I really enjoyed the ending.

Stars marked off for the general sexism of this time period. I'm really upset with how Delia (sp?) was treated in this. Every man in her life, even the ones she loved, chose her life for her. She had nothing for herself, from her father sending her to live with rigidly strict relatives she hated, to her marrying her first husband just to get away from that family even though she didn't love him, to her marrying her second husband who was horribly abusive towards her, and yelled at her, broke her things, and eventually manipulated events so that she'd have a constant sexual companion in his secretary. I just feel bad for her, really, and all the men, upon finding out about her behavior, completely shunned her. As if her behavior was her own fault, and not the fault of everyone in her life manipulating and taking advantage of their power over her.

[ChubbyBabu · Rating 4 out of 5]

ENG.
I've just finished reading it and I can't help but share how thrilled I am! It was a real plunge into the unknown, full of secrets and suspense. Right from the first pages, I was engrossed in the gripping plot and tried to solve the mystery alongside the protagonist. The detailed character descriptions made me feel like I knew them personally, and every clue made my heart beat faster. And what a surprising ending! I had no idea who the culprit was, at first I suspected them, then not, then again yes and then no... IN SHORT, IT WAS A CRAZY RIDE. This book truly fueled my passion for mysteries. The secretary was the best character. ☆

ITA.
Ho appena finito di leggere "Le origini del male" e non posso fare a meno di condividere quanto mi abbia entusiasmato! È stato un vero tuffo nell'ignoto, tra segreti e suspense. Sin dalle prime pagine, sono stata coinvolta nella trama avvincente e ho cercato di risolvere il mistero insieme al protagonista. Le descrizioni dettagliate dei personaggi mi hanno fatto sentire come se li avessi conosciuti di persona, e ogni indizio mi ha fatto battere il cuore più forte. E che finale sorprendente! Non avevo la minima idea di chi fosse il colpevole, inizialmente lo avevo sospettato, poi no, poi di nuovo sì e poi no... INSOMMA UN DELIRIO.
Questo libro ha davvero alimentato la mia passione per i gialli.
Il segretario miglior personaggio. ☆

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the dim and distant past I was allowed limited access to the adult section of the library even though I had a child’s ticket. I sampled various crime writers – in those days this was about as explicit as they got – but obviously was not impressed by Ellery Queen as I don’t remember any specifically and certainly didn’t plough through them all.
Maybe I was too girly, or too British because that this is neither is what strikes me now. As with one of the other books I’ve read for the Wordy Birds’ Book Buddies Reading Challenge 2018 (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter) there are aspects of this one that are very much of their time and that make me cringe – most of all the attitude to women demonstrated not just by the male characters but also in the plot itself. But I made myself grit my teeth to get past that and the fact that it opens with someone literally dying of fright – hearing a very clear wiseass voice in the narration helped, although I’m not sure which film or TV series or set of radio broadcasts my brain coopted for the purpose. In the end, I was able to quite enjoy it and even liked the drop-out Crowe and the revelation that was a trap in the end.

[Rob Smith, Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characters are the standout here. Intriguing, as they are, pulled me into the story and a want to know what on earth was going on. The contrast is melodramatic, but, I found, worked well.

The mystery is very interesting. as is the pacing leading to more to be unveiled along the way revealing more and more mystery.

The plotting is very good. The writing great also. Except for the end which is over long in explanation as the stated answer made the rest obvious. Yet, pages are spent explaining the obvious. The amount of characters is a significant draw back, as I knew who was the instigator more than half-way through. The why I didn't know until the very end. Having much education in the subject involving the why, I knew due to certain naming the direction resolution had to be. Something not mentioned is that one name used, the Adam character's, is also a name of one significant to the subject matter. Inside joke is using 'Adam'.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 8 of ten points.

[Bill Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Within the flotsam and jetsam of my father's house was this, a battered copy from Boots Booklovers Library (closed in 1966). I've never read anything from Ellery Queen so why not give it a go. Well it was just the distraction I needed, an entertaining read with a couple of surprises, but a ludicrous story line and conclusion. The first surprise, as explained in another review was the overt sexuality, an influence of the changing times. The second was the sudden arrival of the Korean War part way through - only to delineate the changing mood of the times and highlighting a key character's concerns with atomic war. Beyond that, it is a detective story with a convoluted and strained plot and a very discursive reveal that does go on. As I say, it was good distraction for a couple of evenings, but I don't think I will read anymore Ellery Queen.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dead dog left on a man's doorstep literally scares him to death; similar deliveries afflict his neighbor and partner, and Ellery wants to figure out what's behind it all. The solution has a couple of twists that make it a satisfying mystery, but it's a bit of a slog getting to the reveal. First, I could not get very emotionally drawn into the plot, since it is unclear that a deliberate murder has been committed, and the only person who is threatened deserves his trouble. Second, a sexual subplot was added apparently for the sole purpose of adding a sexual subplot. It is far more distracting than entertaining. Finally, the entire scenario upon which the mystery is built is incredible. Plus, one mystery within that scenario (from 25 years before the events of the book) is never explained.

[Michael Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started out rather uninteresting. As the characters developed they were not that appealing. But as often happens with characters in these series, something kicks in and the tale takes on a more readable format. An old grudge is suddenly front and center in the lives of two households. Death stalks them and EQ who is back in Hollywood after a long absence is lured from his new book project into the mess. Lots of twists and turns and the early characterizations undergo some minor changes. Not all of the players are now more appealing but at least we have a better understanding of their places in the story.

[Erik Deckers · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of EQ’s characters are starting tonsound the same, and this one reminded me a lot of Double, Double. Young woman investigating her father’s death, falls in love with another character (the young women ALL fall in love with other characters!); someone gets sore at the way Ellery asks questions and blusters about it; a powerful, larger-than-life patriarch. And Queen sits, staring into space for days and days and days, while everyone else demands to know what he’s doing.

I’m giving this one three stars because it’s a dead copycat of at least three of the Wrightsville stories.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been wanting to get back into mystery stories for a while, and oh boy, this one rocked my world. I loved how my guesses as to whodunnit changed pretty constantly while I was reading. I didn't know what was going to happen yet but I was sitting on the edge of my seat getting there. Since this book was written a few decades ago, there were a few words, mostly in describing fashion, that went over my head, but this didn't detract from my overall experience of engaging with this story. I definitely want to read more books by the 'author' Ellery Queen!

[John R. Goyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining and more mature than I expected later saga of Ellery. Enjoyable and well written, the ending was a good twist and left us questioning what the future would bring. The "first" ending or solution had a number of weak spots that made it less than perfect which weakened a little, the twist solution.

[Chris Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good old Ellery Queen. Rereading some oldies. Definitely a different time period that took some adjustments but Ellery was always a fun read. This one was good for characters and a little convoluted on clues and plot but enjoyable.

[Rob Van katwijk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book very much, but I think it would have been better without the last chapter.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Agatha Christie has met her match.

[Nathanael Booth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rare EQ misstep. There’s nothing wrong with the last three chapters. But everything leading up to that is variously overcooked or unpleasant in some way.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dårlige greier dette

[David Megginson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Megalomaniac on a fortified island guarded by an army of minions — I didn't expect something so James Bond in an Ellery Queen novel.

[Burgain Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

As fine a read as you will find.

Typical Queen.
The ability to determine the responsible person is nil.
Good characters and fine plot.
It is therefore highly recommended.

[Mare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting story line.

[John Keeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely Outstanding

This is a must read. I really don’t want to give anything away so that is all I have to say. Definitely don’t pass this one up.

[Jessi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ellery is in Hollywood. When he’s sunbathing in the nude one afternoon, he is interrupted by a young girl who is convinced her father was murdered. The means? A threat in the form of a dead dog. Now the man’s business partner is being threatened as well. Roger Priam, the business partner, is in a wheel chair and his wife, Delia, is running around with his private secretary, Alfred Wallace. Delia has a son who is living in trees and has a crush on the girl who came to Ellery in the first place.
The mystery ends up being incredibly convoluted and Ellery comes off as a major asshole (he lusts after Delia who does nothing to encourage him then gets pissed off when he finds out that she’s sleeping with the secretary - why? He wanted to sleep with her too. Boo, Ellery, boo).
I heard about this book on the Classic Mysteries podcast.