The Chinese Orange Mystery

 

by Ellery Queen (narrated by Richard Waterhouse) 

 

Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration

October side-read, a locked room mystery

Although the project was launched in August and we have been preparing for it with Christie short stories featuring Poirot and Marple and with various side reads, the official celebration began on October 1, 2020.  Hopefully, this is my first of many posts chronicling the adventure.

 

I am not writing a review of the book; other people have done that. I have other things on my mind. This morning,  a comment on the ACCC homepage got me thinking about Ellery Queen the character and Ellery Queen the author. 

Deborah starting the ball rolling with the comment that she thought EQ was a bit of an egotist but that nonetheless she liked the book and hopes to read more of them. I agree with her except that I think he is a prig -- which is what the authors wanted us to think. But the thinking didn't end there and actually it gave me the needed prod to explore something that has been bothering me:

I didn't understand how EQ can be so utterly different  from his father and I had trouble reconciling it. If I remember correctly, the father's background was working class and down to earth, not the prep school, Ivy League, and dare I say, effete snob that EQ comes across as --or should I say,  "masquerades" as. I am sure I am missing details but I don't understand how the son of a police detective could afford to go to prep school and get an Ivy League school back in the days when there were lines that were not crossed -- Jews and Irish need not apply.  Remember the first EQ was published in 1929 -- before equal rights and equal opportunity laws were passed, before our language became so politically correct. Society was rigid. 

Finally the light bulb came on. The first thing I decided was that to a certain extent EQ is a cartoon, a big screen action hero, larger than life, a caricature -- just as is M. Poirot, when you come right down to it, so maybe here we have another connection to Christie. It really doesn't matter how, or even if, he got into prep school and then into Harvard, it only matters that he did and now he can act like the rest of suave, debonair Ivy Leaguers -- right down to the pince-nez and the lingo. In other words, EQ has arrived. He is now part of the elite.

Second, there is no getting around that in spite of a college education, EQ is meant to be a working class hero, the guy who made it out of the factories, off the beat, and into 'society' --even though he really is just hovering at the edge.  Moving up in society, breaking the class boundaries is certainly not a new theme in literature (think Don Quijote); we can all dream in the world of fiction, even if we can't actually achieve it in the real world. If you have ever thought about it, moving up involves a certain amount of masquerade -- the prep school accent, the pince-nez, the 'house boy,' the right address -- you have to look the part and you have to leave your past behind you. 

That brings me to the creators and authors of EQ: two cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who like so many other immigrants, had to use 'professional names' to hide the fact that they were actually Daniel Nathan and Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky from Brooklyn. Whether they ever intended it or not, Ellery Queen had a lot in common with his creators. They weren't writing for the Manhattan socialites; they were writing for the boroughs and the Bowery. If Ellery could do, so can we.

So, now I think I get Ellery Queen the character. He's a super hero --masquerade and all.  I still think he is a bit of prig but I will enjoy giggling at his antics as I continue, over the years, to read his stories.