it wasn’t solely in that field he excelled. Over the course of his 40-year career, he produced more than a dozen novels. They ranged from his 1948 revenge tale, Dreadful Summit, to 1972’s Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (a work about sex, macho self-hatred, and violence that British author H.R.F. Keating included in his 1987 list of the 100 best crime and mystery books), to 1985’s Very Old Money, focusing on out-of-work schoolteachers who join the servant staff of an affluent family that can’t seem to dust the skeletons from its closets.The piece goes on to talk separately about each of those private-eye outings: The Eighth Circle (1958, which won Ellin the 1959 Edgar Award for Best Novel), The Bind (aka The Man from Nowhere, 1970), Star Light, Star Bright (1979), and The Dark Fantastic (1983), the latter two of which featured the same protagonist.
In addition, Ellin concocted four gumshoe narratives, each impressive in its own way, and at least the first two of them meriting mention among the last century’s most distinctive such works.
If you’re thinking that this article sounds rather familiar, it’s because it was published originally in the March 2018 issue of Down & Out: The Magazine, in somewhat different form. So pleased was I with the finished product, that I encouraged my editor at CrimeReads to reprint the story after D&O’s rights to its publication lapsed. I hope you’ll read and enjoy this examination of Ellin’s work, too.
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