American mystery writer, one of the modern masters of the genre. Ellin won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards and the Mystery Writers of America’s prestigious Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement. Despite his critical acclaim as a novelist, Ellin is best-known for his short stories, beginning with the ‘The Specialty of the House’ (1948). The story about a New York restaurant with a special treat for gourmets, was an immediate sensation. It was later dramatized on the television series ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ as many other Ellin’s tales. Often Ellin’s short stories deal with ethical problems, as in the ‘Question’. The narrator is an executioner or ‘electrocutioner,’ as he likes to be called, and takes a pride in what he is doing for the state.
--“Well, you ought to make up your mind one way or the other,’ I told him. ‘I’d hate to think you were like every other hypocrite around who says it’s all right to condemn a man to the electric chair and all wrong to pull the switch.’
–’Do I have to be to one to pull it?’ he said. ‘Do you?’
(from ‘The Question’)
Stanley Ellin was born in Brooklyn, New York. In his childhood his father read him Beatrix Potter’s tale Peter Rabbit on his demand over and over again. On the family bookshelves he discovered the works of Mark Twain, Kipling, Poe, Stevenson, and Maupassant. He was educated at Brooklyn College, receiving his B.A. in 1936. Next year he married Jeanne Michael; they had one daughter. Ellin worked as a teacher, steelworker, a dairy farmer, and served in the United States Army from 1944 to 1945. In 1946, encouraged by his wife, Ellin became a full-time writer. ‘The Specialty of the House’ appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in May 1948. In the story Laffler, a gourmet, goes with his assistant for a dinner at a exclusive restaurant. The kitchen is what Laffler wants to see - which is a great mistake.
In 1954 Ellin received Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the short story ‘The House Party’, a suburban story with an element of fantasy. Two years later he was awarded for the short story ‘The Blessington Method’, a comment on the social rights of the elderly, and in 1958 for novel THE EIGHT CIRCLE, which was an attempt at a long, serious novel about a modern private detective. The title was derived from Dante’s Inferno, in which a circle of dark-colored stone is divided into ten individual pockets of punishment. Dante sees there barrators, sowers of discord, counterfeiters, misusers of public funds, and simoniac popes. However, Ellin left the protagonist, Murray Kirk, and concentrated on short stories. Ellin’s exploration of macho self-hatred and violence, MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, won in 1975 Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. H.R.F. Keating selected it in 1987 for his list of the one hundred best crime novels. The murder mystery revolves round the hero’s sexual background. “Ellin uses all the words, the words that are likely to offend and are generally labelled ‘dirty’, but held in place as they are in the web of the whole they are no longer ‘dirty’. They are no longer words used for their titillating or shocking effect, as in so many cheaper crime novels, and cheaper novels of all sorts.” (Keating in Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books, 1987)
As a novelist Ellin made his debut with DREADFUL SUMMIT (1948). It dealt with father-son relationship, as a sixteen-year-old boy obtains a gun and sets out to avenge his father’s beating and humiliation. The action is squeezed into twenty-four hours. Clive Donner’s film Nothing but the Best (1964) was based on Ellin’s story ‘The Best of Everything’ from the 1950s. In the black comedy Alan Bates in an ambitious clerk who clambers, marries, and kills his way to the top. In Joseph Losey’s film Big Night, based on Ellin’s Dreadful Summit (1951), the author served as a front for two blacklisted writers, Hugo Butler and Ring Lardner Jr. Losey himself left Hollywood in the early 1950s and continued his career in Europe.
MYSTERY STORIES (1956) was hailed by Julian Symons as “the finest collection of stories in the crime form published in the past half century.” It included such works as ‘The Cat’s Paw’, ‘Broker’s Special’, and ‘The Moment of Decision’, in which a dispute between neighbors leads to a fatal decision. In the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents one of the episodes from 1956, ‘Help Wanted’, was based on Ellin’s original story. Also ‘The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby’, about an antique dealer, who do not want to sell his precious items, was used in the series.
Ellin’s Edgar-winning short story ‘The Blessington Method’ gave the title for the second book. After his third collection, KINDLY DIG YOUR GRAVE (1975), Ellin published in 1979 his complete mystery tales 1948-1978. Ellin’s last story was ‘Unacceptable Procedures’ (1985), which questioned the morals of economic development. Ellin died of a heart attack on July 31, 1986 in Brooklyn. Ellin was a member of Mystery Writers of America and its past president. His works were a long time out of print, until Foul Play Press reprinted two of his novels in 1996.
THE LUXEMBOURG RUN (1977) was a story of identity changes of David Shaw, a young American man in Europe. In the novel STRONGHOLD (1975) Ellin explored his own religious background and portrayed a family of nonviolent Quakers at the mercy of four murderous criminals. Ellin’s private eye hero John Milano appeared first in STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT (1979), in which Milano tried to prevent the murder of a renowned mystic guru, who begins to receive threatening letters.
The second John Milano book, THE DARK FANTASTIC (1983), was rejected by Random House because of its insufficient political correctness in dealing with racial problems and attitudes in New York. For most of the readers it was clear, that the author did not share the racist, hate-filled opinions of his character, Professor Kirwan. HOUSE OF CARDS (1963) was a a Hitchcockian psychological thriller with international intrigue. The film version of the book, starring George Peppard and Inger Stevens, was made in 1969. The hero is a former prizefighter, Reno Davis, an American who has lived in Paris six years. He has been trying to become a writer but takes a job as guardian of young Paul de Villemont, son of an aristocratic family which has seen better days. In the barred de Villemont mansion Reno becomes involved with Paul’s beautiful, neurotic mother. A fascist group withg connections to the family plans a coup d’état, and pursues him throughout Europe. Orson Welles played in the film a menacing conspirator.
For further reading: Conversations with Writers II, ed. by Stanley Ellin et al (1978); Twentieth Century Mystery and Crime Writers, ed. by John M.Reilly (1985); 1001 Midnights by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller (1986); Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating (1987); St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, ed. by Jay P. Pederson (1996); Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea (1997) - Suomeksi Elliniltä on julkaistu myös The Specialty of the House (Talon erikoinen) valikoimassa Top Crime: Jännityksen valiot (1984), Herra Applebyn seitsemäs vaimo valikoimassa Jännityskertomuksia läheltä ja kaukaa (1963)
Selected works: