And On the Eighth Day by Ellery Queen

When my dad visits, sometimes he leaves books behind. He's been in an Ellery Queen kick. (Also a Nero Wolf kick, something about oddball detectives I guess) Most of my experience with Ellery Queen is a T.V. adaptation made in the eighties. There are a lot of turtle necks. Most notably, there are these PSA moments when Ellery turns to the camera and explains the solution to the audience.

I had no idea it was set in WWII era and just after.

However, that's not really what I want to talk about.

This is a seriously strange novel. It's about 26 books into the series and I think I started reading them in a seriously strange place. Ellery, after a bad stint writing film scripts for the war effort, takes a wrong turn in the desert and finds an odd little reclusive religious community living out a pre-biblical existence. This is a perfect crimeless religious community here. Of course, there is a murder. Otherwise what is the point of having Ellery Queen there.

So yeah. Not so much turtlenecks. Very much not what I expected walking in. Of course, on further consideration, based on the time period, those weird little religious communities were actually a bit more common than they are today. We tend to think in terms of creepy cults with homicidal suicide pacts these days but America was founded by religious nuts and there used to be a lot of these little religious communities dotted about trying to regains some sort of lost eden. Many were actually successful in the short term and if they weren't exactly harmless, they were at least relatively benign. So, perhaps the subject matter is a little more understandable.

Still seriously weird though.