【推理小说杂谈】埃勒里·奎因浅论(29)

And on the Eighth Day
　ダネイ夫人の回想録「My Life With Ellery Queen」に理由が載っています。
　（注：这里指丹奈夫人自传《My Life With Ellery Queen》）
随后我翻阅了《My Life With Ellery Queen》，相关段落如下，出自一次对丹奈的采访：
F.D.: "No question in my mind that the best quality stories we produced were our later novels. We were older, we were more mature, we had deeper ideas. we began to think in terms of larger meanings and concepts. For example, In The Glass Village our focus was McCarthyism. In The King is Dead it was about Fascism. We wrote a book about gerontology, and only one critic used the word 'gerontology' in his review. I often wondered if the other critics knew what the book was about. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, I became very interested in them and read everything I could about them. I was determined to do a book about them in the framework of a modern detective story to show the life as seen in the Scrolls, the life of the Essenes. That book was called And On the Eighth Day."

丹奈认为他们创作过最好的作品是后期写的小说，而非第一时期。他们更加成熟，有了更深刻的想法，能从更多更宽泛的角度去思考并创作。他们认为《玻璃村庄》就是围绕麦卡锡主义来写的，或许并没有考虑过我提到的“法庭推理公平游戏说”。关于上文提到的“老年学”一词，我想他们是在指《奎因探长自己的案件》。