The Ellery Queen mysteries in the 1950s were filmed live, and TV was not yet what it became, and it was an underfunded medium. At one point while she was failing as a playwright, she took a job in television, which was brand new, and she found herself writing the Ellery Queen mysteries. She’d gone to New York to be a great playwright and had failed, and she wrote this memoir called Underfoot in Show Business about her failure in theatre. But she also wrote a memoir about her failure as a theatre writer in the 40s and 50s in New York City. I had a cousin named Helene Hanff who wrote 84, Charing Cross Road, which is a book that is beloved by book people. I don’t know how you learn that, although I can offer the example of what I’ve got on my bookshelf right here. But it can’t be too obscure, and it can’t be crazy at the same time. You don’t want it to be too easy, you don’t want it to be too obvious. If you find yourself revealing something that doesn’t need to be revealed, you have to go back and do it again. Jean Hanff Korelitz: I think it’s almost a process of elimination. Mitzi Rapkin: When you were writing this, how have you learned-maybe through experience, or instinct, maybe it’s having a therapist mother-to modulate tension and suspense?
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