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Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel (David) Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay (October 20, 1905–September 3, 1982) and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee (January 11, 1905–April 3, 1971), to write detective fiction. In a successful series of novels that covered forty-two years, Ellery Queen was not only the name of the author, but also that of the detective-hero of the stories. Movies, radio shows, and television shows have been based on their works. The two, particularly Dannay, were also responsible for co-founding and directing Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, generally considered as one of the most influential English crime fiction magazines of the last sixty-five years. They were also prominent historians in the field, editing numerous collections and anthologies of short stories such as The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. Their 994-page anthology for The Modern Library, 101 Years' Entertainment, The Great Detective Stories, 1841-1941, was a landmark work that remained in print for many years.
Ellery Queen, Detective Ellery Queen was created when Dannay and Lee entered a writing contest sponsored by a magazine for the best first mystery novel. They decided to use as their collective pseudonym the same name that they had given their detective. Inspired by the formula and style of the Philo Vance novels by S. S. Van Dine, their entry won the contest but before it could be published, the magazine was sold and the prize given to another entrant by the new owner. Undeterred, the cousins decided to take the novel to publishers, and The Roman Hat Mystery was published in 1929. The Roman Hat Mystery established the basic formula: the unusual crime; the complex series of clues; the supporting characters of Ellery's father, Inspector Richard Queen, and his irascible assistant, Sergeant Velie; and what would become the most famous part of the book: Ellery's "Challenge to the Reader". This was a single page near the end of the book declaring that the reader now had seen all the same clues Ellery had, and asking if the reader could deduce the solution. Ellery the character was himself a detective story writer, a snobbish, almost priggish Harvard-educated intellectual of independent wealth who wore a pince-nez and investigated and solved crimes solely because he found them stimulating. He derived these characteristics from his mother, the daughter of a rich aristocratic New York family who had married Inspector Queen, a bluff, man-in-the-street New York Irishman, and died before the stories began. His mannerisms in the first nine or ten novels were apparently based on those of the then-extremely popular Philo Vance character of the same era. As time went on, however, these mannerisms were toned down or disappeared entirely, to the point where he became a near-faceless, near-characterless persona whose role in the books was purely to solve the mystery. Story style The Queen novels are examples of the classic "fair play", whodunit mystery, particularly during what became known as the "Golden Age" of the mystery novel. All the clues are made available to the reader in the same way they are to the protagonist detective, and so the reading of the book becomes an intellectual challenge as well. Mystery writer John Dickson Carr termed it "the grandest game in the world." Other characteristics of the early Queen novels were the intricately plotted clues and solutions. In The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932), multiple solutions to the mystery are proposed, a feature that would show up in later books, most notably Double, Double and Ten Days' Wonder. In that same year, the cousins created Drury Lane under the name of Barnaby Ross, eventually writing four novels about Lane, a Shakespearian actor/detective. These novels were later reissued under the Ellery Queen byline. For a while in the 1930s "Ellery Queen" and "Barnaby Ross" even staged a series of public debates in which one cousin impersonated Queen and the other impersonated Ross, both men wearing masks to preserve their anonymity. By 1938, with Ellery making the move to Hollywood to try his hand at scriptwriting, both his character and the character of the novels began to change. Romance was introduced, the solutions began to involve psychological elements as well, and the "Challenge" vanished from the pages. The novels also moved from mere puzzles to more introspective themes. Ten Days' Wonder (1948), set in the New England town of Wrightsville (a backdrop for several Queen novels during the 1940s), even showed the limitations of Ellery's methods of detection. The 1950s and 1960s showed more experimental work, with one of the last novels to feature Ellery, And on the Eighth Day (1964), being a religious allegory touching on fascism. Although some of the middle-period novels, especially Calamity Town and Cat of Many Tails (an early serial killer novel), are considered classics, some criticize the combination of religious symbolism and detection in the later Queens as clumsy and pretentious. Several of the later novels featuring Ellery Queen the detective were ghost-written, or at least ghost-collaborated, by science fiction writers Theodore Sturgeon and Avram Davidson. Towards the end of their careers, the cousins also produced novels, mainly original paperbacks, written by various people under the Ellery Queen name that did not feature the character Ellery Queen as the protagonist. These included three novels featuring the governor's "troubleshooter" Mike McCall: The Campus Murders (1969, written by Gil Brewer); The Black Hearts Murder (1970, written by Richard Deming); and The Blue Movie Murders (1972, written by Edward D. Hoch). The prominent science-fiction writer Jack Vance also wrote three of these original paperbacks, including the locked room mystery A Room to Die In. Radio and television On radio, The Adventures of Ellery Queen was heard on all three networks from 1939 to 1948. During the 1970s, syndicated radio fillers, Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries, began with an announcer saying, "This is Ellery Queen..." and would go on to describe a case in one minute. The radio station would then encourage callers to try to solve the mystery and win a sponsor's prize. Once they got a winner, the solution part of the spot would be played as confirmation. Helene Hanff, best-known for her book 84 Charing Cross Road, was a scripter for the television series version of The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950-52), which began on the DuMont Television Network but soon moved to ABC. Shortly after the series began, Lee Hart, who played Queen, died and was replaced in the lead role by Lee Bowman. The series returned to DuMont in 1954 with Hugh Marlowe in the title role. George Nader then played Queen in The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen (1958-59), but he was replaced with Lee Philips in the final episodes. Peter Lawford starred in the television movie Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You (1971). The 1975 television movie Ellery Queen led into the 1975-76 ''Ellery Queen'' television series starring Jim Hutton in the title role (with David Wayne as his widowed father). Each episode would end with Queen breaking the fourth wall to go over the facts of the case and invite the audience to solve the mystery on their own. The cousins, under their collective pseudonym, were given the Grand Master Award for achievements in the field of the mystery story by the Mystery Writers of America in 1961. Novels Short story collections As Barnaby Ross Critical works Anthologies and collections | ||||||||
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