Ellery Queen

Frederic Dannay (left), with James Yaffe (1943)

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. 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.

""How actually did they do it? Did they sit together and hammer the stuff out word by word? Did one write the dialogue and the other the narration? ... What eventually happened was that Fred Dannay, in principle, produced the plots, the clues and what would have to be deduced from them as well as the outlines of the characters and Manfred Lee clothed it all in words. But it is unlikely to have been as clear cut as that."

The cousins also wrote four novels about a detective named Drury Lane using the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, and allowed the Ellery Queen name to be used as a house name for a number of novels written by other authors. (See Ellery Queen (house name).)

"As an anthologist, Ellery Queen is without peer, his taste unequalled. As a bibliographer and a collector of the detective short story, Queen is, again, an historical personage. Indeed, Ellery Queen clearly is, after Poe, the most important American of mystery fiction."

The Character of Ellery Queen

Ellery Queen was created in 1928 when Dannay and Lee entered a writing contest sponsored by McClure's 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. "Later the cousins took a sharper view of Vance, Manfred Lee calling him, with typical vehemence, 'the biggest prig that ever came down the pike'."

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 that only one solution is possible. "The rare distinction of the books is that this claim is accurate. There are problems in deduction that do really permit of only one answer, and there are few crime stories indeed of which this can be said."

The fictional detective Ellery Queen is the author of the books in which he appears (The Finishing Stroke, 1958) and the editor of the magazine that bears his name (The Player On The Other Side, 1963). In the earlier novels he is 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. Beginning with Calamity Town in 1940, Ellery became much more human and often became emotionally affected by the people in his cases, at one point quitting detective work altogether. This is the period during which a number of novels are set in the imaginary town of Wrightsville, and subsidiary characters recur from story to story; Ellery seems to be relating to the various strata of American society as an outsider. Ellery spends time working in Hollywood as a screenwriter (for instance, in The Four of Hearts and The Origin of Evil) and solves cases with a Hollywood setting. At this point, he has a slick facade, is part of Hollywood society and hobnobs comfortably with the wealthy and famous. But he soon returned to his New York City roots for the remainder of his career, and is seen mostly as an ultra-logical crime solver who remains distanced from his cases. In the very late novels, he often seemed a near-faceless, near-characterless persona whose role was purely to solve the mystery.

Ellery Queen is said to be married and the father of a child in the introductions to the first few novels, but this soon becomes non-canonic after the ninth novel. The character of "Nikki Porter", who acts as Ellery's secretary and is something of a love interest, was encountered first in the radio series. Nikki's curiosity and/or her attempts to encourage Ellery to work as a detective are responsible for a number of radio/film plots. She does not appear in written stories until the final pages of There Was An Old Woman (1943), when a character with whom Ellery has had some flirtatious moments announces spontaneously that she's changing her name to Nikki Porter and going to work as Ellery's secretary. Nikki Porter appears sporadically thereafter in novels and stories, perhaps in an attempt to link the radio/movies' character (1940-1942) into the written canon. The character of Paula Paris, an agoraphobic gossip columnist, is linked romantically with Ellery in novels and short stories during the period when Ellery is said to be working in Hollywood but does not appear in the radio series or films, and soon vanished from the books. Ellery is not said to have had any serious romantic interests after Nikki Porter and Paula Paris disappear from the canon.

The Queen household, an apartment in New York shared by the Queens father and son, also contains a houseboy named Djuna, at least in the earliest novels and short stories. This young man, who may be of gypsy origin, appears periodically in the canon, apparently ageless and family-free, in a supporting role as cook, receiver of parcels, valet, and as occasional minor comedy relief. He is the principal character in some, not all, of the juvenile novels written as by Ellery Queen, Jr.

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. The EQ "false solution, then the true" would become a hallmark of the canon. Another stylistic element in many early books (notably The Dutch Shoe Mystery, The French Powder Mystery and especially Halfway House) is Ellery's creation of a list of attributes of the murderer (the murderer is male, the murderer smokes a pipe, etc.). Then, by comparing each suspect to these attributes, he reduces the list of suspects to a single name, often an unlikely one.

By 1940, with Ellery Queen -- both the author and the character -- 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. "The great detective is confronted with romance just because the critics said he needed that little bit of spice. It's fair to admit that Nikki Porter brought some charm to the series. And it's fair to say that the Hollywood novels made a pleasant read, but nothing more. Tinseltown didn't treat Dannay and Lee very well. They felt their talent was wasted on small pictures. Burdened by the lack of success they let their feelings get through in the novels. Without those they could have been better books.

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. "Ellery ... occasionally lost his father, as his exploits took place more frequently in the small town of Wrightsville ... where his arrival as a house guest was likely to be the signal for the commission of one or more murders. Very intelligently, Dannay and Lee used this change in locale to loosen the structure of their stories. More emphasis was placed on personal relationships, and less on the details of investigation."

The 1950s and 1960s showed more experimental work, with one of the last novels to feature Ellery, And on the Eighth Day (1964), ghost-written by Avram Davidson, being a religious allegory touching on fascism. (See Ellery Queen (house name).) Several of the later novels featuring Ellery Queen the detective were ghost-written, or more precisely written from detailed story outlines prepared by Lee, 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 and six featuring private eye Tim Corrigan. The prominent science-fiction writer Jack Vance also wrote three of these original paperbacks, including the locked room mystery A Room to Die In.

Ellery Queen also wrote quantities of short stories (possibly because the eponymous magazine published quantities of short stories), many featuring a puzzle format called the "dying clue", where a dying person leaves a clue to their murderer's identity which must be interpreted by detective Ellery. "The writers of short stories between the Wars attempted no more than the statement of a puzzle and its solution by decent detective work. Within these limits the short stories particularly of Queen ... give a great deal of pleasure. Indeed, in some ways the short story is better suited than the novel to this kind of writing. ... This is notable especially in the case of Ellery Queen. The best of his short stories belong to the early intensely ratiocinative period, and both The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1934) and The New Adventures (1940) are as absolutely fair and totally puzzling as the most passionate devotee of orthodoxy could wish. ... (E)very story in these books is composed with wonderful skill. Some of the later Queen stories are interesting, but generally they do not come up to those in the first two collections, because the structure is looser, and there is not much compensation in the way of greater depth."

Novels as Barnaby Ross

Beginning in 1932, the cousins also wrote four novels using the pseudonym "Barnaby Ross" about Drury Lane, a Shakespearean actor who had retired from the stage due to deafness and consulted as an amateur detective. The novels also featured Inspector Thumm (at first of the New York police, then later a private investigator) and his crime-solving daughter Patience. For a while in the 1930s "Ellery Queen" and "Barnaby Ross" staged a series of public debates in which one cousin impersonated Queen and the other impersonated Ross, both of them wearing masks to preserve their anonymity. "People said Ross must be the wit and critic Alexander Woolcott and Queen S.S. Van Dine (real name Huntington Willard Wright), creator of the super-snob detective Philo Vance, on whom 'Ellery Queen' was indeed modeled." The Barnaby Ross novels were later republished under the Ellery Queen name.

The Drury Lane novels are in the whodunnit style. The Tragedy of X and The Tragedy of Y are variations on the locked room mystery format. The Tragedy of Y bears some resemblance to the Ellery Queen novel There Was an Old Woman -- both are about eccentric families headed by a matriarch.

Radio

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.

Television

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 a television movie, Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You, in 1971. Veteran actor Harry Morgan played the Inspector Queen character, but in this film was portrayed as Ellery's uncle. This film is loosely based on Cat of Many Tails.

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). The series was done as a period piece set in New York City in the late 1940s. Sergeant Velie, Inspector Queen's assistant, was a cast regular in this series -- he had appeared in the novels and the radio series, but had not been seen regularly in any of the previous TV versions. Each episode contained a "Challenge to the Viewer" 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, immediately before the solution was revealed.

Movies

• The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935) Donald Cook as Ellery Queen, Guy Usher as Inspector Queen (based on The Spanish Cape Mystery)
• The Mandarin Mystery (1936) Eddie Quillan as Ellery Queen, Wade Boteler as Inspector Queen (loosely based on The Chinese Orange Mystery)
• Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940) Ralph Bellamy as Ellery Queen, Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen (very loosely based on The Door Between)
• Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941) Ralph Bellamy as Ellery Queen, Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen
• Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring (1941) Ralph Bellamy as Ellery Queen, Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen (loosely based on The Dutch Shoe Mystery)
• Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime (1941) Ralph Bellamy as Ellery Queen, Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen (loosely based on The Devil To Pay)
• Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen (1942) Ralph Bellamy as Ellery Queen, Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen
• A Close Call for Ellery Queen (1942) William Gargan as Ellery Queen, Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen
• A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen (1942) William Gargan as Ellery Queen, Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen
• La Décade prodigieuse (1971) (English title, Ten Days' Wonder) directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles (based on Ten Days' Wonder, but not containing Ellery Queen or any detective character)
• Haitatsu sarenai santsu no tegami (1979) (English title, The three undelivered letters) a Japanese movie directed by Yoshitaro Nomura (based on Calamity Town but apparently not containing Ellery Queen or any detective character)

Bibliography

Novels

• The Roman Hat Mystery - 1929
• The French Powder Mystery - 1930
• The Dutch Shoe Mystery - 1931
• The Greek Coffin Mystery - 1932
• The Egyptian Cross Mystery - 1932
• The American Gun Mystery - 1933
• The Siamese Twin Mystery - 1933
• The Chinese Orange Mystery - 1934
• The Spanish Cape Mystery - 1935
• The Lamp of God - 1935†
• Halfway House - 1936
• The Door Between - 1937
• The Devil to Pay - 1938
• The Four of Hearts - 1938
• The Dragon's Teeth - 1939
• Calamity Town - 1942
• There Was an Old Woman - 1943
• The Murderer is a Fox - 1945
• Ten Days' Wonder - 1948
• Cat of Many Tails - 1949
• Double, Double - 1950
• The Origin of Evil - 1951
• The King is Dead - 1952
• The Scarlet Letters - 1953
• The Glass Village - 1954 (neither Ellery Queen nor Inspector Queen in book)
• Inspector Queen's Own Case - 1956 (Inspector Queen only)
• The Finishing Stroke - 1958
• The Player on The Other Side - 1963 (ghost-written with Theodore Sturgeon)
• And on The Eighth Day - 1964 (ghost-written with Avram Davidson)
• The Fourth Side of The Triangle - 1965 (ghost-written with Avram Davidson)
• A Study in Terror - 1966 (Movie tie-in or novelization of a movie of the same name about Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper, with Ellery Queen added as a character in the framing story. The Sherlock Holmes part was written by Paul W. Fairman with Dannay/Lee input.)
• Face to Face - 1967
• The House of Brass - 1968 (ghost-written with Avram Davidson)
• Cop Out - 1969 (neither Ellery Queen nor Inspector Queen in book)
• The Last Woman in His Life - 1970
• A Fine and Private Place - 1971

† The Lamp of God is a long short story or a short novella, originally published in Detective Story magazine in 1935, first collected in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (see below) and published separately (alone) as #23 in the Dell Ten-Cent Editions (64 pages) in 1951.

True Crime

Two collections of true crime stories (based on material gathered by anonymous researchers) written by Lee alone that had been originally published in The American Weekly were collected into volumes.

• Ellery Queen's International Case Book (1964)
• The Woman in the Case (1967)

Short story collections

• The Adventures of Ellery Queen - 1934
• The New Adventures of Ellery Queen - 1940 (Contains The Lamp of God -- see "Novels" above)
• The Case Book of Ellery Queen - 1945
• Calendar Of Crime - 1952
• QBI - Queen's Bureau of Investigation - 1955
• Queens Full - 1966
• QED - Queen's Experiments In Detection - 1968
• The Best Of Ellery Queen - 1985 (one previously uncollected)
• The Tragedy Of Errors - 1999 (a previously unpublished synopsis written by Dannay)
• The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries - 2005

Note that other short story collections exist, such as More Adventures of Ellery Queen (1940), which reprints stories from two previous collections.

As Barnaby Ross

• The Tragedy Of X - 1932
• The Tragedy Of Y - 1932
• The Tragedy Of Z - 1933
• Drury Lane's Last Case - 1933

Omnibus volumes

• The Ellery Queen Omnibus - 1934
• The Ellery Queen Omnibus - 1936
• Ellery Queen's Big Book - 1938
• Ellery Queen's Adventure Omnibus - 1941
• Ellery Queen's Mystery Parade - 1944
• The Case Book of Ellery Queen - 1949
• The Wrightsville Murders - 1956
• The Hollywood Murders - 1957
• The New York Murders - 1958
• The XYZ Murders - 1961
• The Bizarre Murders - 1962

Crime novels attributed to Ellery Queen but written by other authors

See Ellery Queen (house name).

Critical works

• The Detective Short Story: A Bibliography - 1942
• Queen's Quorum: A History of the Detective-Crime Short Story As Revealed by the 100 Most Important Books Published in this Field Since 1845 - 1951
• In the Queen's Parlor, and Other Leaves from the Editor's Notebook - 1957

Magazines

• Mystery League - 1933
• Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - 1941 onwards

Anthologies and collections

• Challenge to the Reader - 1938
• 101 Years' Entertainment, The Great Detective Stories, 1841-1941 - 1941
• Sporting Blood: The Great Sports Detective Stories - 1942
• The Female of the Species: Great Women Detectives and Criminals - 1943
• The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes - 1944
• The Best Stories from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - 1944
• Dashiell Hammett: The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories - 1944
• Rogues' Gallery: The Great Criminals of Modern Fiction - 1945
• To The Queen's Taste: The First Supplement to 101 Years' Entertainment, Consisting of the Best Stories Published in the First Five Years of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - 1946
• The Queen's Awards, 1946 - 1946
• Dashiell Hammett: The Continental Op - 1945
• Dashiell Hammett: The Return of the Continental Op - 1945
• Dashiell Hammett: Hammett Homicides - 1946
• Murder By Experts - 1947
• The Queen's Awards, 1947 - 1947
• Dashiell Hammett: Dead Yellow Women - 1947
• Stuart Palmer: The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers - 1947
• John Dickson Carr: Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories - 1947
• Roy Vickers: The Department of Dead Ends - 1947
• Margery Allingham: The Case Book of Mr. Campion - 1947
• 20th Century Detective Stories - 1948
• The Queen's Awards, 1948 - 1948
• Dashiell Hammett: Nightmare Town - 1948
• O. Henry: Cops and Robbers - 1947
• The Queen's Awards, 1949 - 1949
• The Literature of Crime: Stories by World-Famous Authors - 1950
• The Queen's Awards, Fifth Series - 1950
• Dashiell Hammett: The Creeping Siamese - 1950
• Stuart Palmer: The Monkey Murder and Other Stories - 1950

and many more

Books about Ellery Queen

• Nevins, Francis M. Royal Bloodline: Ellery Queen, Author and Detective. Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1974. ISBN 0-87972-066-2 (cloth), 0-87972-067-0 (paperback).
• Nevins, Francis M. and Grams, Jr., Martin. The Sound of Detection: Ellery Queen's Adventures in Radio. OTR Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-970-33102-9.

References

• Wheat, Carolyn "The Real Queen(s) of Crime", CLUES: A Journal of Detection, 23.4 (Summer 2005): 86-90

External links

• Ellery Queen - a website on deduction
• Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Website with actual magazine excerpts
• Ellery Queen radio shows in the public domain
• The Ellery Queen television show (1975-1976) companion