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Ellery Queen is both a , 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 Novel s 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."Keating, H.R.F., ''The Bedside Companion to Crime''. New York: Mysterious Press, 1989. ISBN 0-89296-416-2 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. "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."Penzler, Otto, ''et al''. ''Detectionary''. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1977. ISBN 0-87951-041-2 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."''Bloody Murder'', Julian Symons, first published Faber and Faber 1972, with revisions in Penguin 1974, ISBN 014 003794 2 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."''The Roman Hat Mystery'' ... introduces two new detectives, the Queens, father and son. One is a genial snuff addict, the other a philovancish bookworm. They are agreeable enough, if somewhat too coy and too chorus-like in their repartee." ''Saturday Review of Literature'', Oct. 12, 1929, quoted in ''The Finishing Stroke'', 1958. 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. Ellery Queen, a website on detection ''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 . Several of the later novels featuring Ellery Queen the detective were also wrote three of these original paperbacks, including the Locked Room Mystery ''A Room to Die In''. 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. 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.''The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946-present'', Brooks and Marsh, 1979, ISBN 0 345 28248 5 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. Some media critics described the series as the best Ellery Queen product ever made for the screen, but it was not one of the more successful with viewers and was soon canceled. MOVIES
BIBLIOGRAPHY Novels
† ''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. Crime novels attributed to Ellery Queen but by other authors All ghost writers are identified where known. Post-1961 novels are usually paperback originals. All titles were edited and supervised by Lee except ''The Blue Movie Murders'', which was edited and supervised by Dannay after Lee's death. Unless noted, these novels do not feature Ellery Queen as a character.
Juvenile Novels attributed to Ellery Queen, Jr. These novels were edited by Lee and ghosted by various authors, including Frank Belknap Long (who admitted writing two without mentioning the titles), Samuel Duff McCoy, and James Clark Carlisle, Jr., who "aroused the ire of Lee by farming out the writing of some of the books to a "sub-ghost", which has made establishing authorship even worse". All the "Junior" novels with a colour in their title starred Djuna (see above), the Queens' houseboy, except for "The Mystery of the Merry Magician" and "The Mystery of the Vanished Victim", which starred "Gulliver Queen", Ellery's nephew.
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.
Short story collections
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
Historical Novels attributed to Barnaby Ross (all ghosted by Don Tracy)
Omnibus volumes
Critical works
Magazines
Anthologies and collections
and many more REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS
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