Ellery Queen is a fictional detective in a successful series of mystery novels written over a span of 42 years. Ellery Queen is also the pseudonym adopted by the two American cousins who wrote the books, and used the name Ellery Queen as the author’s name. Daniel (David) Nathan went under the alias of Frederic Dannay, born in Brooklyn, New York in 1905 and died in 1982. His cousin, Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky went under the alias of Manfred Bennington Lee and was born in Brooklyn in 1905 and died in 1971. They began writing under the name Ellery Queen in 1929.
The character Ellery Queen was the hero of not only a collection of novels, but also radio shows, movies, and television shows. In addition, the cousins co-founded and directed the Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Launched in 1941, EQMM has been in publication for over 65 years, and was originally created because most of the common crime fiction at the time was mediocre, at best. EQMM is the longest running mystery fiction magazine today, mainly because of its high quality editorial content. Frederic Dannay acted as editor from the magazine’s inception until his death.
The successful recipe for Ellery Queen novels has always been an unusual crime and a complex set of clues. Near the end of each novel is a challenge to the reader to solve the mystery using the same clues that the hero detective found. Most mystery authors hold back at least one main clue to make the solution a surprise, but Ellery Queen novels expose all the same clues to the reader that the main character has to work with. This makes these novels not only entertaining to read, but intellectually stimulating as you try to unravel the puzzle along with the characters.
