Two cousins from Brooklyn, New York teamed up to create the character and book series called Ellery Queen. Daniel Nathan and Manford Leposfsky created this series of novels that spanned Detective Ellery Queen's adventures over 42 years. The cousins created these works under pseudonyms, Nathan called himself Frederic Dannay and Lepofsky named himself Manfred Bennington Lee.
In 1928, the cousins entered a contest sponsored by McClure’s Magazine for the best mystery story by a new writer. They won the contest and went on to develop what now we know as the Ellery Queen Mysteries.
Ellery Queen is both the name of each novel and the main character in them. Ellery Queen’s stories have been adapted into radio, television shows and movies over the years. Movies depicting Ellery Queen began in the 1930’s and ran into the late 1970’s. Ellery Queen premiered on television in 1950, an off-shoot of the radio drama. From 1975 to 1978, Jim Hutton portrayed Ellery Queen in a weekly television detective series.
In addition to the novels they created, Dannay and Lee co-founded and edited a mystery magazine called Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in England.
The creative process for two individuals to collaborate to make such a successful product is intriguing to people. Dannay developed the plots and clues that would be used in a story, and it was Lee who put these ideas together in a completed work.
The earliest Ellery Queen stories were complex and riddled with plot twists and clues. As the series progressed, humor was injected into the stories and the characters became more detailed and complex. Many of the later stories take place in New York City.
