In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss the lasting legacy of Ellery Queen and the co-writing cousins behind the name.
Discussed and mentioned
The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1941-present)
Ellery Queen’s Minute Mysteries (listen on YouTube)
Ellery Queen’s Mysteries Radio Show (listen on YouTube)
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi Sarah. Today we’re going to cover another Golden Age mystery author, or in this case, maybe I should say authors. |
| Sarah | Yes, I’m so excited to learn and talk about Ellery Queen. |
| Brook | Yes, today we’ll be talking about Ellery Queen, and they are nearly as synonymous with mystery fiction as Agatha Christie herself. |
| Brook | But some fans may not know that Ellery Queen is actually two people. It’s the pen name of a co-author team comprised of first cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manford B. Lee. |
| Brook | Interestingly, both men’s real names were pseudonyms as well. Manfred Manny Lee was born Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky in January 1905 in Brooklyn, New York. Just nine months later, Frederic Dannay was born as Daniel Nathan, also in Brooklyn. |
| Brook | Before the cousins took up mystery writing, Dannay worked in advertising and Lee was a publicity agent. They first collaborated in 1928 by writing “The Roman Hat Mystery” as an entry into a detective story contest sponsored by McClure’s Magazine and publisher Frederick A. Stokes Company. |
| Brook | As part of the contest, writers had to use a pseudonym so that professional authors wouldn’t have an advantage over novices. The cousins decided to use the name Ellery Queen for both their sleuth and their pen name, believing that readers often remember a hero’s name, but rarely the author’s. |
| Brook | This would prove to be a very clever decision when it came to marketing. They won the contest, but before they could collect the cash prize, McClure’s Magazine declared bankruptcy. |
| Brook | Luckily, the co-sponsor, Frederick A. Stokes Company, still offered to publish their book. With its success in 1929, the cousins decided to continue their partnership and went on to become one of the most revered names in mystery fiction. They were just 25 and 26 years old when they began writing full-time. The pair wrote approximately 40 novels and short story collections featuring Queen. |
| Brook | Their sleuth was admittedly patterned after S.S. Van Dine’s brilliant but arrogant detective Philo Vance. Their stories were solidly fair play mysteries and often included a page near the end called The Challenge to the Reader, explaining that all the clues had been revealed and could the reader deduce the solution. |
| Brook | But the Queen series was just the tip of the iceberg for this prolific team. They also edited more than 30 anthologies of crime fiction and true crime. |
| Brook | In 1941, Dannay founded and for many years edited Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which continues to this day. After 1960, Dannay and Lee also commissioned other writers to produce thrillers under the name Ellery Queen, though these books did not feature Queen himself as a character. The Ellery Queen Jr. books were ghostwritten for children. Additionally, they wrote four novels under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, featuring the detective Drury Lane. |
| Brook | Ellery Queen received four Edgar Awards in various categories from the Mystery Writers of America, including the Grand Master Award in 1961. |
| Brook | In 1983, the Mystery Writers of America established the Ellery Queen Award to honor writing teams and outstanding contributors to the mystery publishing industry. |
| Brook | Queen effectively ended in 1971 with the death of Manfred Lee. Though Dannay lived another 11 years, the pen name was retired, except for the title of the magazine, with his cousin’s passing. |
| Sarah | What a fascinating pair of authors, Brook. The contribution that they have made to the mystery space and this lasting legacy of the magazine is is really incredible. |
| Brook | I agree. It’s ah in researching them. I just and I shared with you, you know, I think we could do multiple episodes on this pair because of how much they did, not just in their fiction writing, but also in the anthologies and the bibliographies. It just it goes on and on. And there’s a lot to say. |
| Brook | But today we’ll focus mostly on the writers and their work. |
| Sarah | So I didn’t realize until um recently that they had named their sleuth Ellery Queen ah as well as that being their pen name. And, you know, you said that it was a ah really clever idea. And I have to agree. You know, I think you do remember the name of of a character maybe a little more easily than you remember their their creator. |
| Brook | Yes. Wasn’t that clever? I hadn’t ever thought that through, but it’s definitely true. Like I can remember the sleuth’s name, ah more so than the author’s name. And I think it really speaks to the fact that, um, you know, I mentioned Dannay was in advertising. Lee was a publicity agent. They kind of had a beat on what would work for being commercial right from the very beginning. |
| Sarah | Mm hmm. |
| Brook | And this was just a contest after all. This was kind of like a whim, a fun thing that they did, but um very smart. And then the way that they were ah marketing and commercializing their work throughout their career just continued. |
| Sarah | Well, and it and it obviously worked, right? So, the the contest, even though they didn’t um get the money, they’re their book was or their story was published. And it must have resonated because they ended up continuing to write and and using that pen name. I love also the way that they structured their stories with that ah challenge to the reader. |
| Brook | I do too. And, um, this week I read the Roman Hat Mystery and some of the earlier books had this foreword and they’re written by a mysterious figure named J.J. McC, who assures the public that Ellery is based on a real person, though his name has been changed. And then then you couple that with this challenge to the reader that continued, I think, throughout all their work. And so they were kind of playing with the idea of is Ellery Queen a real person? And you know, they’re the author, they’re the sleuth. It just makes it um pretty intriguing. |
| Sarah | Yeah, absolutely. And I listened to a few of their radio productions. They were structured similarly. There was, you know, up I guess a pause for commercials or whatever. And um leading up to it, they said, okay, you know, “audience, can you, can you figure it out”? And then um the next scene was the detective revealing ah the solution. |
| Brook | Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah. You know, multiple movies, radio shows and television and TV adaptations have been based on their work. |
| Brook | And it seems that they really saw their intellectual property as just that, and they weren’t afraid to market it. And they were very active on the radio. They would have ah syndicated radio filler spots called Ellery Queen’s Minute Mysteries to promote the series. And it would encourage listeners, like you said, to solve the mysteries. And sometimes there would be prizes involved. |
| Sarah | I love and am inspired by their willingness to really sell their sell their work. |
| Brook | Yeah, I feel like they really um understood how much fun they were creating for their listeners. And they didn’t um they didn’t shy away from um making it available in in various ah medias. And I love that. |
| Sarah | So, Brook, did you find anything about how they wrote? I know we’ve had episodes where we’ve talked about co-authors and the various ways that two people might collaborate. |
| Brook | I did. It’s reported that Dannay did most of the plotting and Lee most of the actual writing, but there were then projects in like busy seasons where the pattern would switch. |
| Brook | So I think probably what we know is ah not the whole story and their process was likely quite nuanced. You know, Sarah, you and i have now written two books together or in the process of, and it is a very nuanced process, isn’t it? |
| Brook | And I imagine it would be interesting to be doing this with someone you are also related to, you have an outside relationship with. It’s said that they would write alone in their separate New York homes and sometimes for up to 12 hours a day when they were on deadline, and then consolidate their work in a small office near Fifth Avenue that they called their hideout, and even their wives didn’t know its exact location. |
| Sarah | Oh my goodness. I love that. Their little writing getaway that, that was a secret. |
| Brook | Yeah, wouldn’t it be fun to have a little hideout to go and write in? But I don’t think it was always ah easy. According to Dannay, he said, “we fight like hell, more competitors than collaborators, but it produces a sharper edge.” |
| Brook | So um it would be really interesting to be a fly on the wall and watch that process, wouldn’t it, Sarah? |
| Sarah | Totally. And as you point out, they were not only writing partners, but they were cousins and, you know, probably more like brothers um in terms of the relationship that they had. |
| Brook | I think so. I mean, they were born nine months apart, you know, in the same city. They were probably raised like brothers. It kind of feels that way to me. Um, and they had very different personalities. It sounds like Dannay was very outgoing. He was the one that would go to, you know, book signings and like the, the literary, uh, organization meetings, um, while Lee was much more introverted and didn’t go out in the public very much. So then you, so you have those two different personality styles. That was probably also, um, something too try to work through. |
| Sarah | Brook, we talked a little bit about radio plays and you mentioned that there had been some other adaptations. Has there been anything that has been released recently? |
| Brook | Not that I found. I think like the latest television adaptations were from the 1980s. um But I find that interesting because you know the the magazine is still going strong. We actually are a recurring guest, Manon Wogan, also known as Mystery Manon, had a short story published in Ellery Queen last January. So it’s it’s kind of surprising to me, but nothing really recent. |
| Sarah | Yeah, that is that is interesting. Maybe that’s an opportunity for some television production company to come up with. And, you know, I think you could um certainly build some of that enthusiasm and um community that they seemed to build with their audiences, with their, you know, audience challenge. You know, I think you could probably do something really fun if you are willing to, uh, to experiment a little bit. |
| Brook | Yeah, that’s a great point, especially right now where we’re seeing, you know, it was just recently released that there’s going to be a Murdle show and that ah sort of gameplay and mystery. um I think you’re right, Sarah. This is a great time for some streaming service to revitalize the Ellery Queen character and um and bring it to a new audience. |
| Brook | The setup is really fun. You know, Ellery Queen, the character, is the son of a police officer. ah detective. And so um they have a fun relationship. I like the relationship between the father and son. |
| Brook | But Ellery, ah you know, is this very highly deductive character and he’s able to come in and and assist his dad in solving cases. So I could really see that translating well for the screen. |
| Sarah | Yeah, that sounds perfect. |
| Brook | One thing that surprises me when we’re talking about Ellery Queen as the character and the ah author is that the story I read was in limited third person and from the point of view of Queen. |
| Brook | But I think I would have liked it to be first person given the fact that we’re supposed to be hearing this from Ellery Queen. So he’s referring to himself in the third person, which feels kind of off. |
| Brook | But I wasn’t quite sure whether that was the sign of the times. I mean, was the Golden Age trend to write in the third person? I can’t really, i can’t put my finger on that. |
| Sarah | Brook, that’s a really great question. And maybe something that um we could look into and see if there’s a future episode idea in there. |
| Brook | Exactly. |
| Brook | Well, some of the greatest minds in mystery really revered Ellery Queen as well. And Otto Penzler is a mystery fiction critic and owner of the Mysterious Bookshop. And he worked for Frederic Dannay at the magazine for years. |
| Brook | And um you know he mentions in a quote that Ellery Queen, Frederic Dannay, is an anthologist, a bibliographer, and a collector of mystery. And he says that “Ellery Queen is, after Poe, the most important American in mystery fiction”. And I just think that that is such a compliment. |
| Brook | And then I love this quote by British crime novelist Margery Allingham. She said that “Dannay and Lee had done far more for the detective story than any other two men put together.” |
| Sarah | Oh, what a great comment. Did you find anything about whether they had any connections with members of the Detection Club? |
| Brook | I did not. You know, they were, again, active with the Mystery Writers of America and attended those meetings. |
| Sarah | Just following on from the comment from Margery Allingham, Martin Edwards in his book, The Golden Age of Murder, ah refers to Ellery Queen as “a towering figure among American golden age writers.” |
| Sarah | So, you know, I think um certainly respected for the contribution that that Ellery Queen made to to writing mystery fiction. |
| Sarah | One thing, Brook, that I saw about Ellery Queen and in particular, the pseudonym, the other pseudonym that they wrote under, Barnaby Ross, um apparently when they publicized those books, ah they wore masks so that they you couldn’t see who they apparently… |
| Sarah | According to Martin Edwards, rumor mongers claimed that “Queen was really Van Dine, while Ross was said to be the critic and raconteur Alexander Wolcott, who later became Anthony Berkeley’s Bette Noire.” |
| Brook | That is so fun. It doesn’t surprise me very much either because they did keep the, um, identity of Ellery Queen a secret for a time as well. And I I think it was only lasted a couple of years because sometime in the earth early 1930s, they revealed who Ellery Queen was. But it’s fun to me that the audience guessed S.S. Van Dine because they really did pattern some of their characters after um after that author’s work. |
| Sarah | That is really interesting. |
| Brook | Speaking of Drury Lane, um the Barnaby Ross character, I thought the ah concept was really different and um interesting. Drury Lane is a retired Shakespearean actor who builds a castle and names it Hamlet. And he essentially he essentially stays within the walls of his castle and solves these mysteries that ah that people bring to him. He’s that deductive detective. |
| Sarah | Oh, that sounds fun. |
| Brook | You know, we spoke earlier about maybe some of the conflicts in their ah relationship. And apparently… Dannay was not thrilled with the ghostwritten books. And the idea of kind of contracting those out ah was purely financial. And it was something that Lee really wanted and needed at that point in his life. |
| Brook | But apparently, Frederic Dannay never even read any of the Ellery Queen Jr. books because he was really not in favor of ah of the projects at all. |
| Sarah | Oh my goodness. |
| Brook | Yeah. |
| Sarah | Yeah. So there must’ve been some, some conflict there. |
| Brook | Yeah. And I think that’s, you know, that’s natural. If you’re going to be working on, ah you know, 40 plus books together and being related, um you know, there’s bound to be some personality conflicts. |
| Brook | But um boy, oh boy, you cannot dismiss what they contributed as a collaborative ah pair to the mystery fiction space. |
| Sarah | I agree, Brook. And, you know, you said at the beginning that um there may be more to say about them. And I’m sure there is because they have contributed a lot. And it has been so interesting to just learn a little bit more about that over the last couple of weeks. Yeah. |
| Brook | It has Sarah. And I look forward to maybe diving into this pair some more later. |
| Brook | But for today, thank you for joining us, listeners, on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah. And we both love mystery. |
