Queen, Ellery

Because Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee wisely used the same name, Ellery Queen, for their joint pseudonym and their detective, they created a name recognition that made Queen the best-known American detective during the 1930s and much of the 1940s. He appeared in a long series of novels and short stories, beginning in 1929 and continuing through 1971. Even radio scripts of the successful The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1939–48) program found their way into print.

Ellery Queen is introduced in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929), in which he is depicted as a handsome, aloof young man in the mold of Philo Vance, then one of American fiction's most popular sleuths. Queen is a dilettante who carries a walking stick, wears pince-nez, and drives a Duesenberg. In the character's first appearance, he is called away from a rare book buying expedition to a Broadway theater in which a murder has taken place. He is a writer, but during his first decade as a fictional character he is also a willing unofficial consultant on difficult cases for his father, Inspector Richard Queen of the New York Police Department, with whom he shares a Manhattan brownstone.

Queen's most notable trait is his intelligence; and he is described as Sherlock Holmes's logical successor. Using unassailable logic, he sifts through complex clues, motives, and alibis to arrive at solutions. His forte is solving bizarre murders, as in The Egyptian Cross Mystery (1932), with its crucifixions. Later in his career, he becomes a highly proficient interpreter of dying messages, obscure notes or objects left by murder victims which, only if interpreted correctly, point to the killer.

By The Devil to Pay (1938), The Queen character is more serious about his writing, having been hired by a Hollywood studio as a screenwriter. However, he is not given assignments, and so relieves his frustration by solving murders. After a one-book stint (The Dragon's Teeth, 1939) as a paid private detective, Ellery enters the most serious period of his career as writer and amateur detective.

In Calamity Town (1942), to gain privacy to write a book, he goes to Wrightsville, a fictional New England village. While there, he becomes so deeply involved with Wrightsville's residents that he returns to the village throughout his career to help solve local crimes. He becomes more down to earth and less inclined to show off his mental prowess when explaining a solution. In The Murderer Is a Fox (1945) he helps a war veteran who has been accused of murder. In Ten Days' Wonder (1948) and Double, Double (1950; The Case of the Seven Murders), he relies less on physical clues, now applying his wide reading of psychology and religion.

In New York City, he discovers a greater, if occasionally reluctant, involvement in social problems. In Cat of Many Tails (1949), the randomness with which a serial killer picks his victims brings the city to the brink of hysteria and class warfare. Only at the request of the mayor does Ellery agree to find the killer. At about this time, Ellery solves a series of short cases dealing with current New York City problems, including juvenile delinquency.

His later cases refer to prior exploits. The Finishing Stroke (1958) is a flashback to 1929 when, as a newly published author, he attends a Christmas party and faces a case of murder among guests isolated by a snowstorm. And on the Eighth Day (1964) is set in 1944 when Queen, returning from Hollywood where he wrote war films for the government, is stranded in the desert community of a religious sect, which treats him as its possible messiah.

It is not only a name that Queen shares with his creator. Parallels, especially to Dannay, are many. Queen, the character, and Dannay were both bibliophiles, each amassing a valuable library of first editions. Dannay and Lee also both spent time in Hollywood, years of frustration in which they never received script credit. Following Dannay's near fatal automobile accident in 1940, the writers showed greater awareness of social issues, as did Ellery Queen, the detective.

Bibliography and More Information about Queen, Ellery

• Francis M. Nevins, Jr., Royal Bloodline: Ellery Queen, Author and Detective (1974).
• Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen's ELLERY QUEEN, in 100 Great Detectives, ed. Maxim Jakubowski (1991).

—Marvin Lachman