Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins,
Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971), as well
as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they
spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the
name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the
Golden Age “fair play” mystery.
Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen’s first
appearance came in 1928, when the cousins won a mystery-writing
contest with the book that would eventually be published as The
Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who
uses his spare time to assist his police inspector uncle in solving
baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee
cofounded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most
influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay
outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee’s
death.
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