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In his new article which Rémi sets out to demonstrate that Dannay's influence ensures that Ellery Queen mysteries are a lot more than  everyday whodunits. 

Author Dan Andriacco, a former journalist and reviewer of mystery books, has not only written much and spoken widely about Sherlock Holmes,  but this Baker Street Irregular (BSI) also produced at least one new mystery novel a year since 2011. His main mystery series features Sebastian McCabe, Jeff & Lynda Cody, and the small town of Erin on the banks of the Ohio River. Last September the latest McCabe and Cody book was published under the name The English Garden Mystery.

As Dan himself explains: " The book is an homage to Golden Age great Ellery Queen (cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee sharing a joint pseudonym) starting with the title. The names of the first nine Queen novels all had a nationality adjective followed by a noun, from 'The Roman Hat Mystery' through 'The Spanish Cape Mystery'.

Beyond that, Mac and Jeff’s latest adventure shares a number of other tropes with the early Queen:

The subtitle “A Problem in Deduction.” Check!

An eccentric family living under one roof or in a compound of nearby homes. Check!

A map showing where the family members live. Check!

A Shakespearean theme running through the storyline. Check!

A “Challenge to Reader” at the point in the novel when all the clues necessary to solve the murder have been present. Check!

A perfectly logical solution—which turns out to be false, thus creating a kind of double ending when the real solution is unveiled. Check!

A dying message from the victim identifying the killer. Check—or maybe not!

The cousins Queen had multiple names. Manfred Bennington Lee was born Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky and Frederic Dannay started out as Daniel Nathan. I like to think that Dannay, who was the Sherlockian of the duo, wouldn’t mind that one of the suspects in 'The English Garden Murders' is a pharmacist named Nathan Daniel."

Read more on authors Ellery Queen influenced here...

Out now! A collection more than half a century in the making!

The discerning reader will recall that the two cousins who wrote as Ellery Queen published five short stories about the Puzzle Club and its newest member, Ellery Queen himself, in the 1960s and '70s. Fifty years later, Josh Pachter picked up the gauntlet and gave us five more tales of the Puzzle Club, each as baffling as the original five, each with an introduction by a family member, friend, or aficionado of Mr. Queen.

In addition to the ten Puzzle Club stories are four that introduce the Griffen family and E.Q. Griffen, who solves problems as confusing as those presented to his namesake. These stories were written by West 87th Street Irregular Josh Pachter and introduced by Frederic Dannay, one of the two cousins who made up the EQ partnership.

The chapbook that accompanies the signed and numbered clothbound edition includes Pachter's story "S.O.S.," which was edited by Dannay and published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1972.

Available in paperback, e-formats, and in a beautiful hardcover edition signed by Richard Dannay, Rand B. Lee, and Josh himself. With introductions by Martin Edwards, Joseph Goodrich, Dale C. Andrews, Kurt Sercu, Janet Hutchings, Jon L. Breen, Mike Nevins, Arthur Vidro, Jeffrey Marks and Richard Dannay.

More on Josh's Puzzle Club stories can be read in our pastiche section here...

Production men would have been the term at the time. It is true that there were almost no women in production.
Actresses abound, but so not as many production women as opposed to production men. This was especially true in radio and early TV productions. Composers, announcers, directors, producers, writers ... . Filling in the biographies of some of these individuals is often even more difficult than it was for actors. While from actors often small or large parts of information can be found, this is almost non-existent for them. For others, fairly complete biographies exist online with little to add.

As previously announced, these were also given their own page in which profiles will also be added.

We start with the profile of George Zachary a prolific radio and TV director producer who originated in 1939 the radio series of Ellery Queen, he would later made the transition to TV work. He was married for a while to Nikki Porter actress Marion Shockley ...

Click here to read more...

The biographies on this site offer a nice glimpse into some lives in the 20th century. It is true that these are more or less public figures, but nevertheless several important evolutions in the American media, politics and everyday life are documented from the viewpoint of the people who lived in that era.

Whenever official or unofficial biographies are published, it is always an enrichment to compare them with the concise descriptions we offer.

The biography of William Gargan has been available for some time. He played Ellery Queen in three Columbia films released in 1942.We went through it again and the page on this courageous actor was updated.

Click here to read more...

Virginia Gregg played opposite Larry Dobkin in The Adventures of Ellery Queen (CBS). We had limited access to her biography Uncredited: The Life and Career of Virginia Gregg by Lona Bailey (June 30. 2022). Some details were added to her biography...

Click here to read more...

We also announce that we will set up a page where we will also compile biographies of various production people. A bit more challenging because they often lived in the shadows... Watch this space!

We're very proud and honored to announce a new (ninth!) member to the West 87th Street Irregulars!

The West 87th Street Irregulars are a band of established EQ experts and fans who collectively have committed themselves to the preservation and revival of Ellery Queen. As such, each inductee has an established interest in the works of Ellery Queen and a recognized contribution to the Queen canon. Collectively the Irregulars share the goal of making Ellery Queen once again a vibrant and recognized name in detective fiction, especially in the United States.

Each inductee is asked to (re)write something on Ellery Queen, the article will get its place here on the site and he or she is there from known as a genuine West 87th Street Irregular!

Steve Steinbock has written articles, interviews, and mystery reviews for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, The Armchair Detective, ... The Strand, and Mystery Scene. He wrote several non-fiction articles (and one short story) for EQMM, and since 2011, he has reviewed crime fiction for EQMM's "Jury Box" column. He has translated numerous Japanese mystery stories into English (click on the picture for his article "Japanese Scholarship: Logic, Formalism, and Ellery Queen")

Click here to read more...
    

In Memoriam: Douglas Dannay, 07/3/1933 – 06/17/2022

"On June 17, 2022, Douglas Dannay died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Born July 3, 1933, Doug was the eldest son of Frederic Dannay, who, together with his cousin Manfred B. Lee, wrote the Ellery Queen novels and stories and founded EQMM. I did not know Doug at all well, as he lived, until his retirement, in Merrick, Long Island, not in New York City where the magazine was based, and he was often unable to attend EQMM events. However, the limited contact I had with Doug left me with two strong impressions: that he was very intelligent and that he was extremely modest. ... "

Click here to read on at the EQMM blog .

I've met Douglas on April 28th 2005 at the Ellery Queen Centenary Symposium in New York. I remember being nervous as to how people, especially family members, would react to a fan from the EQ website flying all the way from Belgium for the New York City event. Accompanied by a new-found friend, Dale C. Andrews (who I previously knew only through email correspondence), I made my way to the symposium comprised of Ellery Queen devotees...

I brought along my copy of "The Tragedy of Errors," the centennial collection by Ellery Queen published by Crippen & Landru, hoping to collect some autographs from the authors of the various essays contained in the anthology. One of the first to graciously agree to sign the book was Douglas. He immediately put me at ease with his kind words. When he signed my copy he wrote "Thank you for coming all that distance & for keeping the memory alive - Douglas Dannay".

It was only later that I found out Douglas actually was a gifted teacher. No surprise to me, he was the sort of teacher we all remember as making a difference in our lives.

The signed EQ book has a prominent place in my book case. After all those years it still has a permanent bookmarker marking the page of Douglas’s inscription.

My sincere condolences to family and friends.
                 

Throughout the years fans of the Ellery Queen novels and short stories have had a recurring mystery to ponder: What, exactly, did Ellery Queen look like? Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee provided only the skimpiest of clues. In the early novels we knew that Ellery wore pince nez glasses, and he has always been described as tall and slender with silver grey eyes. But that was about it. For many fans of the 1975 NBC series Ellery may always be Jim Hutton, but way back, at the very beginning, there was a time when Ellery Queen -- the author(s) -- were also imagined as Ellery Queen, the detective.

Of course, there was one problem. Or maybe we should say “two.” How do you get one detective from two authors? Perhaps not quite as hard as it may sound.

The two cousins not only worked together but at early on they also looked very similar. Melding the two of them into one character presented an opportunity that the magazine Popular Photography couldn't pass up. The cousins had already used relied on their physical resemblance in order to take turns giving lectures (always masked) as "Ellery Queen".

Popular Photography decided to take on the task of actually combining the two authors into one detective. This would have been pretty easy in the present day with Photoshop and other editing programs. But all the magazine had to work with, as the story, linked below, attests, was good old fashioned craftsmanship...

Click here to read more...

A new edition to Otto Penzler presents series of American Mystery Classics comes out in November 2022: The Spanish Cape Mystery.

A house party turns a millionaire’s hacienda hideaway into a crime scene in this classic whodunnit from an Edgar Award–winning Grand Master.

The Godfrey family is vacationing among the picturesque rocky cliffs of the North Atlantic seaboard, expecting peace, quiet, and, perhaps, a bit of golf or tennis. But one dusky evening in an isolated spot on the grounds of Spanish Cape, Rosa and her uncle David get into an argument about her secretive romance with one of their guests, the roguish John Marco, a handsome cad with a yellow roadster and no visible source of income. That’s when a towering one-eyed man with a .38 revolver emerges from the twilight.

When renowned sleuth Ellery Queen arrives the next day from New York City, looking forward to a summer getaway on the coast, he realizes his trip will be no walk on the beach. Rescuing Rosa, he discovers her captor mistook David for John and struck the former down instead. But Ellery has more work to do when Rosa’s shady sweetheart is found stone dead and stark naked . . . aside from a black fedora and a theatrical-looking opera cloak. There are plenty of guests and members of the household who might have wanted John dead, but who did it—and what in the world happened to the victim’s clothes?

In this iconic series inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and praised by none other than Agatha Christie, carefully planted clues, logical deduction, and an atmospheric 1930s setting combine for an irresistibly enjoyable read for anyone who loves a murderous puzzle.

Read more on the book here...