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Defining pastiches is open for discussion. One possible definition would be that it exaggerates the reality. Surely one of the definitions. If so then caricatures also fall into this category. Sort of...

Much to our surprise we found a caricature of the nephews "Manning Lee" (sic) and "Fred Dannay" drawn by Thor Fredric (Tor Fredriksson, 1913-1961) who did cartoons for the Swedish language press in Finland during the 1930s and through WWII. After the war he founded a sports magazine and spent less time drawing. His wartime efforts show that he could've had an interesting career in that direction, too. Because of the Finnish/Swedish language barrier, Thor Fredric's cartoon work has been all but forgotten, until some samples of it were rediscovered in a book about WWII cartoons in 2014.

Picture Courtesy Jyrki Vainio. We added the caricature to the pastiche pages here...  

Fred Duesenberg cars were made for success. During the decade of the twenties, his automobiles won the Indianapolis 500 in 1924, 1925, and 1927, while finishing second or third in four of the other seven Indianapolis events.

It seems like Ellery Queen only used the Duesenberg whenever he was not residing in N.Y. It's an 1924 open two seater with a 'Dickey seat' in the back and a counter which shows 215000 km ('Finishing Stroke').The Duesenberg was a symbol of wealth and the luxury dream car of Americans. It is only as second hand car Ellery could afford this vehicle. It's a second hand... Click here or on the cover to read more...

JJMcC, stockbroker, was a close friend to the Queens and although he had only recently moved to Italy he had met the Queens several times in totally different circumstances. How long ago it now seems since El asked him to write the foreword for his first 'opi'. JJMcC has been forgotten by most of the Queen followers. In several translations he was totally discarded as just another writer who wrote a 'upbeat' intro to a detective story. At first his labored articulation as oracle to the Ellery Queen novels discouraged neither Ellery's publisher nor the omnipotent gentleman himself. Thanks to JJMcC Ellery's fictionalized memoirs were published! He carried the burden of keeping the Queen's secret with some difficulty. Queen père and fils were major cogs in the wheel of N.Y.City's police machinery during the 20s and 30s. The secret of their real names was one secret they demanded to be kept. A secret never revealed. Click here for more...

William Smith played Richard Queen in some 10 episodes of the Ellery Queen radio series. He is the last actor to get his "in-depth" biography here ... not without good reason.

Although the internet has made it easier to research biographical information about many actors otherwise long forgotten, when it comes to correctly identifying someone the unending stream of information available on the internet can present its own difficulties. "Bill Smith" unfortunately is a combination of two very common names. This makes mis-identification a real risk. "The" Bill Smith we're looking for isn't William Smith born on March 24. 1933. This last actor who, in my mind, forever will be Falconetti (Rich Man, Poor Man), did start his acting career at an early age. Physical appearances aside, he simply could not have been the actor who took on the roles 'our' Bill Smith played. The current online information on both of these actors tends to be sadly scrambled. Click on his picture to read the information we have sifted through and found to be correct.

This month's mystery podcast offered on the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine website is Dale Andrews' Ellery Queen pastiche, "Literally Dead," which the author himself recorded for EQMM during the recent Malice Domestic convention in Bethesda, Maryland. Click and enjoy!

It's his third Ellery pastiche -- the first, "The Book Case," is included in The Misadventures of Ellery Queen, co-edited by Josh Pachter and Dale and available on Amazon.

Mystery book maven Otto Penzler has started another new initiative, Penzler Publishers. The new house will release its first six books this fall under the American Mystery Classics imprint.

American Mystery Classics, Penzler said, will feature “traditional mystery stories” by some of the most popular writers from what he called the "golden age of detective fiction," which he said ran from the end of World War I through World War II. The new books will be released in both hardcover and trade paperback, but not as e-books.

Penzler said his inspiration to launch the imprint by the fact that British publishers have been successfully releasing mystery reprints from this time period. And, he added, no company in the U.S. has followed suit. “We’re not doing the hardboiled guys that Vintage does,” Penzler explained. Instead, he went on, his imprint will focus on authors such as Ellery Queen and Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Another motivation for creating the new company was to meet the needs of customers who have requested, both in his bookstore and in notes on his website, print copies of classics available now in only in e-book format. Relying on sales of books through his Mysterious Bookshop as well as his Mysterious Press.com e-bookstore, Penzler also found that traditional mysteries were the most in demand.
The Queen book that is part of the inaugural list is The Chinese Orange Mystery. Penzler will release another six books in March 2019. By 2020, he said he hopes to be releasing 24 books annually. (Source: Publishers Weekly)

Although Dannay once recalled there was talk of an EQ newspaper comic strip it is said nothing came of it. 

Starting September 30, 1946 the newspaper The Wilkes-Barre Record ran the first in a series of eight mystery novelettes by famous detective fiction writers.
Each story was contained in six installments. Starting with A Tale of Two Women by Dashiell Hammett it also included: The Adventure of the House of Darkness by Ellery Queen, Borrowed Crime by William Irish, Cocaine by Cornell Woolrich,  Death rides the train by Eric Stanley Gardner, The Mystery of The Spotted Pup by Dorothy D. Hughes, The Seventh Murder by Carroll John Daly and  Intruder at Scotland Yard by Eric Ambler. Read more here ...