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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...

Chances are that you have never heard of an actor who both played Ellery Queen and, in his youth, actually saw Adolf Hitler at work in Munich. And, this actor’s career was extremely short: he died of a heart attack during a broadcast rehearsal at the age of 36. The actor had a handful of theater appearances and as many films to his credit. As far as TV was concerned, he had only just gotten off to what might have been a good start when disaster struck. Still, his biography is worth reading and full of interesting details. Many we have just added, and they enrich the understanding of the actor's life in his era. Richard Hart (the actor whom we have been talking about) also had a relationship with actress Felicia Montealegre at the end of his life. She later married Leonard Bernstein, and thus will likely earn a spot in the yet-to-be-released Netflix biopic about Bernstein’s life.

               To read all about Richard Hart click here ...

Many of these details we have collected on this site come from newspaper clippings found in archives over the years. When these disparate facts are put together it is like solving a puzzle -- we end up with more insight into the careers of the actors in question. It is frustrating that some blogs or "reputable" sites set forth their information without any identification of the original source, this will not keep us from adding new details that we find. (And whenever we can, we attribute the original source of our information.) So soon you will find out more about who the fourth (actually his first) wife of Hugh Marlowe was.... Check it out. Up until now all sites list only three wives. Hugh, of course, was the actor who early on gave voice and form to Ellery Queen on both radio and TV.

               To read all about Hugh Marlowe click here ...

Every once in a while we subject this website to a little maintenance. This was the case over the past two months.

All the detail pages for the books and films were fine tuned a bit. The content was, where possible, re-ordered to show reviews in chronological order from the time of first appearance. In this way, the reader can see the initial impact each work had on the public. Hopefully this approach will prove less biased in that each review can stand on its own, without being influenced by later critiques or the by the ravages of time. Some Ellery Queen works certainly show their age and in some respects could be viewed as dated. By rearranging critiques and reviews chronologically our hope is that these commentaries can be read with more of an appreciation of the times that they, as well as the work at issue, were written.

So all the detail pages for each work have been adjusted. And at the same time, the covers of the first editions have been re-examined in detail and the differences between first editions and later editions (same covers by other publishers) have been noted.

Also, the manner in which the books are divided into sections has been changed. All of the Dannay/Lee works are now in the full 'opus', and are separated from the paperback originals. The latter have also been organized somewhat more according to publisher and year.

Finally, I would also like to mention that navigating between the different detail pages has been made easier with a button (revolver to the right) and a button (revolver to the left) for toggling to the next or to the previous detail page.

The "Q.B.I." section has all the works published under the Ellery Queen name. Click here to read more ...

The "Kill as Directed" section contains all the other media (radio, TV, film, comics, games,...). The pages on the movies start on page 5 of that section. Click here to read more ...

Enjoy!"

Thorndike Press (From Gale, a Cengage Company) publishes large print editions.  Earlier they published two other Ellery Queen works. With The Dutch Shoe Mystery (December 2020) and The Chinese Orange Mystery  (January 2019), they provided a reader-friendly format readers of all ages could enjoy. Both titles had the same covers we know from the Otto Penzler's series American Mystery Classics. Last February they again came up with Queen title only this time with it's own distinctive hardcover: The American Gun Mystery!

"When a circus rodeo actor is shot dead in the midst of his performance, it seems obvious that someone would have seen the perpetrator - or at least recovered the gun. When the investigation fails to turn up any evidence, the net of suspicion widens across the troupe of performers and the circus staff. Unluckily for the murderer, Ellery Queen is among the thousands that witnessed the crime, and he won't be satisfied until he discovers the truth. By the time he uncovers the necessary clues, Queen will expose both the killer and the hiding place of the weapon - the titular American Gun that fired the fatal bullet."

Buy it here. Click on the cover to read more on that book...

Something for the trivia section or perhaps even the pastiche section this next unusual contribution. Frank Stewart contributed the following Ellery Queen problem in the daily bridge section of many a newspaper in 2004:

Ellery Queen surveyed the lifeless body of West, sprawled under the table where he's played in a high-stakes game. He'd been conked with a pair of fire tongs.
"We're holding the other three birds," Inspector Queen said.
"North's prints are on the murder weapon, but he won't confess. He says he'd stoked the fire."

"What happened on their last deal, Dad?" Ellery asked.
"According to North," said the Inspector, "South played at five clubs. West led the ace and another heart, and South ruffed, forced out the ace of trumps and took six trumps, four diamonds and a spade. What does it matter?"

"I think if you put the heat on East, he'll confess," said Ellery.
"West defeats the contract with a diamond shift at Trick Two. When East takes the ace of trumps, he leads a second diamond, and South can't use the diamonds and loses a spade."

"I did it," howled East. "My partner wouldn't kill the dummy so I killed him."
"Take him away, Velie," sighed the Inspector.

My attention was caught last month by a post from the hand of Matthew J. Elliott, by his own admission, an award-winning screenwriter, author, voice-over artist, presenter, editor and contributor for RiffTrax from Lancashire, England. His 2008 miniseries The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer starring Stacy Keach was nominated for an Audie Award.

 "I became a mystery writer because of Ellery Queen. Hilary Caine wouldn't exist were it not for Ellery."

The "tongue in cheek" Hilary Caine mysteries are set in "The Golden Age" of 1930s British mysteries. Hilary Caine is a young woman with a unique gift for solving crimes. She is employed by the English tabloid Tittle Tattle Magazine as their private investigator. She solves the crime, they write the story.