Queen, Ellery

US writers of detective stories. They collaborated on numerous books featuring the fictitious detective Ellery Queen, including The Four of Hearts 1938, The Greek Coffin Mystery 1932, and The Player on the Other Side 1963.

Both writers had successful careers in advertising when they jointly entered a detective-story competition and won with The Roman Hat Mystery 1929. They concealed their identity for some time, even wearing masks at literary parties, but later this pretence was abandoned, though they kept the pseudonym.

Lee and Dannay were both born in New York. After collaborating on the detective short-story contest, they decided to become full-time writers. As well as 33 Ellery Queen novels, they published four others under the name of Barnaby Ross. Their works sold over 100 million copies and were made into several movie series, a long-running radio programme, and occasional television movies.

In 1941, the cousins founded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, to publish both current mystery stories and reprint classics. They also edited numerous anthologies. They always refused to disclose their exact writing methods, but evidently they took turns in developing the plots and writing the stories.