The following essay discusses Dannay and his frequent collaborator, Manfred B. Lee. Ellery Queen was the pseudonym of cousins and collaborators Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee and the name of detective they created. As Queen, they wrote mystery...

The pseudonym of writers Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971) and his cousin Frederic Dannay (1905-1982), and the name of the main character of their popular mystery novel series, Ellery Queen was probably the most popular American mystery novelist of the Golden...

Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel (David) Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay (October 20, 1905–September 3, 1982) and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington...

[Dannay's and Lee's early books], from Roman Hat through The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935), are generally bracketed together as Queen's First Period. The obvious hallmark of this period is the recurrence of adjectives of nationality in the titles. Another, more significant but less obvious, is the overpowering influence of [S. S. Van Dine], which began to melt away around 1932 and had almost totally vanished … by 1935. The Ellery of these first "Problems in Deduction"...

["A Fine and Private Place"] exhibits all of the virtues and defects of the Queen books. It is full of stale literary devices, such as a simply preposterous diary. The writing is arch and labored. ("I'd better totter off and tuck my lil ole self into beddy-snooky-bye.") Any character capable of delivering this sentiment deserves all that is coming to her … But if Ellery Queen doesn't write too well, he can plot. In this story—about the murder of a jinx...