[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" is a polysyllabic literatus wreathed in classical allusions and pince-nez—in short, a close imitation of Philo Vance or, as Manfred Lee in recent years called him, the biggest prig that ever came down the pike. For those who don't like First Period Queen—a group that apparently includes the authors themselves, to judge from interviews near the end of Lee's life—these novels are sterile, lifeless, relentlessly intellectual exercises, technically excellent but unwarmed by any trace of human character nor by any emotion other than the "passions of the mind." For those who love Period One, including myself and most Queenians, these books are splendid tours de force of the artificer's art and are nowhere near totally devoid of interest in human character or concern with fundamental issues. (pp. 6-7)
It's convenient to date the beginning of Queen's second period from Halfway House (1936) since this is the first of Ellery's cases not to contain an adjective of nationality in the title. But the new title format is merely symptomatic of changes in substance. The main influences on Dannay and Lee in this period were the women's slick magazines, to which they began to sell around the middle of the decade, and Hollywood, where they worked as script writers for Columbia, Paramount and M-G-M in the late Thirties. Compared with the early masterworks, the novels of Period Two suffer from intellectual thinness, an overabundance of feminine emotion, and characters cut out of cardboard with the hope that they would be brought to life by movie performers. On the other hand, with the broader perspective that accompanies the passage of time we can see the entire second period as a series of steps in the progressive humanization of Ellery and the Queenian universe and as the necessary preparation for the great synthesis of Period Three. (p. 7)
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Queen, Ellery [Joint Pseudonym of Frederic Dannay (1905–) and Manfred B(ennington) Lee (1905–1971)]: Critical Essay by Francis M. Nevins, Jr. Access Pass.
