Queen, Ellery, was the pen name of two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971), who became successful detective-story writers. Ellery Queen is also the name of their chief fictional character. They also published under the name Barnaby Ross.
Lee was born on Jan. 11, 1905, and Dannay was born on Oct. 20, 1905. They were both born in New York City. They became full-time writers soon after they won a detective-story contest in 1928. The story became their first Ellery Queen novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). The early Ellery Queen novels especially are excellent examples of the cleverly plotted mystery puzzle. In 1941, Dannay and Lee founded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which publishes original detective fiction and reprints detective fiction classics. As editors and anthologists, the cousins made a major contribution to the popularity of mystery fiction in America. Lee died on April 3, 1971. Dannay died on Sept. 3, 1982.
