Chapter 3 On the Centenary of Ellery Queen

2005 marks the centennial of the births of the two Brooklyn-born cousins, undeniably the most artistic and commercially successful duo in literary history.Before they became detective novel writer Ellery Queen, they already had their own pen names.Manfred Lipowski—born January 11, 1905—became Manfred Bennington Lee.Daniel Nancy—born October 20, 1905—became Frederick Denney.They were working in Manhattan in the 1920s, Lee in movie promotion, and Dennay in advertising editor and art director, when they decided to enter a magazine-sponsored detective story competition for $7,500.Despite being privately told of the award, the magazine folded and a successor picked another winner, causing them to lose their prize money.But—a novel about Detective Quinn by writer Quinn—was published in 1928.This started the most successful—albeit often vehemently rhetorical and intransigent—collaboration, which has lasted for more than 40 years.

The first novel was followed by several novels in the country/object title format, from The Mystery of the Powder at Franky's Place (1930) to (1935).Of particular note is 1932, the year they published four of their classic novels: and, under the name Ellery Queen, and two about the deaf actor and detective, under their second pseudonym, Barnaby Ross. The Tragedy of X and The Tragedy of Y by Jerry Lane.In keeping with the mystery of the identities of the two pseudonyms, Cousins ​​attends the lecture wearing a mask, with Lee playing Quinn and Dennay playing Rose.Roth's pseudonym ceased to appear after writing the fourth book, The Last Case of Mr. Wren (1933).The true identities of Ross and Quinn were not revealed until 1936.

Quinn's novels of the late 1930s, from (1936) to (1939), marked a transitional period in which they attempted to make their work more attractive for the sake of serialization in glossy magazines. Dirty Town (1942) -- the first novel set in the small New England town of Wright -- kicked off their prime in the 1940s and 1950s, which included the classic serial killer (1949) , one of the best Hollywood detective novels, The Origins of Evil (1951), a brave anti-McCarthy allegory (1954), a perceptive look at retirement, Inspector Quinn's Own Case (1956), and Nostalgic Novel - Originally written as Ellery's Last Case.

In the early days of their collaboration, the duo divided their labors as follows: Dennay worked on the detailed outlines of mysteries, characters and events, and Lee made them perfunctory novels and short stories.Although this collaboration produced some of the best detective stories of the twentieth century, it was by no means an easy task.In a 1967 interview with MD magazine, Lee said, "We have a very different view of detective fiction." Dennay added, "We have a very different view of everything." Both took literature seriously, but they disagreed over whether detective stories—those works of the golden age between the two world wars—could be taken as seriously as literature.Dennay thinks so, but Lee has expressed doubts in private correspondence.Perhaps Quinn's greatest achievement is a byproduct of Dennay and Lee's state of balance.They always keep pace with the times, expressing current culture and politics, adding deep psychological analysis, serious themes are also increasing in their novels, but never giving up sufficient clues, fair game --- these are in the early works has risen to an artistic level.Dennay would not allow this element of character to be lost, and Lee became more and more obsessed with mixing political, social and psychological themes into the novel.

Ellery Quinn's editorial and scholarly accomplishments paralleled these works, with his pioneering bibliographic work on the short detective story and, of course, this 1941 magazine .Much of these accomplishments were personal to Dennay, but that wasn't the case in the first place.Years before EQMM, Ellery Quinn edited the high-quality cheap magazine Mystic League, which ran only four issues in 1933 and 1934.Manfred Lee masked as Quinn appeared in the first issue of the magazine, but according to Lee's 1969 letter to Easy Chair Detective, the two shared responsibility for the magazine's Work: "We're all clerks—you see—all; we don't even have a secretary. We pick out novels, prepare copies, read proofs, bind proofs, overwork, etc., and even clean the office...  All of this happened more than 30 years ago, but the pain just seems to be starting to subside." This may partly explain why Lee left most of the later editing to Dennay.

Radio drama is Lee's domain.He took care of the details, and when other needs prompted Dennay to step down from his radio script writing role, Lee teamed up with Anthony Butcher and other writers.The two-volume true crime anthology Ellery Quinn's International Casebook (1964) and Women in Case (1966) is a personal credit to Lee.When severe dysgraphia and other health problems led to abandoning Quinn's novels sometime in the 1960s, Dennay worked with other collaborators, including renowned detective novelist Theodore Sturgeon and Avram Danidson. Lee returned to the role of collaborator on the last Ellery Queen novel, A Beautiful Private Place (1971).He died on April 3 of that year.Fred Denney wrote no more novels, but continued to edit EQMM until his death on September 3, 1982.

"Ellery Quinn was American detective fiction," wrote Anthony Butcher. All their accomplishments taken together, and their literary and editorial influence, is clearly not an exaggeration.But where would it be without Ellery Quinn?What if Fred Denney and Manny Lee were the winners of that essay contest, simply considering collaborating but not deciding to do so?If they did not foresee success and fame but contradictions--their differences in personalities and opinions-their strong self-importance doomed not to success in literary cooperation but to destroying the relationship between them. Beautiful friendship, so what?In short, what if they decided to stick with their old jobs?

Who else can write such a detective novel, which is both classic in the mystery layout and clue arrangement of the golden age and full of American flavor?Who else brings pure challenge readers to radio and television?Who else can promote the development of the early American Detective Writers Association (MWA) ?Who else could collect, value, and catalog such a vast collection of short detective stories, keeping alive the famous and forgotten names?Who else could edit a magazine like this to find outlets for quality crime fiction of all genres?How much would not have happened and how difficult would it have been to grow the field without Ellery Quinn?How will the short detective story go—or not?These answers are too depressing to imagine.