Talk:Ellery Queen

March 2005

How about changing "The Queen novels were the epitome of the classic "fair play" mystery" to "The Queen novels were the epitome of the classic whodunnit mystery"?

Because not all whodunnits are fair play. Fair Play is a specific type of whodunnit which lays out all the clues fairly for the reader. --khaosworks 00:13, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Categorisation

This article is in both Category:Fictional writers and Category:Pseudonyms, I feel this is misleading and redundant. Even if the pseudonym has a fictional backstory, it should be more than sufficient to put them in Category:Pseudonyms, unless the name is also used for a character that acualy appear in a work of fiction and is also a writer, in wich case the double categorisation would be apropriate. Please post any comments to Category talk:Fictional writers so we don't have to repeat ourselves over multiple article's talk pages (I will post this wherever I find such double categorised articles). --Sherool 30 June 2005 14:18 (UTC)

This particular article actualy is a good example of one that belong in both categories. Guess I should have taken the time to read it all before posting my "stock message" here. --Sherool 30 June 2005 18:27 (UTC)

• No, it's not such an example (and it's sweet that our edits fall so close together without my having known of yours before i removed

  Queen, Ellery

from the article and coming to this talk page): The article deserves Cat "Fictional detectives" and some Cat like "Pseudonymous authors"; i think i recall Category:Pseudonymous people a long time back. A fictional author is a character in a work of fiction who is presented in that work as being an author. But this is merely a case of a fictitious char's name and a real but pseudonymous author's name coinciding.

--Jerzy·t 1 July 2005 08:52 (UTC)

• That was my original possition also, but asuming what was posted in Category talk:Fictional writers is corect (I am not familiar with the authors, the series or the character, so I'm just repeating what I've been told), it does seem to fit into both categories (pseudonums and fictional writers). True it is a case of Pseudonym and character name converging (wich is why I wanted it removed in the first pace), but acording to what I was told the character was both a detective and a writer as well. The article could make that clearer, but if you read it carefully it does say "Ellery himself was a detective story writer, a snobbish, almost priggish intellectual who investigated and solved crimes solely because he found them stimulating" ^{(emphasis mine)}. It is a bit ambgous, but I think that portion is about the character Ellery, in wich case it support the argument that the character was also a writer, hence the double cat. --Sherool 1 July 2005 09:54 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct. Ellery Queen the psuedonym belongs to Fred Dannay and Manfred Lee, who wrote detective stories. Ellery Queen the fictional character is also a writer of detective stories in those novels. --khaosworks July 1, 2005 11:50 (UTC)

• Omigosh, there i go again, assuming a limit to the mental perversity of the skilled human -- and assuming from that the dispensibility of some details of the article.

Closing the barndoor (bard door?), i've extended a sentence in the descrip at Category:Fictional writers:

Not to be confused with real people who are writers of fiction; not even in the case of real people who write fiction under a pseudonym: the writer and the work are both real, even though the name is false.

(The italics, added here, identify the new text.) Seeing it, others may not be so quick to assume there are editors who don't grasp the point.

And more to the point, i'm adding a comment next to the Cat tag: i erred; i've put the tag back, and perhaps made it harder for another misguided editor to do what i did.

--Jerzy·t 2 July 2005 04:28 (UTC)

It should be "fictional writers" and "fictional detectives", because in The Origin Of Evil, he is an author that begins doing detective work. Or was this already settled? I'm to lazy to read this whole section so I dunno if this is over now or anything. - 97.102.154.152 (talk) 19:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Tragedy of X,Y,Z?

His most famous works not listed. --60.48.39.254 11:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

A, they're NOT his most famous works. In fact, I'd say that they're hardly known today.

B, There's this paragraph in the article: "In that same year, the cousins created Drury Lane under the name of Barnaby Ross, eventually writing four novels about Lane, a Shakespearian actor/detective. These novels were later reissued under the Ellery Queen byline. For a while in the 1930s "Ellery Queen" and "Barnaby Ross" even staged a series of public debates in which one cousin impersonated Queen and the other impersonated Ross." It doesn't list the novels, because they are listed under the Barnaby Ross page. Or at least they should be. I'll redo the links if necessary. Hayford Peirce 18:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It might be worth pointing out that these were masked debates, preserving each author's anonymity, or the whole thing would have been a bit silly.

Anthologies

I've got the ball rolling with a couple of their works, plus some writing about them in the opening paragraph. They did dozens of anthologies – how about someone putting them in? I myself only have a couple of them at home... Hayford Peirce 01:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm holding a copy of Queen's Full right this second. Its earliest copyright is 1954. Where somebody came up with 1966 is beyond me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.129.10 (talk) 00:56, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

September 2011

The bibliography section has missed: http://www.goodreads.com/series/54741-ellery-queen-jr-mystery-stories (Mark32 2000 (talk) 15:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC))

Ellery Queen

"The fictional detective Ellery Queen is the author of the books in which he appears (The Finishing Stroke, 1958) and the editor of the magazine that bears his name (The Player On The Other Side, 1963)." Are you *sure* about this? That's not the way I remember it although my memory could, of course, be wrong. Where, for instance, in each of the books you cite, are there references to what you are asserting? Hayford Peirce 01:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The Finishing Stroke, first paragraph of Chapter 11, page 23 of the 3rd Pocket printing (1963), says: "... Ellery ... took his reviews seriously. ... The reviews of The Roman Hat Mystery had been, on the whole, nourishing."

And midway through chapter 28 of The Player on the Other Side, page 208 of the 1st Pocket printing (1965): "Ellery ... reached over and picked up a piece of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine stationery and held it ...".

I was surprised to confirm this, since it didn't match my recollection either, but there you have it.

Accounting4Taste 00:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I recall (but can’t confirm, as I don’t have copies) that one or more of the early book introductions purport to be by a character who signs off with initials rather than a name; the implication I remember taking from this is that although Ellery supplied the story, the “Initials” person was the “author” of the book, acting as a non-participatory Doctor Watson (the “author” is not a colleague of Ellery in the adventures which are told), transcribing Queen’s detection for publication.

This is also where the fact that Ellery was married with a child was mentioned (as referenced in the article), which also suggested that the adventures were set in some time past when the books came out, prior to meeting and marrying his wife. I also think that this time disparity was part of the logic that Julian Symons used in arguing for two “Ellery Queens” as older and younger brother - the older having told his tales to the initials man, and the younger writing up his own cases, with himself as a character in them. 86.147.80.209 (talk) 11:22, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Last name Bone?

Can someone offer a citation for the assertion that Ellery Queen's name was originally Bone? I've never heard of this. Also, I'm wondering why the piece of information is where it is in the article; it might more logically fit elsewhere. If the cite can be verified, I'll take this further. Accounting4Taste 00:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the reference to the part of the article where the character was created -- still hoping for a citation.

Accounting4Taste 03:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Added list of films

I'm new here, and if I've done this incorrectly, I apologize. My authority for the facts presented is that I actually have copies of these films, although I lazily verified the information using IMDB rather than calling up and freezing the appropriate screenshot. I'm going to provide further references for paperback novelizations of a few of the films as soon as I get my copy of Hubin back so that I can have an accurate bibliographic citation; they were not apparently written by the cousins. The Chabrol film is a fairly accurate adaptation of the novel, Ten Days' Wonder (starring Orson Welles and Tony Perkins), lacking only the Ellery Queen character; there is a paperback tie-in edition with photographs, so the link is assured. I'm not sure how much more information would be appropriate to add. I can certainly provide a list of the episodes of the Jim Hutton TV show. If a more experienced contributor feels I've gone too far already, a word to the wise will be sufficient. Accounting4Taste 01:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

The Chabrol film of Ten Days' Wonder does not lack the Ellery Queen character, any more than Satan Met a Lady, a 1936 film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, lacks the Sam Spade character. All the character names are changed, but there is a character who is as much Ellery as the ones played by Welles and Perkins are Diedrich Van Horn and son. I'll get the actor and character names from IMDb and add. Ted Watson (talk) 21:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not that I disagree with you -- I welcome this addition if it can be backed up with a reference. I'm afraid IMDB isn't considered a reliable source as far as Wikipedia is concerned, and it doesn't speculate on the Michel Piccoli character's identity anyway. But I suggest that since the character is not actually called Ellery Queen, there needs to be a third-party source that confirms that the identification is indeed the case. Accounting4Taste:talk 21:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking for sources for opinion material

Although I actually tend to agree with the opinion presented about the clumsy and pretentious nature of the religious symbolism, it's both unreferenced and NPOV, as I understand it. I tried to find a citation in a number of reference sources but could not, and hope the person who wrote this will oblige. There are a number of NPOV problems -- for instance, calling the early books "mere" puzzles, unreferenced assertion about certain books being "classics", etc., and I would like to know which commentator's opinions these are, if they're not original research. Please note that I do not disagree with the bibliographic attributions for the ghosted books, and I'll be confirming them with a citation from Hubin shortly (when I dig out my copy from the basement). Accounting4Taste 03:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I've added the bibliographic material about the ghosted books with information from Hubin (Crime Fiction, 1749-1980: A Comprehensive Bibliography), which truly deserves the word "comprehensive" in its title. I've removed one attribution which is not supported by Hubin, but if a citation can be provided, I'd be delighted to restore it, since I think information like this is of interest to collectors. Accounting4Taste 00:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Also removed links for particular books which led nowhere... there seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to why particular books were selected, and nothing had been written about any of them. If someone wants to create pages and restore the links, perhaps something could be written about the books during that process. I'll try to do some of the more significant novels when I get time... Accounting4Taste 01:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the material about symbolism, since I cannot find any reference to back it up, and the suggestion that Ellery Queen's last name was originally Bone for the same reason. Also I've been creating pages for the novels one by one as I get time. Accounting4Taste 18:01, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Page length

The main article is getting overly long and something must be split out of it to its own page. I'm hereby asking for suggestions as to what that might be. I offer for consideration the idea of creating an article called something like Ellery Queen in other media and moving the material for television, radio and movies there (and also adding material about comics, which is missing). There's also the possibility of Ellery Queen books by other authors being a new page. Suggestions and comments are welcome. Accounting4Taste 19:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I've created Ellery Queen (house name) since it seemed most logical to split out work by others to a separate page. If the original page grows, I'll look at creating "Ellery Queen in other media". Accounting4Taste 23:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

To Accounting4Taste

I left this comment on your user page, but it appears to have been an unintentional casualty of the activity there.[1] I assume this page is on your watchlist and since we're talking about the article may as well continue the conversation here. My remark on Levin:

If the book isn't available from a library I'd ask yourself the question: is this a book I'd enjoy reading anyways? Looks like you can get a copy for under $30 on Amazon.[2] It's pretty highly-touted. Janet Maslin likes it. [3] If you think you would enjoy the book regardless of Wikipedia, I say go for it. If you wouldn't enjoy it and you have to choose between buying the book and buying dinner... it's not a make-or-break sort of thing. Looks like the library I use has online access to Clue after 2004. So I can track down the Clue article mentioned in references (Wheat 2005). Probably getting ahead of myself a bit though as I haven't read the article closely yet. --JayHenry (talk) 01:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the comment was regrettably mulched by a vandal, one more vandal-ly than most, so thanks for putting the comment here. I'm going to get the book because I'd enjoy reading it regardless of Wikipedia, and because I have the bad habit of always buying reference books so as to have them when they're wanted. I'll look forward to hearing what you have to say about the Clues edition (I think they devoted an entire issue to articles about Queen). Accounting4Taste:talk 03:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Assorted revision notes

My schedule has cleared up a bit, so – hoping that I don't step on the esteemed toes of Mr. JayHenry and that your request is still pending – here are some thoughts on the article as it currently exists.

First off, kudos on your obvious hard work – this is clearly an important topic, and the article is generally well-written. Now to specifics.

• Having three sets of names for two people in the lead is mighty confusing. My suggestion would be to introduce Ellery Queen and then the names the two men were most well-known as. Then, in the first paragraph of the article proper, give us their birth names (assuming their aliases were more common).

• I've done some copyediting as I go. Please check and make sure I don't hurt the spirit of any sentences or cause anything to be incorrect.

• I would put the sentence: Movies, radio shows, and television shows have been based on their works. later in the lead. (For literature articles, I recommend the following: Give general info, then a very brief bio, then style/theme info, then reception/legacy. See Mary Wollstonecraft for a good example.)

• Extended quotes generally don't work well in the lead. Stick to summary and, if you feel they're really important, include the two long quotes elsewhere in the article. (I'd say the second quote is valuable; the first could easily be – should, in my opinion – paraphrased.)

• The TOC is very wide, owing to "5.6 Novels attributed to Ellery Queen/Barnaby Ross/Ellery Queen Jr. but written by other authors". I'd shorten it to "Novels attirubted to Queen by other authors".

• If there are no pages (or won't be any time soon) on Dannay and Lee, maybe this should have biographical info? What do you think? Maybe JayHenry could sound in here?

• "Later the cousins took a sharper view of Vance, Manfred Lee calling him, with typical vehemence, 'the biggest prig that ever came down the pike'." This sort of thing is better done as follows: Paraphrase the first part, then include the quote from Dannay/Lee (a great quote). It's best to include the exact wording from third-party sources only when it's really well-phrased.

• "irascible" is a bit POV – it's a bit of an opinion about Sergeant Velie. There's probably a more neutral way to describe him. (Focus on actions as much as possible, rather than adjectives.)

• When including quotes from critics like "The rare distinction of the books is that…", it's good to provide the source in the sentence itself: 'As critic Julian Symons notes: "The rare distinction of the books is that…"'

• As early as possible, I'd suggest explaining how the dynamic of character and author being one person is presented in the novels. Are they written in first person? Is it just something the reader must "go with"? This may be explained in a part of the article I haven't read yet; if so, you might want to move it up, since it's a question I've been pondering since I started reading.

More to come! – Scartol • Tok 18:46, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

• "snobbish" is another example of POV wording. In this case, it's not even necessary; the reader can infer this from the information around it ("Harvard-educated intellectual of independent wealth who wore a pince-nez".) There are other phrases like this as well ("man-in-the-street").

• The "Character of Ellery Queen" section could use more wikilinks. I've added some, but you should find places for more. It also needs more citations.

• The tense in the later "Character" paragraphs oscillates from present tense ("...is part of Hollywood society...") to past ("...he soon returned to his New York City roots...") and back again. The tense should be consistent (I'd use the literary present throughout).

• There's a mention of EQ being independently wealthy and having a secretary, and that he solves crimes because he finds them stimulating; but does he have an official occupation?

• If you give years of publication for some of the works, you should give them for all of the works.

• Sometimes "Queen" is used; other times "Ellery" is used. Standard practice is to use the last name only after the initial naming.

• The Queen household, an apartment in New York shared by the Queens father and son... This is unclear. I don't know that we need the second "Queen".

• Rather than organizing it thematically, I'd rearrange the "Character of" section by the books' progression. Explain what the character was like early on, then as he is in the middle years, then in the later books. This will be easier for the reader than jumping back and forth from family to personality to home life.

More to come! – Scartol • Tok 16:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not entirely clear on the difference between "fair play" and the standard whodunit model. Maybe phrase it like so: "Whereas a standard whodunit [explain], the 'fair play' model offers readers [explain]..."

• Maybe give a year range for the golden age of the detective novel?

• Mystery writer John Dickson Carr termed it "the grandest game in the world." Two things: First, the referent of "it" here is unclear. Second, the period should go after the quotation mark, since you're not quoting an entire sentence. (I've fixed it here; this is for future reference, and check it elsewhere in the article.) See Wikipedia:PUNC#Punctuation.

• Please don't use the conditional ("would later show up") when the simple past ("later showed up") will do; simplicity is key for ease of reading.

• Other characteristics of the early Queen novels were intricately plotted clues and solutions. In The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932), multiple solutions to the mystery are proposed... I'm not sure how the one relates to the other. Are these two sentences connected? If so, please explain a bit more.

• (the murderer is male, the murderer smokes a pipe, etc.) The Wikipedia MOS recommends against using "etc". Instead, try: "(for example: the murderer is male, smokes a pipe, and wears large shoes)" or some other third thing.

• Use unspaced em dashes (—) or spaced en dashes (–) rather than two hyphens. See Wikipedia:MOS#Em_dashes. I've fixed this for the "both the author and the character" phrase, but it may need repairing elsewhere.

• Does the "Challenge" mentioned in the style section after the Hollywood move refer to the "fair play" challenge? If so, it's best to clarify.

• a religious allegory touching on fascism feels odd. How about: "discussing fascism" or "about fascism"? I didn't want to change it, since I'm not sure which is more accurate.

• Future reference and to check elsewhere in the article: by [[science fiction]] writers [[Theodore Sturgeon]] and [[Avram Davidson]].<ref> The period (and other punctuation) comes before the ref tag.

• I'm not sure if this applies or not, since I'm not very familiar with the "house name" concept, but I wonder if maybe the info about other writers writing under the name EQ should be on the EQ house name page. Maye just give a sentence about it here and direct the reader to the house name page with a {{Main}} template.

• For ten years of radio broadcasts (and however long the 1970s one-minute dealies were on the air), the paragraph about the radio stories is very stubby.

• Peter Lawford starred in a television movie... I'm totally lost. Did Lawford play Queen, or did Morgan? Please reword for clarity. Also: This film is loosely based on Cat of Many Tails. Was this a novel?

• Some of the games are in italics, and others are in quotation marks. They should all be one or the other.

• Since the comic book and board game sections are so short, you might want to group them together into an "other" section.

• The films section should be in paragraph form. You don't have to list every single movie (a separate page can be created for this if necessary), but discuss the highlights, the changes made between book and movie, and stylistic trends.

• Which brings me to the very long bibliography. When I was working on Balzac, most reviewers urged me not to include the entire La Comédie Humaine. Instead, we included selected titles and directed readers to the main LCH page. I would recommend something similar here, with a stand-alone list as a separate page. I'm curious to get JayHenry's take on this one.

Well, that's it. When you get the book(s) JH recommended, I expect many parts of this article can be expanded – I'd suggest more info about why the cousins stopped writing under the EQ name, and more info on their later lives (but see above for my question about the appropriateness of biographical info in this article).

Thanks for bringing me on and good luck with the FA process! – Scartol • Tok 18:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Origins Of "The Roman Hat Mystery"

I seem to recall seeing or hearing or reading where Dannay & Lee actually wrote "The Roman Hat Mystery" for a writing compition. They won the compition but never got paid for some reason or another and ended up publishing it and creating a legend. Can anyone confirm or deny? This seems important enough to be included in the article.Hx823 (talk) 22:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

You can read all about that in the first paragraph of this section: Ellery Queen#The Character of Ellery Queen! --JayHenry (talk) 22:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

duh!!!!!Hx823 (talk) 15:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

competition — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.110.116.213 (talk) 00:06, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

too many subjective statements

This article includes far too many subjective statements. Even if subjective statements are cited, they must not be confused with objective fact, and deserve a place in the article only if they are noted as subjective opinions, and put into a broader context. Minaker (talk) 01:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Television

Ｉf I'm right, 2 stories were adapted into the 1975 Tv series, not only the pilot. can someone confirm or deny me? B3430715 (talk) 20:02, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

"The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party" is based on a short story but I can't say for sure that any of the others are. 209.53.143.56 (talk) 18:36, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Kill as Directed

Someone created a page for Kill as Directed and added that novel to the list of Ellery Queen novels. While it was one of many novels published under the name Ellery Queen, it does not seem to be any different from the others, does not seem to feature Ellery or his father, and I cannot find any source suggesting that it was really written by Dannay and Lee. My inclination is to remove it from the list of authentic Queen novels, but I would like to hear from anyone who has definitive information about this book. Rick Norwood (talk) 23:54, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

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