Ellery Queen

Author Information
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  • Bibliography:
    124 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    February 1935
  • Latest Book:
    October 2022
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About the Author

Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905-1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age "fair play" mystery. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee's death in 1971.

Full Series List in Order

An Ellery Queen Mystery

The Four of Hearts (Jan-1994)

Book List in Order: 124 titles

  • The House of Darkness

    Ellery Queen finds himself in charge of the young rambunctious lad, Djuna. What better way to spend his time than at the newly opened amusement park called Joyland. But the park’s designer pride and joy is his “House of Darkness”. A haunted hou...

  • The Murderer is a Fox

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Like father, like son...killers! Davey Fox returned to his hometown a war hero. But inside he was a shattered man, convinced he was a killer just like his father. The war proved it; his past proved it. All signs pointed to it. His wife would soon die...

  • The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln's Clue

    in Murderous Schemes

    When plotting a murder (figuratively speaking), the mystery writer has at hand any number of M.O.'s including such tried and true conventions as the locked room, the unbreakable alibi, the double bluff, the mistaken identity, and many others. Indeed,...

  • Losers, Weepers

    Some men retire on a hundred grand or buy their wives mink coats with days of the week sewn in the lining ... or fly to Rio for a good cup of coffee -- but not Jim Morgan.Jim had a hundred thousand all right -- neatly packed in stacks of fifties -- o...

  • Shoot the Scene

    Joe Maddox was one of moviedom's most successful producers. But could he produce $200,000 in time to save his wife, his scriptwriter, and his leading lady? They didn't know, all three were held at gunpoint in a deserted California beach house, but th...

  • A Study in Terror

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy

    Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes match wits to reveal the identity of history's most infamous killer. Uniquely imaginative, "A Study in Terror" is a masterpiece of mystery and suspense. Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes are the undisputed masters o...

  • How Goes the Murder?

    Tim Corrigan is up to his eye-patch in scandal, intrigue, and wide-open murder. The banners waved, the crowd cheered, the reporters rushed toward the candidate as he made his way to the speaker's platform. And then a shot rang out, the candidate ...

  • Face to Face

    When a popular singer goes from retired to dead the day before New Year's Eve, Ellery Queen is certain it’s murder. Luckily, just before she died, the victim managed to scribble out a single mysterious word: F A C E. Unfortunately, no one knows wha...

  • House of Brass

    Newlyweds Richard Queen and his wife are invited to a dead man’s treasure hunt in a mystery that’s “incredibly intricate; in other words Queentessential” (Kirkus Reviews). Ellery Queen is vacationing in Istanbul when he learns that his aging ...



  • Ellery Queen's All Stars

  • Kiss and Kill

    • / Private Investigator
    • Buy Buy

    The nice mild man named Edward Tollman had a problem. His lovely wife was missing, and he wanted her back fast. So he went to a fellow whose specialty was solving problems like that a very private detective called Barney Burgess. Burgess' methods wer...

  • The Dectective Short Story, a Bibliography

    Excerpt from the Introduction: For a long time we declined the invitation of Messrs. Biblo and Tannen to reissue The Detective Short Story: A Bibliography. The book originally appeared in 1942, and since then nothing has been changed in the book, no...

  • In the Queens' Parlor and Other Leaves from the Editors' Notebook

  • Queens Quorum

    This book written by Ellery Queen, the famous radio detective story man, is a history of the detective crime short story as revealed bt th 125 most important books published on that subject since 1845....

  • Faces

  • Adventures of Ellery Queen

    For Ellery Queen, there is no puzzle that reason cannot solve. In his time, he has faced down killers, thugs, and thieves, protected only by the might of his brain-and the odd bit of timely intervention by his father, a burly New York police inspecto...

  • Halfway House

    Called to an urgent meeting at a mysterious shack in the middle of nowhere, attorney Bill Angell finds his brother-in-law, traveling salesman Joe Wilson, stabbed. With Joe's dying breath, he manages to convey that his murderer was a veiled woman. Was...

  • The Door Between

    Raised in Japan by American expatriates, Karen Leith now lives a reclusive life in New York, known chiefly for her highly regarded novels, of which the latest has won a major American literary award. When she is found on the floor behind her desk, su...

  • The Devil to Pay

    When every last one of the Ohippi hydro-electric power plants are destroyed by flood, Rhys Jardin is one of many who loses everything. But somehow Jardin's longtime partner, finance magnate Solly Spaeth, manages to come out of it wealthier than b...



  • The Dragon's Teeth

    AKA 'The Virgin Heiresses'. Eccentric multimillionaire Cadmus Cole hires Ellery Queen to investigate a case but won't say what it is. When Cole dies mysteriously at sea, Queen and his partner, Beau Rummell, must navigate a thicket of complicat...

  • Ten Days' Wonder

    Ellery Queen is persuaded to accompany an old friend and sculptor to his ancestral home when the latter arrives at Ellery''s house covered in blood and unable to remember anything from the past few weeks. Once there, tensions erupt and foul play r...

  • New Adventures of Ellery Queen

    The classic mystery novella The Lamp of God is paired with eight short stories in this collection featuring “the prince of American detective fiction” (Kirkus Reviews). Is it possible for a man to lift himself off the ground by his shoe...

  • The Glass Village

    A lynch mob threatens to take over a small New England town after a shocking murder Homicide has never had a place in Shinn Corners. This backwater New England hamlet has seen three unlawful deaths in its 250-year history: infanticide in 1739, a poli...

  • Dead Man's Tale

    A fixer hunts down a man in Europe for the sake of his lover’s fortune In 1943, Barney Street was flying a bombing mission over Holland when the Germans knocked his plane out of the sky. He bailed out at the last minute and was rescued from the Naz...

  • Death Spins the Plate

    When a rock ’n’ roll disc jockey is murdered at a live event, a reporter is out to find the killer in this mystery from the author of A Room to Die In. From 3:00 to 4:00 every afternoon, Tutter “Tut” King reigns supreme. The dreamy disc jocke...

  • Murder with a Past

    David Tully hunts for a burglar’s killer in order to save his wife It’s been 3 days since David Tully has seen his wife, and there’s a homicide cop waiting at his front door. Someone has been murdered, but it’s not Ruth Tully. The dead man is...

  • Wife or Death

    A journalist accused of murdering his unfaithful wife searches for the real killer Angel Denton’s extramarital activities are the worst-kept secret in town. Jim Denton has endured the cuckold’s horns for ages, but by midnight on Halloween he’s ...

  • Beware Young Stranger

    When a diplomat’s daughter falls in love with a man suspected of murder, he goes in search of the truth in this classic from the legendary mystery author. The kids call it spring break, but their parents know it by its true name: debauchery. Every...

  • The Copper Frame

    A small-town police chief is framed for a heinous crime  Andy Saxon has run the Iroquois police force for as long as anyone can remember. At 62, he’s as strong as an oak and hasn’t even given a thought to retirement. When a national crime sy...



  • The Killer Touch

    An American cop stumbles across a drug ring on a tropical island No matter how hard she tries, Tracy can’t seem to kill herself. Her hands shake too much to cut her wrists. Wading into the ocean, her body refuses to be drowned. Even the heroin she ...

  • Queen's Full

    The Death of Don Juan The amateur theater company of Wrightsville is dying a slow and painful death. Every production is worse than the last, and the backers are about to pull the plug when the director reaches for his ace in the hole: the always-...

  • The American Gun Mystery

    When a Western star is gunned down at a rodeo, Ellery Queen saddles up to solve the mystery. Buck Horne has roped thousands of cattle, slugged his way out of dozens of saloons, and shot plenty of men dead in the street--but always on the backlot. He'...

  • Chinese Orange Mystery

    A puzzling publishing murder attracts the eye of Ellery Queen. Mandarin Press is a premier publishing house for foreign literature, but to those at the top of this enterprise, there is little more beautiful than a rare stamp. As Donald Kirk, publishe...

  • Dutch Shoe Mystery

    The operating room was ready; the surgeon called for his patient. A door opened and a long, still form was wheeled in. The doctor lifted the sheet - and found Abby Doorn dead. She'd been murdered only minutes before, almost under their very eyes. ...

  • The Greek Coffin Mystery

    From the very beginning, the Khalkis case struck a somber note. It began, as was peculiarly harmonious in the light of what was to come, with the death of an old man. Georg Khalkis, internationally famous art dealer and collector, died of heart failu...

  • Roman Hat Mystery

    Ellery Queen is again faced with a seemingly insoluble problem - how Monte Field, a shady and prosperous New York lawyer, was murdered by poison during the second act of a smash hit play in the crowded Roman Theatre. The seats surrounding the victim...

  • Spanish Cape Mystery

    A house party turns a millionaire’s hacienda hideaway into a crime scene in this classic detective novel from an Edgar Award–winning Grand Master. The Godfrey family is vacationing among the picturesque rocky cliffs of the North Atlantic ...

  • The Last Woman in His Life

    Ellery Queen leaps into action when a jet-setter is murdered in Wrightsville From New Year’s in Málaga to Christmas in Hawaii, John Levering Benedict III -- or Johnny-B, as everyone calls him -- is the crown prince of the jet set. He has 3 ex-wive...

  • The Last Score

    A tough-guy travel agent loses an heiress while on a drug-fueled vacation Reid Rance can’t take his eyes off May Gibson. It’s not her figure or her face that’s got him mesmerized though. It’s the emerald on her finger and the checkbook in her...



  • Cat of Many Tails

    The silent rush of footsteps, the muffled shriek, the ever-tightening noose of exotic silk ... the mark of the Cat. The Cat had claimed number nine.The Cat had nine kills, but Ellery Queen found number ten alive and offered the victim temptingly to t...

  • The Siamese Twin Mystery

    1993, mass market paperback reprint edition (of a work first published in 1933), Otto Penzler Books, NY. 325 pages. A group of travelers is stranded on a mountain top. Close by is a forest fire, getting closer. A killer is nearby too. A Golden Age my...

  • Ellery Queen's Doors to Mystery

  • A Room To Die In

    A schoolteacher fights to prove that her father’s suicide was actually murder in this classic whodunit from one of the greatest names in mystery fiction. Ann hasn’t seen her mother in three years, and she doesn’t miss her at all. But without wa...

  • Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

  • Ellery Queen's Eyes of Mystery

  • A Fine and Private Place

    Ellery Queen investigates a mobster whose bizarre death is marked by the number 9 Nino Importuna has a soft face, but when he smiles, it’s terrifying. His Central Park penthouse is lavish, but it was bought with the blood of his enemies. His crimin...

  • 2 Novels

    Signet Double Mysteries: A Fine And Private Place; The Madman Theory. A Fine And Private Place: Killers had challenged the master crime solver before, but none so cleverly. The 9-word clue was one of 9 cryptic notes that had been sent to taunt Inspe...

  • Ellery Queen's Book of First Appearances

  • The French Powder Mystery

    [Library Edition Audiobook CD in Vinyl case.]

    [Read by Scott Harrison]

    The second novel in the popular detective series featuring Ellery Queen.

    French's department store was famous for the rare merchandise it offered its elite...



  • Inspector Queen's Own Case

    For years Inspector Richard Queen had been outshone by his writer-detective son. Now, with Ellery away, Dick Queen, freshly retired from the NYPD, had a case all his own -- or did he? The verdict had been accidental death, and only the victim's nu...

  • Ellery Queen's Eyewitnesses

  • Double, Double

    Ellery Queen pais a visit to Wrightsville, a small New England town he had known from boyhood holidays. His nostalgia for the place was awakened and shaken when he recieved anonymously some cuttings from the Wrightsville Record, a comparison of whi...

  • Ellery Queen's Lost Ladies

  • The Golden Goose

    An orphan encounters greed, deception, and murder when she goes to live with a new family Despite her name, Princess O’Shea is not a spoiled brat. When her father’s death leaves her an orphan, she goes to live with her old uncle, Slater, and is h...

  • Ellery Queen's Magicians of Mystery

  • The Four of Hearts and Halfway House

  • Ellery Queen's Lost Men

  • Player on the Other Side

    On the sprawling estate of a bizarre wealthy family, a series of cryptic notes brings deadly regards in this classic from a legendary mystery author. York Square is a tidy private garden surrounded by four matching castles, each inhabited by a differ...

  • The Egyptian Cross Mystery

    The Queens are intrigued when a grisly murder mars a small town's Christmas It's Christmas in Chicago, and Inspector Richard Queen is enjoying a busman's holiday at a conference on gangland violencebut his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, is bored s...

  • And on the Eighth Day

    While stranded in the desert, Ellery Queen stumbles across a religious cult It's 1943, the war is raging, and sleuthing scribe Ellery Queen wants to do his bit. After a tortuous cross-country drive, he takes a job writing scripts for a Hollywood ...

  • Ellery Queen's Prime Crimes

    An anthology of mystery tales, never before published in America, includes "The Holly Wreath," a short novel by Patricia Moyes, as well as stories by Joan Aiken, Christiana Brand, Edward D. Hoch, and other favorite authors...

  • Ellery Queen's Maze of Mysteries

  • Fourth Side of the Triangle

    A fashion designer’s murder draws legendary sleuth Ellery Queen into a New York society family’s tangled web of secrets. Ever since New York was Nieuw Amsterdam, the McKells have been building their fortune. Combining Scottish thrift with America...

  • Crimes and Punishments

  • The Devil's Cook

    A killer stalks a college campus, sending the co-eds scurrying Terry Miles goes across the hallway expecting an orgy. When her neighbor opens his door, she finds that the promised erotic party is nothing more than a few brainy academics balancing bee...

  • Ellery Queen's Prime Crimes, No 2

  • Ellery Queen's Windows of Mystery

  • What's in the Dark?

    A blackout leaves New York in chaos as cop Tim Corrigan searches for a shadowy killer in this classic mystery from the legendary author. High above the sidewalks of Manhattan, Miss Graves is closing up the offices of the Burns Accounting Company when...

  • Tragedy of X

    A retired Shakespearean actor plays his new role -- amateur sleuth -- after a murder in a New York streetcar. Born during intermission in a seedy New Orleans playhouse, Drury Lane has spent the better part of his life in the theater. A majestic old-...

  • The Inner Circle and Other Mysteries

  • The King Is Dead

    Ellery Queen and his father discover a baffling murder on a private island Ellery Queen and his father are meandering through breakfast when their apartment is invaded. Without making a sound, 2 men appear in the Queens’ living room, guns drawn, an...

  • Ellery Queen's Circumstantial Evidence Anthology

  • The Tragedy of Y

    A Shakespearean actor-turned-sleuth wonders if a suicide’s been staged -- and suspects the members of an eccentric New York family . . .   A ramshackle trawler, the Lavinia D rumbles into New York harbor with empty nets. When it...

  • Ellery Queen's Circumstantial Evidence Anthology II

  • Ellery Queen's Secrets of Mystery Anthology

  • The Tragedy of Z

    Patience Thumm, the adventurous daughter of an NYPD inspector, teams up with actor Drury Lane to solve the mystery of a senator’s murder. Patience Thumm has just traveled the world. She turned heads in London, sipped absinthe in Tunis, and debated ...

  • Drury Lane's Last Case

    Inspector Thumm enlists the help of an actor to track down a stolen Shakespearean manuscript and solve a baffling murder in this classic mystery. Inspector Thumm has never seen such a marvelous beard. It is massive and pointed, a rainbow composed of ...

  • Masks of Mystery

  • Ellery Queen's Masks of Mystery II

    A collection of seven stories and one novelette originally published in the "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine," this anthology features the works of such authors as Isaac Asimov, Lawrence Treat, Edward Hoch, and Joyce Porter...

  • Ellery Queen's a Multitude of Sins

  • Ellery Queen's Masks of Mystery

  • Ellery Queen's Secrets of Mystery

  • Ellery Queen's Veils of Mystery

  • Ellery Queen's More Lost Ladies and Lost Men

  • Ellery Queen's More Lost Ladies and Men

  • Ellery Queen's More Lost Ladies and Lost Men Anthology II

  • Ellery Queen's Poetic Justice

  • Crime Cruise around the World II

  • Ellery Queen's Eyes of Mystery Anthology I

  • Ellery Queen's Eyes of Mystery Anthology II

    Such authors as Patricia Highsmith, Julian Symons, Isaac Asimov, Hugh Pentecost, and Hal Ellson are featured in a collection of tales which includes the best mystery stories from the years 1963 through 1977...

  • Eyewitnesses

  • Ellery Queen's More Eyewitnesses

  • Calamity Town

    Looking for trouble, Ellery Queen descends on a small town

    At the tail end of the long summer of 1940, there is nowhere in the country more charming than Wrightsville. The Depression has abated, and for the first time in years ...

  • The Origin of Evil

    Ellery Queen visits Hollywood, and looks into a nasty prank that sent a man to his grave . . . Ellery Queen stands naked by the window, sipping rum from a frosted glass, a corpse at his feet. The deceased is Hollywood, and the cause of deat...

  • Ellery Queens's More Eyewitnesses

  • Ellery Queen's Faces of Mystery

  • Best of Ellery Queen

  • The Four of Hearts

    An Ellery Queen Mystery

    Lew Bascom is an idea man, and he has quite an idea. To put his career on the fast track, Bascom plans to pen a film about Hollywood's longest-running theatrical feud -- Blythe Stewart and her daughter Bonnie's rivalry with Jack Royale and hi...

  • There Was an Old Woman

    AKA 'The Quick and the Dead'....

  • Ellery Queen's Circumstantial Evidence

  • Ellery Queen's Wings of Mystery

  • The Finishing Stroke

    At the tail end of the Roaring Twenties, a birthday bash for publishing heir John Sebastian, Jr., perfectly coincides with the twelve days of Christmas. Among the twelve invited guests is Ellery Queen, a newly published mystery writer planning to enj...

  • The Tragedy of Errors & Others

    “ELLERY QUEEN IS THE AMERICAN DETECTIVE STORY” So wrote the great critic Anthony Boucher about the contributions of Ellery Queen to the mystery story. Queen appeared in novels and short stories, in the movies and on television, on the radio an...

  • The Hollywood Murders

    New York's crime-solving genius is adrift in Tinseltown until a series of fatal finales revives him. With ambitious starlets, idols, and majordomos, The Hollywood Murders offers witty proof that the nature of evil is a bit gaudier on the West Coast. ...

  • The Black Hearts Murder

    From the masterly Ellery Queen comes "The Black Hearts Murder," the thrilling second installment in the Mike McCall series. Where is Harlan James? He is the indicted, bail-jumping leader of Banbury's militant Black Hearts who has gone undergrou...

  • The Blue Movie Murders

    Blue film and blood-red murder! All Hollywood producer Ben Sloane had wanted was to find Sol Dahlman, the mysterious film genius who had made The Wild Nymph - and now Sloane is dead. ''Go up to Rockview,'' the governor tells Mike McCall, ''and ge...

  • The Campus Murders

    The co-ed missing from Tisquanto State is the daughter of Governor Sam Holland's rival for reelection - and best friend. But she is more than that. She is Laura Thornton, a human being - somehow the pawn and victim of angry student upheavals not even...

  • The Madman Theory

    Madman or murderer? That was the question and it was Police Inspector Omar Collins who had come up with the answer. All he had to go on was: the victim -- Earl Genneman, wealthy president of Genneman Labs; the scene -- right in the middle of a busy s...

  • QBI: Queen's Bureau of Investigation

    From cons to kidnapping to murder, eighteen ingenious stories showcase the talents of “the prince of American detective fiction” (Kirkus Reviews).   The agents of the FBI are fierce, brilliant, and brave -- but nothing in their files can com...

  • QED: Queen's Experiments in Detection

    The legendary detective investigates the death of a chrysanthemum king, as well as fourteen other mysteries in this short story collection. When Godfrey Mumford retired to focus on his chrysanthemums, he was worth a little over $5 million. A decade l...

  • Guess Who's Coming to Kill You?

    ''Let's face it, Alex: you were the KGB's top assassin, and they paid you off. Just as we might. A cushy lieutenant-colonelcy in Tokyo, riding pour le sport, a yacht, your pick of Eurasian dolls Like? We can do you better in the USA, Alex - come on o...

  • Ellery Queen, Detective

    Ellery Queen was both fictional detective and literary pseudonym, created in 1929 by cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee. Ellery Queen starred in over 30 novels and short story collections, along with a popular radio show, several television a...

  • Eyes of Mystery

  • The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes

  • Ellery Queen's Japanese Mystery Stories

  • The Adventures of the Puzzle Club

    A collection more than half a century in the making!The discerning reader will recall that the two cousins who wrote as Ellery Queen published five short stories about the Puzzle Club and its newest member, Ellery Queen himself, in the 1960s and '70s...

  • Blow Hot Blow Cold

    • / Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    A summertime slaying sets a suburban housewife on the hunt for a killer On a scorching summer afternoon, Nancy Howell bakes in the sun, hoping her neighbor will invite her inside. Lila has central air conditioning -- a priceless luxury this time of y...

  • Cop Out

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    To escape a manhunt, a gang of killers takes a cop’s daughter hostage After years of toil for Aztec Paper Products, Thomas Howland only makes $112.90 per week. When it comes time for the company to compensate its workers, he is in charge of carryin...

  • The Four Johns

    • / Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    A teaching assistant knows that a man named John is out to kill him -- but which John is it? Mervyn Gray sits at the college coffee shop scowling at his notes. The waitress assumes he’s just another overworked Berkeley undergrad, but she is dead wr...

  • Kill As Directed

    • / Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    A desperate doctor finds that crime is the best cure for poverty -- unless it gets him killed -- in this novel from the legendary mystery author. Harry Brown is a good doctor, but he doesn’t know the antidote for the poison that has coursed through...

  • The Midnight Strangler

    • / Mystery
    • Buy Buy

  • Q.E.D.

    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    [Read by Traber Burns] Sixteen brilliant and audacious bafflers by the masterly Ellery Queen. Let Ellery Queen clue you in on his special brand of high tension, brain-teasing mystery! This collection consists of novelettes and short stories from Quee...

  • The Scarlet Letters

    • / Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    A TOUCH OF RED For once Ellery Queen had a simple case. A few days of discreet snooping, some choice advice, and the inimitable sleuth would blithely restore domestic harmony to the tumultuous marriage couple Dirk and Martha Lawrence. And then ...

  • Woman Trouble

    • / Mystery
    • Buy Buy

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ellery Queen has published 124 books.

Ellery Queen does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Adventures of the Puzzle Club, was published in October 2022.

The first book by Ellery Queen, The House of Darkness, was published in February 1935.

Yes. Ellery Queen has 1 series.
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