The Dragon’s Teeth

Ellery Queen is the pseudonym under which two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York wrote, edited, and anthologized detective fiction: Frederic Dannay (born Daniel Nathan, October 20, 1905 - September 3, 1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (born Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky, January 11, 1905 - April 3, 1971).

The writers’ main fictional character, whom they also named Ellery Queen, is a mystery writer and amateur detective who helps his father, Richard Queen, a New York City police inspector, solve baffling murders. During the 1930s and much of the 1940s, the detective-hero Ellery Queen was widely regarded as one of the best known American fictional detective, with movies, radio shows, and television shows based on Dannay and Lee’s works.

Although Frederic Dannay outlived his cousin by ten years, the Ellery Queen authorial name died with Manfred Lee. The last Ellery Queen novel, A Fine and Private Place, was published in 1971, the year of Lee’s death. However, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, founded by Dannay, continues as an almost monthly crime fiction magazine as of 2016, publishing ten issues per year including two "double issues."