Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story ALSOBYLAIRDR. BLACKWELL The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction(McFarland, 2018) H.C. Bailey’s Reggie Fortune and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction(McFarland, 2017) Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Art of the Detective Short Story L R. B AIRD LACKWELL McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-7652-4 ♾ ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-3561-3 LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE © 2019 Laird R. Blackwell. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover illustration © 2019 Shutterstock Printed in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Withloveandgratitude to my wonderful and accomplished wife Melinda, for all her support and love over the years, and to my grandson Jack who, in a few years, may become another fan of detective literature Acknowledgments Thanks to Ellery Queen who almost sin- glehandedly (doublehandedly?) encouraged and championed the detective- crime short story through a time when it was fading from sight and memory, and undying gratitude to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which still thrives after over 75 years of publishing the very best of the genre—resuscitating the Old Masters, sus- taining the New Masters, and birthing the Mas- ters- to-Be. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Preface 1 Introduction: Queen as Champion of the Past and Patron of the Future 5 ONE. From Thinking Machine to Human Being— From Ellery I to Ellery II 13 TWO. A Quorum of Queens, the Old Masters and the New Masters 16 THREE. A Never-Ending Stream of Manuscripts 28 FOUR. The Old Masters Resuscitated 39 FIVE. The New Masters Celebrated 54 SIX. The Acclaimed and the Awarded 93 SEVEN. “’Tec Tyros” as Masters of the Future 114 EIGHT. Other Significant Debuts 143 NINE. The Fine Arts of Parody, Pastiche and Spoof 179 TEN. Queen as Champion, Cheerleader, Critic and Patron 187 Appendix: Story Titles 193 Works Cited 205 Index 207 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface Theshortstoryhasoftenbeencalledtheperfectandideal form of expression for detective fiction.—Haycraft in Queen 1942, preface Modern readers tend to think of detective stories as novels, but the original, the “legitimate” form was the short story.— Queen 1941, p. vi Almost without exception, the best detective stories are short stories.—Starrett in Queen, 1942, preface Ellery Queen. The two words together have a provocative and satisfying rhythm—from the multiplicity of the three syllables of the first to the unity of the single syllable of the second, from the dangling “ee” sound at the end of the “Ellery” to the closed and final “een” sound at the conclusion of the “Queen.” The contrast of the complexity of “Ellery” with the simplicity of “Queen” is reminiscent of the disparate personalities and skills and sometimes antagonism of the two cousins, Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay—Man and Dan—resolving into the apparent unity and accord of their nom de plume— Ellery Queen—and is suggestive too of the tortuous intricacy of plot, clues, and red herrings of the classic detective stories resolving at last into the relief and satisfaction of the single solution. “Ellery” almost seems to be a question hanging in the air—a puzzle, an enigma, a case; while “Queen” is the answer, the detective, the solution—solid and irrefutable. But to the seasoned reader of the detective- crime genre, “Ellery Queen” not only evokes images of the classic, eccentric, brilliant, rather brash and arrogant young Ellery, complete with pince- nez and affected speech, pene- trating the clues and discarding the deception, but also conjures images of transition and maturation—in Ellery and in the detective- crime genre as a whole—as the later, wiser, sadder, more compassionate, and more human Ellery (without the affectations) struggles through the human drama with all its tragedies and triumphs to solve the crimes but not the human dilemma, 1