“Furious?” The Inspector was sheepish. “I feel like eating crow.”

She beamed at him. “Make it chicken, and I’ll rush home and put on the dotted Swiss and join you. Shall we say Fourchette’s at eight?”

THE ADVENTURE OF THE AFRICAN TRAVELER

Ellery Queen

Detective: Ellery Queen

AS ANTHONY Boucher once wrote in The New York Times, Ellery Queen is the American detective story, the creator and defender of the fair play mystery puzzle.

In what remains one of the most brilliant marketing decisions of all time, the two Brooklyn cousins who collaborated under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, Frederic Dannay (born Daniel Nathan) (1905-1982) and Manfred B(ennington) Lee (born Manford Lepofsky) (1905-1971), also named their detective Ellery Queen. They reasoned that if readers forgot the name of the author, or the name of the character, they might remember the other. It worked, as Ellery Queen is counted among the handful of best known names in the history of mystery fiction.

Lee was a full collaborator on the fiction created as Ellery Queen, but Dannay on his own was also one of the most important figures in the mystery world. He founded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1941 and it remains, more than seventy years later, the most significant periodical in the genre. He also formed one of the first great collections of detective fiction first editions, the rare contents leading to reprinted stories in the magazines and anthologies he edited, which are among the best ever produced, most notably 101 Years’ Entertainment (1941), which gets my vote as the greatest mystery anthology ever published.

Dannay also produced such landmark reference books as Queen’s Quorum (1951), a listing and appreciation of the 106 (later expanded to 125) most important short story collections in the genre, and The Detective Short Story (1942), a bibliography of all the collections Dannay had identified up to the publication date. More than a dozen movies were based on Queen books, there were several radio and television shows as well as comics; it was not far-fetched to describe the ubiquitous Ellery Queen in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as the personification of the American detective story.

“The Adventure of the African Traveler” was originally published in The Adventures of Ellery Queen (New York, Frederick A. Stokes, 1934).

The Adventure of the African Traveler

By Ellery Queen

MR. ELLERY QUEEN, wrapped loosely in English tweeds and reflections, proceeded—in a manner of speaking—with effort along the eighth-floor corridor of the Arts Building, that sumptuous citadel of the University. The tweeds were pure Bond Street, for Ellery was ever the sartorial fellow; whereas the reflections were Americanese, Ellery’s ears being filled with the peculiar patois of young male and female collegians, and he himself having been Harvard, ’Teen.