The Four Johns

Ellery Queen is a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn—Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay (1905–1982), and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971)—to write detective fiction. In a successful series of novels that covered forty-two years, Ellery Queen served as both the authors’ name and that of the detective-hero. The cousins also cofounded and directed Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential English crime-fiction magazines of the twentieth century. They were given the Grand Master Award for achievements in the field of the mystery story by the Mystery Writers of America in 1961.