Ellery Queen of the 1940s, that detective-hero was possibly the best known American fictional detective. Movies, radio shows, and television shows were based on Dannay and Lee's works. Frederic Dannay, without much involvement from Lee, was founding and directing editor of "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine", generally considered one of the most influential English-language crime fiction magazines of the last sixty-five years. They were also prominent historians in the field, editing numerous collections and anthologies of short stories such as "The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes". Their 994-page anthology for the Modern Library, "101 Years' Entertainment: The Great Detective Stories, 1841–1941", was a landmark
Frederic Morton Frederic Morton Frederic Morton (October 5, 1924 – April 20, 2015) was an Austrian-born American writer. Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, Morton was the son of a blacksmith who specialized in forging (manufacturing) imperial medals. In the wake of the "Anschluss" of 1938, his father was arrested, but later released. The family fled to Britain in 1939 and migrated to New York City the next year, when the senior Mandelbaum also changed the family name in order to be able to join an anti-Semitic labor union. Morton worked as a baker but began studying literature in 1949. He returned to