Ellery Queen Dannay and Lee also commissioned other authors to write crime thrillers under the Ellery Queen authorial name, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character. Daniel Nathan, professionally known as Frederic Dannay (October 20, 1905 – September 3, 1982), and Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky, professionally known as Manfred Bennington Lee (January 11, 1905 – April 3, 1971), were American cousins from Brooklyn, New York. In addition to writing most of the novels and short stories starring the brilliant amateur detective Ellery Queen, Dannay and Lee edited more than thirty popular anthologies of crime fiction and true crime, which were also published
Pen name is writing in. Western novelist Pearl Gray dropped his first name and changed the spelling of his last name to become Zane Grey, because he believed that his real name did not suit the Western genre. Romance novelist Angela Knight writes under that name instead of her actual name (Julie Woodcock) because of the double entendre of her surname in the context of that genre. Romain Gary, who was a well-known French writer, decided in 1973 to write novels in a different style under the name Émile Ajar and even asked his cousin's son to impersonate Ajar; thus he received