Beginning in 1932, the cousins wrote four novels using the pseudonym Barnaby Ross about Drury Lane, a Shakespearean actor who had retired from the stage due to deafness and was consulted as an amateur detective. The novels also featured Inspector Thumm (at first of the New York police, then later a private investigator) and his crime-solving daughter Patience. The Drury Lane novels are in the whodunit style. "The Tragedy of X" and "The Tragedy of Y" are variations on the locked-room mystery format. "The Tragedy of Y" bears some resemblance to the later Ellery Queen novel "There Was an Old Woman": both are about eccentric families headed by a matriarch.