Toward the end of their careers, the cousins allowed some crime novels, mainly paperback originals, to be written by ghostwriters as part of the Ellery Queen franchise. These books did not feature the character Ellery Queen as the protagonist. They included three novels featuring "the governor's troubleshooter", Micah "Mike" McCall, and six featuring Captain Tim Corrigan, of the NYPD's Main Office Squad. The prominent science-fiction writer Jack Vance wrote three of these original paperbacks, including the locked room mystery "A Room to Die In".