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The Sound of Detection: Ellery Queen's Adventures in Radio
Ellery Queen, perhaps as famous as any fictional detective after Sherlock Holmes, was created by cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee over lunch one day in 1929. This led to more than 40 novels, a film series, a long and convoluted run on radio, and various runs on TV. For an initial $350 fee, Dannay and Lee would write one mystery per week, allowing both the guest armchair detective and radio listeners the opportunity to solve the mystery themselves, before the famous sleuth did.
This new publication includes a detailed account covering the lives of the creators, the how and why they moved llery Queen into radio, and a detailed history of the series during its long run on the airwaves (1939-48). Included in the chapters are reminiscences taken from interviews and correspondence with the creators themselves; with mystery writer and critic Anthony Boucher, who collaborated on more than 70 of the later radio adventures of the master detective; and with three of the actors who played Ellery over the years.
Includes an introduction by Larry Dobkin, who played Ellery Queen for a short time on the radio! Includes a detailed broadcast log with a chart showing various time slots, networks, sponsors, and competition. Brief biographies of cast and production crew. Capsule biographies of more than 350 personalities who appeared on the program as guest armchair detectives. A week-by-week log giving principal actors, announcer, director, composer-conductor, sponsor, script writer(s), plot synopsis, and much more. Appendices covering subjects like the early episodes of The Shadow that Dannay and Lee wrote without credit in order to learn the craft of radio writing, and other Ellery Queen incarnations on the radio.
- GenresNonfiction
109 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
8 people want to read
About the author
Francis M. Nevins Jr.
62 books9 followersFrancis Michael Nevins, Jr. aka Francis M. Nevins, Jr.
Francis Nevins’ areas of expertise straddle the worlds of fact and fiction.
When he created the seminar on “Law, Lawyers and Justice in Popular Fiction and Film” in 1979, it was considered a novel idea. Today, similar seminars and courses commonly are offered in law schools throughout the United States and abroad. If there is a conference on law and film almost anywhere in the world, chances are good that Professor Nevins will be invited as a guest speaker. His paper, “When Celluloid Lawyers Started to Speak: Exploring Juriscinema’s First Golden Age,” presented in 2003 at a University College colloquium in London, is scheduled to appear in a book of essays on law and popular culture published by Oxford University Press.
An expert in estate and copyright law, Nevins was one of the first to explore in depth the legal problems that arise when an author dies. He coined the term “will bumping” to describe how, in certain circumstances, the Copyright Act can “turn an author’s will into a worthless piece of paper.” A famous writer to whom this happened was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie books. Professor Nevins served as a consultant in a federal lawsuit aimed at “unbumping” her will.
Nevins has also written about the interface between copyright and matrimonial law and has argued that a little-known provision of the Copyright Act precludes state courts from treating copyrights as matrimonial or community property when an author divorces. “It’s interesting to see courts squirming all over the place to avoid the plain language of the Copyright Act,” he says. He is currently involved in a case that raises the issue of whether upon the divorce of a successor to an author, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution precludes state courts from treating as matrimonial or community property the termination interest granted by the Copyright Act to authors’ successors.
In addition to his scholarly writing, Professor Nevins is an award-winning author of mystery fiction. His mentor in this field and “the closest thing to a grandfather I’ve ever had” was Frederic Dannay, whose pen name was Ellery Queen. Professor Nevins has published six novels, two collections of short stories and several books of non-fiction. He has edited more than 15 mystery anthologies and collections. His latest book of fiction is titled Leap Day and Other Stories (2003).
Professor Nevins graduated cum laude from New York University School of Law in 1967. He is a member of the New Jersey Bar, and worked as a staff attorney with the state’s Middlesex County Legal Services Corp. before joining the School of Law in 1971.
Francis Nevins’ areas of expertise straddle the worlds of fact and fiction.
When he created the seminar on “Law, Lawyers and Justice in Popular Fiction and Film” in 1979, it was considered a novel idea. Today, similar seminars and courses commonly are offered in law schools throughout the United States and abroad. If there is a conference on law and film almost anywhere in the world, chances are good that Professor Nevins will be invited as a guest speaker. His paper, “When Celluloid Lawyers Started to Speak: Exploring Juriscinema’s First Golden Age,” presented in 2003 at a University College colloquium in London, is scheduled to appear in a book of essays on law and popular culture published by Oxford University Press.
An expert in estate and copyright law, Nevins was one of the first to explore in depth the legal problems that arise when an author dies. He coined the term “will bumping” to describe how, in certain circumstances, the Copyright Act can “turn an author’s will into a worthless piece of paper.” A famous writer to whom this happened was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie books. Professor Nevins served as a consultant in a federal lawsuit aimed at “unbumping” her will.
Nevins has also written about the interface between copyright and matrimonial law and has argued that a little-known provision of the Copyright Act precludes state courts from treating copyrights as matrimonial or community property when an author divorces. “It’s interesting to see courts squirming all over the place to avoid the plain language of the Copyright Act,” he says. He is currently involved in a case that raises the issue of whether upon the divorce of a successor to an author, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution precludes state courts from treating as matrimonial or community property the termination interest granted by the Copyright Act to authors’ successors.
In addition to his scholarly writing, Professor Nevins is an award-winning author of mystery fiction. His mentor in this field and “the closest thing to a grandfather I’ve ever had” was Frederic Dannay, whose pen name was Ellery Queen. Professor Nevins has published six novels, two collections of short stories and several books of non-fiction. He has edited more than 15 mystery anthologies and collections. His latest book of fiction is titled Leap Day and Other Stories (2003).
Professor Nevins graduated cum laude from New York University School of Law in 1967. He is a member of the New Jersey Bar, and worked as a staff attorney with the state’s Middlesex County Legal Services Corp. before joining the School of Law in 1971.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 20, 2017
Ellery Queen is one of fiction’s Great Detectives, up on the same level as Holmes and Poirot. Queen’s novels are written by “Ellery Queen”—the pen name for co-writers (and cousins) Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee.
{In that corner of my brain where I believe that all the Great Detectives exist in the real world, I think of the novels as Queen’s 3rd person narrative accounts of his actual cases.}
One of the neat things about the novels is that they played fair with the reader—all the clues are there for us and the early novels actually paused just before Ellery reveals the killer’s identity to let us have our chance to solve it.
When Ellery Queen was on radio from 1939 to 1948, the same conceit was used, usually with a celebrity guest in the studio to play armchair detective and get a chance to solve the crime before Queen did. It was a wonderful premise for a great show.
“The Sound of Detection” does a superb job of taking us through the history of this show. The first part of the book gives us brief biographies of Lee and Danney. We learn how they came to love mystery fiction and eventually create Ellery Queen. We then follow along with them as they become involved in writing “The Adventures of Ellery Queen” on radio.
The prose is clear and entertaining as Francis Nevins provides us with facts and anecdotes, building a clear and comprehensive history of the radio show. He includes plot summaries for a lot of episodes to help give us a real taste of what the show was like. Nevins also proves himself to be a true fan when he does not hesitate to criticize the occasional weak episodes, but does so without sacrificing his respect for the overall high quality of Lee and Danney’s work. On page 31, Nevins is talking about how the authors would often reuse clues and plot devices from older stories to meet deadlines. He writes: “It’s no wonder that the cousins borrowed liberally from themselves, nor that some of their scripts were routine and mechanical in nature. What is astonishing is that so many Queen dramas were so good. In the memories of fans in the forties who became writers later, it was the best whodunit on the air.”
The rest of the book is wonderfully comprehensive in the information it gives us. There are several plot summaries written for the show by mystery writer/critic Anthony Boucher (who took over for Danney as co-writer late in the show’s run); a complete episode guide that also identifies the celebrity playing armchair detective for each episode; a list of what shows were on other networks during its run; and brief biographies of both the actors AND the armchair detectives. If I wanted to nitpick, I probably would have wished for a list of what episodes still survive and might be available commercially or online, but that’s simply not enough of a nitpick to knock off a star. If you are a fan of Ellery Queen, mystery fiction in general or Old-Time Radio, you will love this book.
I think it’s an indication of how much I loved it to mention that I had to pause several times while reading the book: Once to read one of the original short stories that had just been reference; twice to listen to episodes of the radio show; and once to listen to an episode of “The Shadow” in response to a short chapter written by William Nadel theorizing about what episodes of that show Lee and Danney wrote in the late 1930s.
{In that corner of my brain where I believe that all the Great Detectives exist in the real world, I think of the novels as Queen’s 3rd person narrative accounts of his actual cases.}
One of the neat things about the novels is that they played fair with the reader—all the clues are there for us and the early novels actually paused just before Ellery reveals the killer’s identity to let us have our chance to solve it.
When Ellery Queen was on radio from 1939 to 1948, the same conceit was used, usually with a celebrity guest in the studio to play armchair detective and get a chance to solve the crime before Queen did. It was a wonderful premise for a great show.
“The Sound of Detection” does a superb job of taking us through the history of this show. The first part of the book gives us brief biographies of Lee and Danney. We learn how they came to love mystery fiction and eventually create Ellery Queen. We then follow along with them as they become involved in writing “The Adventures of Ellery Queen” on radio.
The prose is clear and entertaining as Francis Nevins provides us with facts and anecdotes, building a clear and comprehensive history of the radio show. He includes plot summaries for a lot of episodes to help give us a real taste of what the show was like. Nevins also proves himself to be a true fan when he does not hesitate to criticize the occasional weak episodes, but does so without sacrificing his respect for the overall high quality of Lee and Danney’s work. On page 31, Nevins is talking about how the authors would often reuse clues and plot devices from older stories to meet deadlines. He writes: “It’s no wonder that the cousins borrowed liberally from themselves, nor that some of their scripts were routine and mechanical in nature. What is astonishing is that so many Queen dramas were so good. In the memories of fans in the forties who became writers later, it was the best whodunit on the air.”
The rest of the book is wonderfully comprehensive in the information it gives us. There are several plot summaries written for the show by mystery writer/critic Anthony Boucher (who took over for Danney as co-writer late in the show’s run); a complete episode guide that also identifies the celebrity playing armchair detective for each episode; a list of what shows were on other networks during its run; and brief biographies of both the actors AND the armchair detectives. If I wanted to nitpick, I probably would have wished for a list of what episodes still survive and might be available commercially or online, but that’s simply not enough of a nitpick to knock off a star. If you are a fan of Ellery Queen, mystery fiction in general or Old-Time Radio, you will love this book.
I think it’s an indication of how much I loved it to mention that I had to pause several times while reading the book: Once to read one of the original short stories that had just been reference; twice to listen to episodes of the radio show; and once to listen to an episode of “The Shadow” in response to a short chapter written by William Nadel theorizing about what episodes of that show Lee and Danney wrote in the late 1930s.
Displaying 1 of 1 review