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Every year, thousands of crime novels, films, and games are published, attracting countless audiences from all over the world. 

It may lead people to wonder, why the crime genre has been so popular throughout the year. Looking back, many brilliant authors such as Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle and Edogawa Ranpo paved the way for future literati, and among them, Ellery Queen is a name that must be mentioned, since the logical deduction in his works led to a new style in the golden age of detective fiction. 

Let's take a look at one of his most notable works, The Greek Coffin Mystery, and see how it has inspired numerous creators in modern time.

Unpredictable plots 

It is common for writers to use pseudonyms, but Ellery Queen not only is a camouflage for authors Frederic Da nnay and Manfred Bennington Lee, who co-created the series, but is also the name of the protagonist of the book. 

Ellery Queen is a fictional detective who has an extraordinary ability in logic and an ambition to prove himself. The Greek Coffin Mystery is his first case and an unspeakable past. 

The chief criminal in the case is too cunning, and it takes several errors for Queen to reach the final answer.

The book starts its interaction when the reader opens the first page. 

If you pay attention to the catalog carefully, you can see the first letter of the 34 chapters (Tomb, Hunt, Enigma, Gossip, Remains, Exhumation, Evidence, Killed, Chronicles, Omen, Foresight, Facts, Inquiries, Note, Maze, Yeast, Stigma, Testament, Expose, Reckoning, Yearbook, Bottom Yarns, Exhibit, Leftover, Light, Exchange, Requisition, Yield, Quiz, Upshot, Elleryana, Eye-opener, Nucleus) spell out the title of the book. Such interesting tricks are used throughout the work, and all the twists and turns are often caused by only the slightest changes in the clues. 

The background of the story begins at the funeral of a famous Greek art dealer and collector, Georg Khalkis, whose seemingly normal death leads to a series of unexpected murders. 

The young Ellery Queen, son of a New York inspector, meets his first failure in his journey to the truth, which would shock any reader who reaches the finale with him. There are no narrative traps, and supernatural forces, nor impossible mode of operations in the solution. 

Follow the logic 

Everything seems realistic yet unbeatable. If not for the mistake the killer made in the end, that person may never have been captured. Every detail sums up like an equation in a mathematical textbook. 

Nowadays, a time when detective novels are more dependent on fictitious settings and whimsical methods, The Greek Coffin Mystery brings us back to the basics, where the ultimate appeal of the suspense genre lies in logic and reasoning. 

As the author has promised, all clues are given to the reader, and it's up to their imagination to link them together and make the impossible possible.

In 1975, there was a TV series inspired by the book titled Ellery Queen. 

It features renowned actor Jim Hutton, Nina Roman, David Wayne, John Hillerman and Tom Reese. The TV production brought the story alive. 

In both the novel and the TV series, the character Ellery Queen is portrayed as a man who has a robust body, charming gray eyes but also incredible intelligence. 

It is interesting to compare the character "Ellery Queen" to "Sherlock Holmes" from the pen of British author Arthur Conan Doyle. 

They are both gifted with wisdom, yet the character of Holmes appears to be much more "defective" when held up to the almost perfect Queen due to his stubbornness and pickiness.  

It was interesting to me to see such a difference, and I would like to take it to a slightly deeper level to think that those different portrayals were rooted in the different personalities of people from the UK and the US. 

The latter is often confident, glam and ambitious whereas the Brits are often humble and reticent, which can be seen from their self-deprecating deadpan humor. 

Everyone likes perfection, but I don't mind the quirky Holmes as the complexity in a character's personality brings more theatrical tension to an artwork.  

In 1971, Manfred Bennington Lee, co-author of the "Ellery Queen" mystery series passed away. 

His passing not only made the "Ellery Queen" series an eternal cultural legacy, but  also inspired many people to commemorate the writer as well as review his creative career. 

Prior to Lee's novelist career, he worked in many other jobs such as publicity and advertising copywriter, during which he practiced his writing skills, giving him the talent of writing down stories that would entice readers. 

The great writer received several awards such as the Special Book Award in 1951, the Grand Master Award in the 1960s, and the American Red Cross citation for outstanding national service in 1945. 

The author is a graduate from the Great Neck South High School in New York