Ellery Queen Mysteries

When crimes stump the New York City police in the 1940s, Inspector Richard Queen turns to his son, a mystery writer of astounding ingenuity. Match wits with Ellery Queen in the puzzling adventures of the lover's leap, the comic book crusader, the Pharaoh's curse, the eccentric engineer and more. All 22 episodes of the hit series, plus pilot. From the creators of Murder, She Wrote and Columbo. As seen on NBC.

Season 1, Episode 0: Too Many Suspects
Original Air Date-23 March 1975
Ellery must track down the killer of noted fashion designer, Monica Gay, who pulled the plug out of her clock and her TV set as a cryptic dying message. The three main suspects are Monica's financier lover, his jealous wife, and hot-tempered son who'd been having an affair with her himself. Each is charged and then cleared of murder but are they really innocent? Ellery must sort things through.

Season 1, Episode 1: The Adventure of Auld Lang Syne
Original Air Date-11 September 1975
The time: 10:00 pm, New Year's Eve, 1946. The place: The ballroom of the Hotel Astor. The victim: Mr. Marcus Halliday. And the suspects (all the usual ones): the son (and his gold-digging girlfriend), the untrusted nephew, the long-time secretary (and her brand new fiance), and the new business partner (of course, stealing from the company behind the victim's back). The soon-to-be victim has just announced that he plans to disinherit all of the above before the night is out - only to be found minutes later, slumped over in a nearby phone booth. Since Charlie's Angels aren't available to solve the mystery, Ellery Queen and the Inspector are on the scene.

Season 1, Episode 2: The Adventure of the Lover's Leap
A wealthy heiress dies. She jumped off the balcony of her elegant home (or did she?). Was it suicide... or was it murder? The twist: she was reading one of Ellery's own murder mysteries at the time and she died exactly the same way as the victim in the book. Simon Brimmer arrives on the scene and does his usual job to help unravel things. Which is to say not much at all.
Original Air Date-18 September 1975

Season 1, Episode 3: The Adventure of the Chinese Dog
On a fishing trip to the town of Wrightsville, Ellery and Inspector Queen are dragged into the case of the murder of a wealthy man who was whacked over the head with an ornamental dog figurine meant as a wedding gift for his daughter and worth nearly half a million dollars. It seems as though two rival candidates for sheriff want the Inspector to solve the town's first murder in decades so that they can grab the credit.
Original Air Date-25 September 1975

Season 1, Episode 4: The Adventure of the Comic Book Crusader
Original Air Date-2 October 1975
Ellery himself is a leading suspect in the murder of a comic book publisher with whom he'd clashed over how he was portrayed in the publisher's comics. It seems as though the man left a dying clue which apparently points to him. Ellery is forced to investigate in order to clear his name. Ole Frank Flannigan is on the scene too trying to steal some of the glory.

Season 1, Episode 5: The Adventure of the 12th Floor Express
Original Air Date-9 October 1975
News mogul Henry Manners is murdered in an express elevator to the 12th floor of his building with nobody inside the elevator except the victim. The suspects include Manners' sister who had previously run the paper while her brother was absent in WW II, the right-wing columnist who was always getting the paper into legal hot water, the Editor being forced into retirement, and (yes, you knew this was coming) the paper's lawyer. Ole Frank Flannigan is on the scene too making the usual nuisance of himself and trying to beat Ellery to the solution. They'll have to take things one day at a time in this case.

Season 1, Episode 6: The Adventure of Miss Aggie's Farewell Performance
Original Air Date-19 October 1975
Radio star Vera Bethune is poisoned during the taping of her show. She survives and asks Ellery from her hospital bed to look into things. Unfortunately for both Vera and Ellery, she is shot to death while in the hospital. Ellery and the Inspector are both guilt stricken over failing to protect Ms. Bethune and are determined to find her killer from among the usual numerous suspects. But radio mystery star Simon Brimmer is determined to beat both Queens to the solution in order to retain a sponsor to his radio program. A golden girl might have a hard time with this one.

Season 1, Episode 7: The Adventure of Colonel Nivin's Memoirs
A WW II spy, Colonel Alec Nivin, is on a book tour in New York concerning his memoirs in which he accuses a variety of people of war crimes and treasonous acts. Ellery's galpal, Jenny O'Brien, finds the erstwhile spy dead in his hotel room having been stabbed with an antique dagger. Everybody except Jenny is a suspect in this one.
Original Air Date-23 October 1975

Season 1, Episode 8: The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party
Original Air Date-30 October 1975
Ellery and his agent, Howard Biggers, travel to the estate of the wealthy and eccentric Spencer Lockridge. It seems as though Biggers wants to turn one of Ellery's books into a play and is trying to get Lockridge to provide the financial backing. All goes for naught when Lockridge disappears while wearing a Mad Hatter's costume from the Alice in Wonderland theme party he was throwing. Whodunit? Could it have been someone from New York or maybe even Dallas?

Season 1, Episode 9: The Adventure of Veronica's Veils
Original Air Date-13 November 1975
Burlesque producer Sam Packer is found dead of an apparent heart attack but he leaves behind a video to be shown at his funeral in which he states that no matter what it looks like, he will be murdered. Packer, in the video, asks radio mystery star Simon Brimmer to solve his murder. Packer's widow, knowing that Simon can't figure out his butt from third base, goes to Ellery and asks for his help. Brimmer once again tries to best Ellery and once again is 100% wrong.

Season 1, Episode 10: The Adventure of the Pharaoh's Curse
Original Air Date-11 December 1975
Norris Wentworth buys and brings an Egyptian sarcophagus to display at the world famous Tremane Museum. Wouldn't you know it, there's curse on the darn thing. The six previous owners have all kicked the bucket under mysterious circumstances. Needless to say, Wentworth becomes victim number seven but is he really the victim of a mummy's curse or is there some other motive in this wild, wild case?

Season 1, Episode 11: The Adventure of the Blunt Instrument
Original Air Date-18 December 1975
An awards dinner sponsored by the Crime Writers of America is being held at the residence of writer Edgar Manning who is the recipient of the Blunt Instrument Award. Ellery is not present at the dinner due to the fact that he's home sick with a head cold. Nasty, egotistical Manning calls up Ellery on the telephone in order to gloat about his win and is murdered while speaking with our hero on the phone. It might take a quantum leap for our hero to solve this one.

Season 1, Episode 12: The Adventure of the Black Falcon
Original Air Date-4 January 1976
Simon Brimmer arrives at a restaurant where he is to give a live-remote broadcast of his highly rated mystery radio program. Ellery and the Inspector are invited to attend. As you would figure, a murder is committed on the premises. One of the owners is poisoned by a bottle of wine. Can Simon beat Ellery to the solution of the case? Of course not.

Season 1, Episode 13: The Adventure of the Sunday Punch
Original Air Date-11 January 1976
A boxer is killed while training for a championship bout and the finger points towards his sparring partner, Joe Adams. Joe's girlfriend, Corrinne Ogden, seeks out Ellery for help in clearing her boyfriend's name. Ellery accepts the challenge of proving Joe's innocence but it seems that the dead boxer had nearly as many enemies as Bugs Moran. Making things even more complicated is the fact that good old Frank Flannigan is also on the scene trying to beat Ellery to the solution.

Season 1, Episode 14: The Adventure of the Eccentric Engineer
Original Air Date-18 January 1976
A famous inventor suddenly withdraws from the world and starts holing up in his shed, playing incessantly with his toy trains. So why would someone kill him? A clue at the beginning of the show: before the inventor answers the knock of his killer, he hides some secret formulas in a secret-compartment desk drawer.

Season 1, Episode 15: The Adventure of the Wary Witness
Original Air Date-25 January 1976
A man on trial for murder claims that the victim was shot through a window from a fire escape, and that he fired at the killer. The defendant's lawyer claims that he can bring in a witness, a woman who was beaten up by the victim. But the woman can't be found. When she's finally tracked down, Inspector Queen, Ellery and Frank Flannigan hear a gunshot from outside her window, break down the door and find the woman lying unconscious -- shot from the fire escape.

Season 1, Episode 16: The Adventure of the Judas Tree
Original Air Date-1 February 1976
Soemone goes to an awful lot of trouble to make the murder of a wealthy man look like a ritualistic killing, hanging his corpse from a Cersis tree (aka a Judas tree, after the one Judas Iscariot supposedly hanged himself from) and adorning it with branches. When the wealthy man is found to be far less wealthy than thought (he had given everything away except a huge life insurance policy), suspicion turns to his wife, who already has a boyfriend on the side.

Season 1, Episode 17: The Adventure of the Sinister Scenario
Original Air Date-8 February 1976
An actor playing Ellery Queen in a motion picture is supposed to be "shot" on camera, then jump up and nab the woman who shot him, exclaiming "Bulletproof vest!" The rehearsal, with blanks, goes fine. But the ensuing "take" with the same gun finds it loaded with real bullets, and the actor drops dead. The film crew tries to carry on, and soon a stunt man is killed when the car he was driving is rigged to wipe out before he was ready. Are the two murders linked -- and how?

Season 1, Episode 18: The Adventure of the Two-Faced Woman
Original Air Date-29 February 1976
A society matron is stabbed to death while examining a painting she has purchased at auction. She had started to scrape off the painting to get at another painting underneath, and had uncovered the artist's signature -- "Lazar," a key figure in an unsolved (and heinous) murder in Paris 25 years earlier. When the rest of the painting is revealed, it's a portrait of the dead woman herself. Investigation reveals that the woman was in Paris at the time of the murder and may well have been the killer, but she subsequently completely lost her memory. Somebody didn't want her to regain it.

Season 1, Episode 19: The Adventure of the Tyrant of Tin Pan Alley
Original Air Date-7 March 1976
A famous crooner who's also a cutthroat record producer is doing a radio interview when a songwriter breaks into the studio and accuses the singer of stealing his song, waving a demo record around as proof. The singer smashes the disc and storms out. The interviewer hurriedly cues up some records to cover the dead air. While everybody in the radio station searches for the singer, someone finds him in the music library and shoots him. The singer is found clutching a recording of "Danny Boy," which implicates the songwriter (whose name is Danny). But is it a dying clue or a red herring?

Season 1, Episode 20: The Adventure of Caesar's Last Sleep
Original Air Date-14 March 1976
A mobster survives a bombing attempt and plays dead, hiding out in a hotel room with two police guards. But the mobster is found dead anyway, of poison. A furious crusading District Attorney accuses Inspector Queen and the two guards (including Velie) of serving up poisoned chewing gum, the only thing the mobster had to dine on. Ellery thinks this unlikely because nobody opened the packet except the mobster, and starts looking for other ways the poison could have been administered.

Season 1, Episode 21: The Adventure of the Hardhearted Huckster
Original Air Date-21 March 1976
A Madison Avenue advertising executive wants to make newspaper columnist Frank Flanagan a TV star by setting him up with a variety show. But then the executive is found murdered in his private bathroom, stabbed in the back. The killer had to be someone who knew the executive's meticulous habits. The plans for the TV show go forward and Ellery takes an inside look at the advertising industry to determine how the killer could have slipped in and out undetected.

Season 1, Episode 22: The Adventure of the Disappearing Dagger
Original Air Date-4 April 1976
An elderly amateur criminologist finally figures out how a five-year-old "locked-room" murder was committed, and is murdered by the killer before he can alert Inspector Queen. Ellery takes up the challenge himself. The criminologist had first implicated an airline pilot, because he was flying the plane where the murder was committed and had the opportunity to toss the murder weapon out the window. Nobody else seems to have been able to get rid of the weapon, but Ellery finds that the murder victim had stolen someone else's invention, and that the murderer may have invented the weapon as well.

Series Cast

Directed by Seymour Robbie, Jack Arnold, Peter H. Hunt
Written by Richard Levinson, William Link, Peter S. Fischer
Produced by Peter S. Fischer, Michael Rhodes
Executive Produced by Richard Levinson, William Link
Original Music by Elmer Bernstein
Cinematography by John M. Nickolaus Jr.
Film Editing by Chuck McClelland, John Elias
Costume Design by Charles Waldo