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Leave it to Edgar Allan Poe. While many probably associate the mercurial author and poet with horror milestones like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he’s also widely credited with inventing the detective story with his 1841 publication, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Since then the genre of detective fiction has spanned untold numbers of short stories, novels, plays, radio shows, TV series, and of course, movies.

One of the subsets of detective fiction, the whodunit, remains almost interchangeable with the genre itself and one of its most popular variations. From the urbane, eccentric likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to the more grizzled Sam Spade and Mike Hammer, to the shapeshifting meta-detective Ellery Queen, stories that allow the reader or viewer to solve the mystery right alongside the protagonist are an entertainment staple to this day, as borne out by...

Fictional detective Ellery Queen is set to make a return to television – this time as a woman.

Incendo and BlackBox Multimedia have optioned the TV adaption rights to the collection of novels and short stories in which Queen, originally written as a male character, appears.

The two companies will co-develop and co-produce a modernized, high-end scripted series in which Ellery will be changed to female. The part of the best-selling detective has yet to be cast.

The “Ellery Queen” books, which were written by cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee, remain hugely popular in the U.S. and abroad, including China. The character of Queen was both a fictional detective and a pseudonymous name the cousins used when writing or editing other works.

“’Ellery Queen’ is one of the most definitive series of detective fiction to ever be written,” Giuliano Papadia, CEO and creative director at BlackBox Multimedia said in a statement.

Mickey Spillane grabbed his position in the pop culture pantheon much like his iconic creation, private eye Mike Hammer, made his way through a case: through a sort of literary brute force, blasting away with heavy doses of graphic violence, steamy sex, and a style which reviewers often considered the prose version of a blunt object.

As a mystery writer, Spillane wasn’t as clever as Evan Hunter, nor as introspective as late career Ross MacDonald, nor did he have the insider’s street savvy of George V. Higgins, or the prose command of Raymond Chandler. Read today, some of his stuff seems so familiar and stale and excessive it borders on camp. But, whatever one’s qualitative judgment on Spillane and his canon, there’s no doubt his impact on the mystery genre – and the private eye tale in particular – was both massive and indelible, reaching beyond the printed...

NBC’s Ellery Queen Mysteries only lasted one season, but it remains a favorite among fans of TV detective shows in general, and fans of writer-producers Richard Levinson and William Link in particular. Following their success with Mannix and Columbo, Levinson and Link had the clout to pursue a series based on Ellery Queen, whose stories they had bonded over in junior high. “Ellery Queen” was the pseudonym of another mystery-loving pair, Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, two cousins who stuck the name on novels, short stories, magazine anthologies, movies, radio dramas, and the protagonist of all the above. Their ...