Ellery Queen - Season 1

The time: 10:00 pm, New Year's Eve, 1947. 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. Can Ellery figure out the clues as they play out?

When an heiress is found dead from an apparent suicide, Ellery Queen suspects she was murdered, but the investigation is hindered by interference from radio detective Simon Brimmer.

A fishing trip for Richard and Ellery Queen soon becomes a working vacation when they are asked to help investigate the murder of a small-town magnate who was whacked over the head with an ornamental dog figurine.

A tyrannical comic book creator is shot to death in his office, and Ellery Queen becomes the prime suspect because of arguments over how he was portrayed in the victim's comics.

Inspector Queen calls in his son Ellery to help investigate the murder of a newspaper publisher, who first disappears from his private express elevator and then is later found there dead by gunshot.

Beloved Vera Bethune stars as Miss Aggie in a radio soap opera, but is about to be written out. One day she drinks water from a jug and is poisoned in a murder attempt. She is taken to the hospital and survives, but the killer returns.

Ellery's publicist becomes embroiled in a murder investigation when she finds the body of one of her clients, a World War II spy who recently wrote a tell-all memoir.

Fun-loving theatrical producer Spencer Lockridge invites Ellery to his mansion for a weekend of working out how to adapt one of Ellery's works for the stage. But the producer disappears shortly thereafter, and presumed murdered. A series of clues are delivered by pranksters' means. The idea is to try to get the killer to implicate himself or herself.

Burlesque producer Sam Packer is found dead of an apparent heart attack but he leaves behind a cine film to be shown at his funeral in which he states that, no matter what it looks like, he will have been murdered.

Ellery and Simon join forces to figure out if an airplane manufacturer was murdered - or killed by a 2,000-year-old Egyptian curse.

A man who just won a mystery writers award is slain during a gloating telephone call to Queen.

When a wine-loving night club owner is poisoned with one of his bottles, Ellery discovers motives hidden in a murky past for the killing.

A prizefighter is killed while training for a Championship bout and when guilt points toward his sparring partner Joe Adams, Joe's girlfriend seeks out Ellery to prove his innocence. The autopsy discovers death due to poison, but there seems to be a never-ending list of potential suspects.

When a once-brilliant, now seemingly senile inventor is murdered in his electric train workshop, the mystery is afoot. It seems no one could have come in or gone out during the period of time when the murder must have taken place, and a ticket was needed to gain admittance to the train room. This narrows the suspects down to his family and his business associates.

Ellery's old college chum, Linville Hagen, is accused of murdering mobster Nick Danello, and Ellery must find a missing witness who can prove his innocence. This missing witness was a woman wearing a green dress - a description, of course, which could fit any woman in New York. Frank Flannigan comes along for the ride too, and this time he's not quite so antagonistic towards Ellery.

The Queens investigate when a wealthy industrialist and war profiteer is stabbed to death with a Chinese ceremonial dagger and then dragged out of his house and hung from a tree with a crown of thorns placed on his head.

Ellery and the Inspector travel to Hollywood in order to watch the filming of an adaptation of one of Ellery's novels into a movie. At the studio, they meet the actors who will be portraying them.

Simon Brimmer once again fingers the wrong culprit in this tale about the murder of a socialite who was apparently leading a double life.

Popular songwriter Alvin Winter is killed during the musical interlude on a radio show when he goes to the station's record library. Ellery must clear a friend who had just accused Winter of stealing his song.

Inspector Queen is in charge of protecting mob witness Ralph Caesar, but the witness is murdered before he can testify. The evidence points to none other than Sgt. Velie. The Inspector must also deal with rivals in the department who feel he's gotten long in the tooth and relies too much on Ellery.

A nasty advertising executive for the Quick Silver Tobacco company is murdered. Is Frank Flannigan, the star of a radio show the company was going to sponsor, to blame?

Ellery probes the case of a retired detective who was killed while investigating an unsolved murder.