Structure
Set in post-World War II, the show closely followed the format of the early Ellery Queen mystery novels, where just prior to the presentation of the solution to the mystery, a "Challenge To The Reader" was issued, in which the suspects and clues were reviewed and the reader challenged to guess the solution to the crime. In the show, this tradition was preserved by having Ellery Queen break the fourth wall and speak directly to the viewer prior to the commercial break that led into the final act. The final act always employed the time-honored detective cliché of calling together all the suspects, with Ellery Queen presenting the solution to the group, frequently upstaging and skewering the solution proposed by whichever rival sleuth was also in the episode.
Read more about this topic: Ellery Queen (TV series)
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