Drury Lane is a

fictional detective Fictional detectives are characters in detective fiction. These individuals have long been a staple of detective mystery crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories. Much of early detective fiction was written during the ...

created by

Ellery Queen Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...

in the 1930s under the byline of

Barnaby Ross Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...

. He is a retired Shakespearian actor who lives in a lavish castle on the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. His backstory involves leaving the theatre because he lost his

sense of hearing A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system rec ...

, and the novels occasionally mention his lip-reading. He appeared in four mystery novels: ''The Tragedy of X'', ''The Tragedy of Y'', ''The Tragedy of Z'', and ''Drury Lane's Last Case''. These books were later reissued under the Ellery Queen byline.Book Review of the Series
/ref> His name is taken from the name of a London street (see Drury Lane) that eventually became the site of the celebrated

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Dr ...

References

Fictional amateur detectives Fictional deaf characters Fictional actors {{novel-char-stub