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stories take place in a New York populated with sophisticates and eccentrics. If  'Ellery Queen is the American detective story' in this century New York must have been the setting par excellence for his adventures. Large buildings with buzzing streets where crime lurks behind each corner and yet it keeps something sofisticating up his sleeve. Some trips to Hollywood aside in the 1940's he invented a small New England manufacturing town,Wrightsville and located several works here.

anhattan in particular was strongly featured in Cat of Many Tails
and served much in the same way as a gameboard would serve.Ellery lives in West 87th Street and apparently moves around New York without the aid of his Duesenberg which serves him well when visiting outside New York.
Queen often chose a site a block or two from a reallife prototype for his fictional sites. E.g. The Longacre Theater gives away it's use by age, handsome terra cotta facade, and two stage doors on either side of the main marquee. It's make it one of the best substitues for the new (1920s) Roman Theater in Ellery Queen's first mystery, which is supposed to be two blocks south, at West 47th Street. (Mystery Reader's Walking Guide:New York - Alzina Stone Dale)