"The White Priory Murders" by Carter Dickson

It’s the early 1930s. An English actress has become an American movie superstar. She is wowing the public with her return to England, intent on appearing in a West End play of the type she was booted from years before. She attracts admirers, crowds, and reporters wherever she goes (not unlike a Depression-era Taylor Swift). She’s also attracting danger, as in the arrival of a poisoned box of chocolates. 

The actress and some of her immediate circle are invited to spend a long week at White Priory, a 17^th century estate with supposed connections to Charles II and his mistress. She insists on having a large, enclosed pavilion as her room. Separate from the house, it’s next to a small currently frozen lake. 

 

When the actress is found bludgeoned to death in the pavilion’s bedroom, the most obvious fact is that the murder couldn’t have happened. There is only one set of footprints in the snow leading to the pavilion, and none returning. The snow on the frozen lake is undisturbed. So how could she have been killed?

 

Carter Dickson, aka John Dickson Carr

The White Priory Murders by Carter Dickson (aka John Dickson Carr) was first published in 1934; the mystery novel has now been republished by the British Library Crime Classics. It’s billed as a Christmas mystery, although the only connection to the season is that the story happens near Christmas. It’s the second novel in the Sir Henri Merivale detective series. As British author and crime story expert Martin Edwards notes in the introduction, Merivale became a major player in the stories almost by accident; the first in the series was supposed to feature another detective but Sir Henri kept butting his nose in, and the author gave the character his head and let him go.

 

Carr (1906-1977) write under his own name and four pseudonyms – Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn. One of the Golden Age mystery writers, he’s best known for his Gideon Fell and Sir Henri Merivale mysteries. He’s often grouped among British authors, and while he lived in England for many years, he was actually an American (in the story, Merivale talks like an American and his nephew is an American). He was also known for an esteemed biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Even after suffering a stroke and some paralysis in 1963, he continued to write stories and a column for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He published some 73 mystery novels, numerous collection of short stories, several stage and radio plays, and three works of non-fiction.

 

If you like locked-room mysteries, The Murders at White Priory, with its slight variation on that theme, might be your cup of tea (if you’re British) or coffee (if you’re American). 

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

Paradise for the broken – poem by Franco Amati at Garbage Notes.

 

The 1954 London Yearbook – A London Inheritance.

 

I Keep Pretending – poem by Paul Wittenberger at Paul’s Substack.

 

Old Trees in Greenwich Park – Spitalfields Life.

 

Keep or Toss? My Personal Criteria for Culling a Library – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review. 

"The Tragedy at Freyne" by Anthony Gilbert

It’s a two-fer – an English country manor weekend mystery and a locked room mystery. But it’s anything but conventional. 

Alan Ravenswood, who serves as the story’s narrator, is spending a long weekend at Freyne Abbey, the home of his cousin and her husband, Catherine and Simon Chandos. Catherine is as beautiful as Simon is ugly. But Simon is known as a sterling character and a true friend. Also visiting are Simon’s niece Rosemary, her current love interest and a journalist who wants to be her love interest, and the man long rumored to be in love with Catherine and in serious debt to her husband. In the background, and sometimes the foreground, hovers Simon’s secretary, a woman who adds her own barbed comments into what is already an explosive scene.

 

It's a perfect recipe for murder. And that’s what happens. Simon is found dead in his study, stabbed in the hand with an overdose of morphine. The room is locked from the inside; a key is required to open or lock the door, and the only key is in the dead man’s pocket. It’s made to look like suicide, but the killer made a mistake or two, and murder will out.

 

Catherine’s paramour is arrested, although Catherine claims he spent the night with her and stands steadfastly by her man. It’s looking increasingly grim for the man charged with murder.

 

Lucy Beatrice Malleson, aka Anthony Gilbert

But this is a story where appearances are not only deceiving; the deceptions themselves are also deceiving. The mystery must be unraveled layer by layer.

 

The Tragedy at Freyne by British mystery writer Anthony Gilbert (1899-1973) was first published in 1927, and it’s a double-genre story that turns into a suspense thriller, as the protagonists race against time. It was the first mystery published by Lucy Beatrice Malleson under the Anthony Gilbert pen name, and it was be followed by more than 60 other Gilbert novels.

 

Malleson was enormously prolific. She first published poetry, then turned to mysteries. In addition to the Anthony Gilbert stories, she published under the pen names of J, Kilmeny Keith, and Anne Meredith. She also wrote a wealth of short stories and radio plays. Surprisingly, given the quality of her novels like The Tragedy at Freyne, she was never a bestselling writer during her lifetime. In the past few years, interest in her work has revived with the publication of several of her novels by British Library Crime Classics.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Who Cheered You On Throughout Your Writing Journey? – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

God Made These Texas Summers – Roy Peterson at Society of Classical Poets.

N.C. Wyeth painting purchased at a thrift shop for $4 could sell for $250,000 at auction – Carlie Porterfield at The Art Newspaper.

 

Les Miserables. The American Civil War, and Violent Revolution – David Dixon at Emerging Civil War.

 

The Age of Shakespeare – Stephen Klugewicz at The Imaginative Conservative.

"The Man in Lower 10" by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Lawrence Blakely is a young attorney in Washington, D.C., partners with his best friend from school and college and fellow lawyer. He is taking the train from Washington to Pittsburg, to bring the evidence for a forged documents case to a courtroom. The documents will convict the accused. 

As is the custom in the early 1900s, he reserves a space in the Pullman sleeper car, numbered Lower 10. But returning from a few drinks in the saloon car, Blakeley discovers someone else asleep in his assigned bed. The conductor switches the sleeping arrangements, and all appears well.

 

Except the man in the Lower 10 bunk is found dead, stabbed to death. Blakely’s own clothes and suitcase, with the all-important fraud documents, are missing, and he’s left with someone else’s clothes. Just as his fellow travelers begin to accuse him of murder, there’s a wreck – another train has plowed into them. Blakely – now with a broken arm from the crash – is eventually awakened by a beautiful fellow traveler, and the two make their way from the train as their car is engulfed in flames. 

 

But there is still a murder victim, missing documents, and the mystery of what happened to Blakely’s clothes.

 

The Man in Lower 10 was one of the first mysteries published by American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. It inaugurated a string of popular mystery stories that continued well into the 1930s. As in many of her stories, Rinehart combined mystery and romance in The Man in Lower 10, to the point where the novel is almost more romance than mystery. And Rinehart nicely complicates the romance, with having both law partners in love with the same woman. 

 

Rinehart (1876-1958) was a prolific writer of plays, mysteries, short story collections, non-fiction, and essays. A stock market crash in 1903 forced her to find income, and she began to write short stories. In 1907, her novel The Circular Staircase made her famous across the United States. The Bat first appeared as a play in 1920 and published as a novel in 1926. Several movie versions were filmed, included the 1959 movie starring Vincent Price and Agnes Morehead.

 

Related:

 

The Case of Jennie Brice by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

"The Mazaroff Murder" by J.S. Fletcher

Mervyn Hoyt is a former army officer in World War I. He’s drifting a bit, not sure what he’ll do next. The war has been over for more than three years when a friend encourages him to answer an advertisement. Salim Mazeroff, a wealthy man from South Africa, is in Britain and seeking a traveling companion around the country. Hundreds of people apply, but Hoyt is the one selected. 

Mazaroff is obviously and almost naively wealthy. He peels money from a wad he carries in his pocket. He’s known to carry loose diamonds, the business where he made his fortune. In fact, one of the reasons he’s in Britain is to sell a pair of blue diamonds, and he’s carrying one of them around with him. 

 

They reach northern England, not far from the Scottish border. While staying a few days at a country inn, Mazaroff tells his traveling companion than his real name is Merchion, that he grew up in the area, and that, 20 years before, he abruptly left his wife after only a month of marriage because neither of them really loved the other. And there’s a daughter. 

 

J.S. Fletcher

A might later, Mazaroff goes for a walk, and he doesn’t return. Search parties are sent out, and his body is found. All of his valuables – cash, loose diamonds, watch – are missing, presumably stolen. It takes a day or two to learn, but Mazaroff was also carrying his last completed will. It’s also missing.

 

The Mazaroff Murder by J.S. Fletcher was first published in 1922. It’s a fast-paced, something-is-always-happening kind of story, with each chapter surprising the reader with something new and unexpected. The second half of the book moves the narrative to London, with even more surprises in store. And for good measure, Fletcher throws in a budding romance between Hoyt and the daughter Mazaroff never knew he had.

 

Fletcher (1863-1935) was a British journalist who began writing detective novels in 1914. Over the next 20 years, he wrote more than 100 of them, and is considered today one of the great writers of the Golden Age of the mystery and detective novel (roughly 1920s to the 1940s). He also wrote more than 130 other works, including poetry and non-fiction, but he is best remembered for his mysteries.

 

Related: 

 

My review of J.S. Fletcher’s The Middle of Things.

 

My review of The Middle Temple Murder by J.S. Fletcher.

"The Templeton Case" by Victor Whitechurch

Reginald Templeton is known as something of a world traveler and possibly even a millionaire. He arrives at Marsh Quay, a fishing village in South Downs on England’s Cheanel coast. The village is only two miles from the town of Frattenbury, where Templeton’s cousin is the canon at the cathedral. He does indeed visit his cousin, but he also has other appointments, “business” left undefined. Early one morning, Templeton is found stabbed to death on his yacht. 

Detective Sergeant Colson of the local police is assigned to investigate. At the inquest, the canon discloses he picked up something on the floor under his cousin’s body – a cigar band, which he promptly stuck in his pocket and forgot. And a walking stick in found in the small dinghy used by the murderer to gain access to the yacht.

 

Victor Whitechurch

Early on, it appears there are three good suspects. Colson goes through the gradual elimination of each, until he reaches a blind alley. None of his three prime suspects could have committed the murder.

 

The Templeton Case by Victor Whitechurch was first published in 1924 and has now been republished in e-book format. It’s a mystery that seems to have no solution, until things take a rather unexpected turn. It also contains anti-Semitic references which are jarring to read today, but they likely would have passed unnoticed in 1924.

 

Whitechurch was a Church of England clergyman as well as a crime novelist. He wrote seven mystery novels and one collection of mystery stories, most featuring a clergyman as a main character. He was well known enough to become one of the founding members of the Detection Club, along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and G.K. Chesterton. His best-known literary character is the amateur railway detective Thorpe Hazelle.

"The Return of Mr. Campion: Stories" by Margery Allingham

I’ve been a fan of Margery Allingham (1904-1966) and her fictional private detective Albert Campion since I first started reading her novels in the 1970s. Allingham was one of the queens of the Golden Age of Mystery (1920s-1940s), and her books remain in print more than half a century after her death. 

Allingham began publishing in 1923 when she was only 19. But it was The Crime at Black Dudley in 1929 that established her as one of the best mystery writers of the era. That story introduced Campion, a private detective who has assumed his name because he’s actually a title in one of Britain’s leading aristocratic families. His “man” or butler, Magersfontein Lugg, a convicted felon who has seen the inside of prison, also contributed to Allingham’s success. 

Campion lives in a flat on Bottle Street in Piccadilly in London, right above a police station. Bottle Street is a fictitious cul-de-sac, but real institutions close by include the Royal Academy of Arts, Fortnum & Mason, and the Ritz Hotel. Piccadilly Circus is close by on the east, as is Green Park on the west.

The recently published The Return of Mr. Campion is a collection of 13 stories by Allingham, not all of which feature the detective. In fact, most of them don’t include her star character. The stories are all good ones, and the non-Campion stories help display the broader extent of Allingham’s talent. 

In “The Case is Altered,” Campion travels to the estate of friends for a weekend house party, and a letter suggesting a late-night tryst at the fountain in the garden ends up in the wrong hands. “The Dog Day” involves the detective accidentally overhearing the name of a dog, which turns out to be something of a spoiler.

In “The Wind Glass,” a Japanese gentleman studying in Britain falls in love with a young English woman in his class. He formally asks her father for her hand in marriage, and the English family reacts as if insulted. The man is humiliated and sends a gift of wind chimes that will almost be the family’s undoing. “The Beauty King” is about a hairdresser who develops a secret process that can transform women, but he doesn’t realize his greatest triumph. In a similar story, “The Kernel of Truth,” a man is willed a punch recipe that creates a phenomenal sense of well-being, if it’s mixed exactly right. 

Campion is back in “The Black Tent,” and during a party he sees a beautiful teenaged girls use a knife to jimmy open a library drawer – which will lead to the apprehension of a trans-Atlantic blackmailer. In “The Curious Affair in Nut Row,” Campion is merely a listener to a story told by a policeman. “What to Do with an Aging Detective” is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek story, involving both an elderly Campion and an even-more-elderly Magersfontein Lugg. “Tall Story” finds Campion again listening to a policeman’s story about a crime that appeared to be impossible to commit and prove.

Margery Allingham

“Sweet and Low” is something of a love story, involving horses, country estates, and the hero almost ending up with the wrong fiancée. In “Once in a Lifetime,” a well-known actress is on a train, arranging her large number of bags to discourage others from sharing her compartment. One man, however, barges in, and she hopes he doesn’t recognize her as his first young love. Or does she? “Happy Christmas” is about a young family, unexpectedly left to themselves for the holiday, who learn what the spirit of the season actually means. “The Wisdom of Esdras” is a ghost story, set in a large cottage in the country, with a guest who becomes almost desperate to help a ghostly girl. 

The collection includes two non-fiction articles by Allingham. “My Friend Mr. Campion” describes how the author came to invent the detective, explaining how he appeared in the first novel that featured him. And the introduction, “Mystery Writer in the Box,” is a delightful essay on the art of writing mystery stories. 

The Return of Mr. Campion is a welcome addition to the published novels and stories of one of the big names of the Golden Age. It also works by itself and could serve as an introduction to Allingham’s work.

Related:

Campion at Christmas by Margery Allingham.

Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham.

The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham.

Two by Allingham: an almost Gothic and a Campion.

More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham.

The Mind Readers by Margery Allingham.
The China Governess by Margery Allingham.

The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham.

The Allingham Casebook by Margery Allingham.

Margery Allingham’s The Case of the Late Pig.

Margery Allingham’s Flowers for the Judge.

Margery Allingham’s Death of a Ghost.

Margery Allingham’s Black Plumes.

Margery Allingham’s Look to the Lady.

Margery Allingham’s Police at the Funeral.

The Essential Margery Allingham Collection.

Margery Allingham Box Set #2.

Margery Allingham’s The Fashion in Shrouds.

The Margery Allingham Society.

Top photograph: British actor Peter Davison as Albert Campion in the 1980s television series.

"The Gracie Allen Murder Case" by S.S. Van Dine

People are tempted to do a lot of things when they need money. 

Mystery writer S.S. Van Dine needed money, and he cut a deal with Paramount Studios to write a parody of his own Philo Vance novels. As John Loughery writes in his Edgar Award-winning biography, Alias S.S. Van Dine: The Man Who Created Philo Vance, Van Dine not only delivered a manuscript suitable for satire, he also agreed to allow Paramount to make any changes they wanted without his approval. 

The manuscript in question was The Gracie Allen Murder Case, using the enormously popular Gracie Allen, the zany half of the George Burns and Gracie Allen comedy duo. To the author’s credit credit, Van Dine’s novel is substantively better than the movie of the same name. The book was published in 1938; the movie was released in 1939. Paramount made big changes, including dropping George Burns altogether and giving Gracie Allen a different boyfriend. 

That said, the character of Gracie Allen is by far the best in the story. Van Dine seemingly channeled her crazy way of thinking and speaking, and he did it expertly.

In the novel, a criminal known as Benny the Buzzard has escaped from prison, and Sergeant Ernest Heath of the New York City Police warns district attorney John Markham that the man has vowed vengeance on the DA. Markham blows off the threat, but Philo Vance does not. He travels to a rural section of New York City (they still had then in the 1930s), where he thinks he might find the criminal. He doesn’t, but he meets a young perfume factory worker named Gracie Allen and charms her with an untrue story about being out in the sticks to kill a criminal (she takes him seriously).

He meets her again that evening at a restaurant known for criminal associations, and the place where the police expect Benny the Buzzard to show up. But it’s a dishwasher from the kitchen who’s found murdered in the boss’s office – and the dishwasher happens to be Gracie’s brother. For a time, suspicion focuses on her boyfriend, George Burns, who also works at the perfume factory. Gracie, kept unaware the deceased is her brother, decides to help Philo Vance and become a detective assistant. She finds useless, unrelated clues that actually help Vance solve the mystery. 

S.S. Van Dine

Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939) was an art critic who had been literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, an editor of The Smart Set, a novelist, an art historian, and art exhibition organizer. A friend of H.L. Mencken and an admirer of the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Wright hated romance and detective fiction with a passion, until he needed money. In 1926, he published the first Philo Vance story, The Benson Murder Case, with Scribners. And he used the pen name “S.S. Van Dine.” 

The Gracie Allen Murder Case is interesting as an artifact of the period of the big movie studios and the Golden Age of Mystery converging at a point in time. But it’s still the weakest of the Philo Vance novels, even with the laugh-out-loud scenes involving Gracie Allen.

Related:

The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Canary Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Kennel Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Dragon Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Casino Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine. 

The Garden Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Kidnap Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

"The Kidnap Murder Case" by S.S. Van Dine

Of the 12 Philo Vance mysteries by S.S. Van Dine, only two weren’t made into movies. Several actors played the detective in the various films, including William Powell (also known for The Thin Man movies with Myrna Loy), Basil Rathbone, Paul Lukas, Warren William, Edmund Lowe, and Grant Richards. Powell played in four, the most of any in the group. 

The novels were suited for adaptation to the big screen. They often read like expanded movie scripts. Settings were almost all interiors, making them easy to recreate in studio stages. Of the 10 adaptations, only one – “The Scarab Murder Case” – hasn’t survived. In the early 1930s, Warner Brothers hired Van Dine to write a series of scenarios for 12, two-reel films, each about 20 minutes. Released in 1931 and 1932, they featured Dr. Crabtree and Inspector Carr as investigating detectives. The films have all survived, but the scenarios written by Van Dine have not.

The Kidnap Murder Case is one of the two Philo Vance stories not filmed (the other is The Winter Murder Case, Van Dine’s last work). First published in 1936, it is built upon the kidnapping cases that were, unfortunately, common and sensationalized in the 1920s and 1930s (the Lindbergh baby kidnapping being the most famous). 

Kaspar Keating is something of a playboy and gambler, and he’s apparently kidnapped from his home in Manhattan. But the kidnapping features some odd clues, as Philo Vance soon ferrets out. His pajamas and toothbrush are also missing. A ladder is found leaning against the second story window of Keating’s bedroom, but little weight has been placed on it, judging by the ground indentations. Keating’s wife Madelaine heard someone moving around the room and called out, but there had been no answer. And Keating was desperate to raise money for a gambling debt.

The household is filled with odd characters as well. Madelaine’s mother and brother live on the third floor, and neither liked the missing Keating. The butler seems shifty; with a name like “Weem,” he’s something straight out of Dickens. Keating’s brother Kenyon lives not far away, and he controls the family purse strings. He’s also in love with his brother’s wife. A plan to catch the kidnappers is foiled with Madelaine’s mother attempts to retrieve the money in Central Park, and then Madelaine herself is kidnapped.

S.S. Van Dine in his later years

The story ranges far afield from the Keating brownstone, and that may be one reason why it didn’t lend itself as readily to a film adaptation. But it has all the classic Philo Vance attributes – the New York City setting, a psychological approach to finding the criminal, Vance confounding and surpassing the investigating policemen, and the detective’s rather famous nonchalance and projection of boredom. 

Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939) was an art critic who had been literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, an editor of The Smart Set, a novelist, an art historian, and art exhibition organizer. A friend of H.L. Mencken and an admirer of the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Wright hated romance and detective fiction with a passion, until he needed money. In 1926, he published the first Philo Vance story, The Benson Murder Case, with Scribners. And he used the pen name “S.S. Van Dine.” 

The Kidnap Murder Case is one of the few in which the villain becomes apparent sooner than Van Dine likely intended. But it is a fascinating story nonetheless, including scenes of gun violence and one in which Philo Vance and the narrator Van come very close to being killed.

Related:

The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Canary Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Kennel Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Dragon Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Casino Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine. 

The Garden Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

Top photograph: S.S. Van Dine and William Powell on the set of one of the early Philo Vance films.

"The Garden Murder Case" by S.S. Van Dine

Almost every Philo Vance mystery by S.S. Van Dine includes an in-depth dive into a subject. It may be Egyptian artifacts and hieroglyphics, as in The Scarab Murder Case. It may be Chinese ceramics and pottery. In The Casino Murder Case, the subject was the production of heavy water. Sometimes it’s the scientific study of criminology. The Kennel Murder Case includes an extensive discussion of dog breeding and registration.

The stories also contain a multitude of cursory references to art and music; Vance tosses off references to art, artists, art exhibitions, and symphony and operatic music like many people discuss sports and politics. These references explain why Van Dine included so many footnotes in the stories, footnotes that are real and not invented references. The effect is to depict Philo Vance as a man of broad and deep education, as comfortable puzzling over his translations of Sumerian tablets as he with speculating about the electricity used to produce heavy water. 

In The Garden Murder Case, first published in 1935, the in-depth subject is horseracing. Floyd Garden lives with his parents and a cousin in the penthouse of a New York City apartment high-rise. The penthouse includes a rooftop garden, and the book’s title is taken from both the family name and the penthouse feature. Garden has organized a horseracing betting party. After receiving an anonymous phone call warning of an impending tragedy, Vance gets himself invited to the party.

The event involves a fairly elaborate set-up of radios, telephones, and betting forms. Vance soon realizes that the anonymous phone caller was correct – so many tensions underlie the party and the house that it’s almost inevitable that something will happen. And it does. The cousin bets everything he has on a horse in one particular race, and then he retires to the rooftop garden to await the results. The bets are placed, the race begins and quickly ends, and then all at the party hear a gunshot. The cousin is dead, shot in the temple in what looks like a suicide. Vance quickly determines that it’s murder. The victim was killed even before he knew the outcome of the race (and his horse did indeed lose). 

Over a two-day period, Vance sifts through what’s known and what isn’t known. And then a second murder occurs.

S.S. Van Dine

Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939) was an art critic who had been literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, an editor of The Smart Set, a novelist, an art historian, and art exhibition organizer. A friend of H.L. Mencken and an admirer of the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Wright hated romance and detective fiction with a passion, until he needed money. In 1926, he published the first Philo Vance story, The Benson Murder Case, with Scribners. And he used the pen name “S.S. Van Dine.” 

The Garden Murder Case is S.S. Van Dine and Philo Vance at the top of their game. Van Dine liked to play with stories in which justice is only possible when it falls outside the law, and this is certainly one of those. Interestingly enough, this story is the only Philo Vance mystery in which there's a hint of a love interest for the amateur detective. But it is only that, a hint.

Related:

The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Canary Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Kennel Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Dragon Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Casino Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.