“Alias S.S. Van Dine” by John Loughery

While the mystery detective story may have been invented by Edgar Allen Poe, detective stories generally languished in America until the 1920s, with a few notable exceptions like Mary Roberts Rinehart. The British dominated the genre, both in Britain and the United States. Then, in 1926, Scribner’s published The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine, a story featuring a rather snobby, almost effete detective named Philo Vance. 

Scribner’s was not known for publishing mystery or detective stories. Van Dine’s editor, Maxwell Perkins, also served at the time as the editor for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and for Thomas Wolfe and Margaret Kinnan Rawlings a few years later. In this case, the detective mystery sold well, so well that Scribner’s contracted with Van Dine to publish more. The second in the series, The Canary Murder Case, skyrocketed Philo Vance and S.S. Van Dine to national fame. 

Willard Huntington Wright

Part of the attraction was S.S. Van Dine’s identity. No one knew who it was, and Scribner’s wasn’t saying. And part of the attraction was that the fictional detective happened to capture the spirit of the Jazz Age better than just about any fiction being published. The public couldn’t get enough of Philo Vance. 

Not everyone was impressed; one of the very few negative reviews of The Benson Murder Case came from a relatively unknown writer named Dashiell Hammett. But Philo Vance and S.S. Van Dine put the American detective story on the map, paving the way for an entire generation of noir writers like Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Van Dine was Willard Huntington Wright, known for being more of an art critic, book reviewer, and editor than a mystery writer. He 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. He knew Max Perkins from his brief Harvard days, and he presented the editor with three story treatments, which became the first three Philo Vance stories.

But the man was complex, and he’d led a complicated life. John Loughery tells the story of that life in Alias S.S. Van Dine: The Man Who Created Philo Vance. Published in 1992, the biography deservedly won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for best biography. It is a well-researched, in-depth work, its accomplishment even more marked by the fact that Wright told so many different stories (some embroidered truths, others outright lies) about his childhood, upbringing, education, and work experience. Loughery sifted through all the information to produce a well-written, engaging biography.

He tells a complete story. Wright had a first-rate mind, but he tended to squander his talents. He didn’t like to follow direction, especially from the people who employed him. He treated his wife and daughter rather shamefully, and his serial philandering was the least of that treatment. He disdained popular literature, seeing himself as an arbiter of artistic ideas and understanding. In many cases, he was exactly that. He borrowed money from whomever would lend it to him. 

John Loughery today

Finally, in desperate financial straits, he presented Perkins with three ideas for detective stories. The editor, no fan of detective fiction, immediately recognized the commercial possibilities. From 1926 to about 1934, Wright rode a wave of popularity that combined publishing and film (most of the Philo Vance stories became movies). But his creativity waned; the later of the 12 novels were weaker than the earlier ones. By 1938, Perkins was saying they would publish no more; the stories simply weren’t selling like they had. But Scribner’s knew that Van Dine and Philo Vance had saved the publishing firm from disaster after the stock market crash of 1929.

Loughery has also published Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century, The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives and Gay Identities, John Sloan: Painter and Rebel, and other works. He’s been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and received the Edgar Award in Biography from the Mystery Writers of America for Alias S.S. Van Dine. He has also edited three anthologies. First Sightings: Contemporary Stories of American Youth (1993), Into the Widening World: International Coming-of-Age Stories (1994), and The Eloquent Essay: An Anthology of Classic and Creative Nonfiction (2000). Born in 1953, he lives in New York City.

Wright died in 1939 from heart disease; he was 51. He and his novels were quickly forgotten until a minor revival in the 1990s. But Philo Vance was an American original; he put American detective fiction on the world literary map and could rightly point to what he made possible – Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane, Perry Mason, and so many characters and stories in detective fiction. Alias S.S. Van Dine tells a fine story about a talented and very imperfect man.

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

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

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

Few outside his immediate circle of friends knew it, but S.S. Van Dine, author of the Philo Vance mysteries, was in declining health. He had suffered a mild heart attack; he was told by his doctor that the prognosis was not good and that his end would be sooner rather than later. He continued to work; the need for money was always present.

He wrote the next Philo Vance mystery as he had written the previous stories. He would create a core story of some 20,000 words, and then rewrite it, adding in all the detail, footnotes, and extended discussions of art, theater, sports, and anything else that served as one of the hallmarks of the detective. In other words, he first wrote the basic narrative, and then he came back to embellish it.

The 1939 book cover

He did finish the basic story of the last manuscript – some 20,000 words. The typist stacked the pages neatly on his desk. But he never finished the novel, and he never saw the typed version. He died on April 11, 1939, the manuscript unfinished.

As a consequence, The Winter Murder Case is the shortest of the Philo Vance mysteries. It’s missing some of the familiar characters, like Sergeant Ernest Heath and his band of detectives. District Attorney John F.X. Markham has but a fleeting role at the beginning of the story. And there are no footnotes and other Philo Vance trademarks. Even the narrator “Van” is barely mentioned.

Vance has been asked to come to the Carrington Rexon estate in the Berkshires. It’s the height of winter and snow is everywhere. There’s a house party involving the usual assortment of jaded friends and hangers-on, and the Rexon patriarch is fearful that his collection of emeralds is at risk. The daughter of the estate manager is an accomplished ice skater, and ice-skating looms large in the story. An estate guard is found dead, seemingly of an accidental fall but actually of a blow to the head. The patriarch is himself attacked and knocked out, and some of the prize emeralds are stolen.

Movie poster via Wikipedia

It’s an odd story for a Philo Vance mystery. Vance has never been called in before a crime happens, but in this case he is. The murders (there are two) appear almost accidental, with one of the “master criminal mind” directing them. It’s a Philo Vance story that “might have been,” had Van Dine lived long enough to finish the rewriting and editing.

Working with executives at Paramount Studios, Van Dine wrote the story specifically to provide a role for skating star Sonja Henie (the studio suggested the title be The Sonja Henie Murder Case, following the success of The Gracie Allen Murder Case book and movie, but Van Dine resisted).  

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.” 

S.S. Van Dine

Scribner’s dutifully published The Winter Murder Case as written in 1939, but its sales were disappointing. Paramount did eventually film and release the movie, but dropping the Vance character, changed the title, and rewrote the story so much that’s unrecognizable from the book. The 1941 movie was called Sun Valley Serenade, starring Sonja Henie, Milton Berle, John Payne, and Glenn Miller. The movie is best remembered for its Glenn Miller tunes, including “Moonlight Serenade,” “In the Mood,” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”

The novel, more properly called a novella, was usually included in various Van Dine anthologies. It was reprinted in 1993 by mystery expert and publisher Otto Penzler, as part of his Classic American Mystery Library series. To help make it a fuller book, Penzler included Van Dine’s once-famous article “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.”

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

"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. 

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

The purported narrator of the Philo Vance mystery novels is the pseudonymous author S.S. Van Dine, always referred to as “Van” in the stories. The reader always knows what all the other characters, including Vance, look like in great physical and psychology detail, but never does the author provide a physical description of Van. He accompanies Vance on investigations, and he writes reports of the various crimes.

We do know a little about the narrator. He and Vance attended college together. Van also worked at his father’s law firm, Van Dine, Davis, & Van Dine. He made a decision to leave the family firm and work for Vance full-time as an attorney, general secretary, and accompanying investigator. Eventually, it’s mentioned that he lives in a small apartment in Vance’s brownstone. Later critics have read all kinds of implications into Van and his apartment, but the one thing it provided for was a legitimate reason what Van always seems in attendance when District Attorney John F.X. Markham and Police sergeant Ernest Heath arrive with a crime report.

His role in the novels is not unlike Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, except that Arthur Conan Doyle allowed Watson’s character to more fully develop. Van remains much more of a mystery.

Van is generally faceless and colorless, and the perfect scribe, but there are occasional exceptions, as in The Casino Murder Case, first published in 1934. He finds himself, with Vance, confronting an almost diabolical killer, and he occasionally notes the chilling terror he feels at times, including when they’re both staring their own deaths in the face.

The story centers on the Llewellyn family. Lynn and Amelia Llewellyn are brother and sister; Lynn is married to the former stage star Virginia Llewellyn, and they all live with their mother (in a large New York City brownstone, a standard setting in most of the Philo Vance stories). Also living with them is a maternal uncle, Richard Kincaid, who owns a casino, and Morgan Bloodgood, who works for Kincaid as a casino croupier. 

The story begins with an anonymous letter, saying evil events will begin to happen at the casino on a Saturday night. Vance goes, grasping that it’s the letter writer who will set the vents in motion. The events begin when Lynn Lewellyn is apparently poisoned and collapses at the roulette table. At the same time, at home, his wife Virginia apparent commits suicide by taking poison. Then sister Amelia collapses, having drunk water intended for her mother. Someone is obviously out to destroy the family, and all the clues point to Kincaid, the uncle. 

S.S. Van Dine

But Vance soon realizes that the clues have been designed to point to the uncle. And what is unfolding is the ruthless implementation of a ruthless plan, a plan that the killer adapts as mistakes are made and events warrant a change. The novel at times reads like a movie script, and the story was filmed and released as a movie of the same name in 1935, starring Paul Lukas as Philo Vance.

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” so friends wouldn’t know.

The Casino Murder Case certainly is in the running for the best of the 12 mysteries written by Van Dine. A fully developed Philo Vance is the story’s center and star, and he’s even up for a bit of entrapment when he learns he can’t prove the murderer’s identity. The thrilling disclosure scene starts looking deadly for Markham, Vance, and Van, and it’s helpful to remember that there are four more mysteries after this one.

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.

Top photograph: The movie poster for The Casino Murder Case (1935), staring Paul Lukas at Philo Vance (and made into something of a romance, which the book isn't).