“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 Canary Murder Case" by S.S. Van Dine

Before he was S.S. Van Dine the mystery writer, Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939)

was known as an art critic, art historian, book reviewer, and literary editor. He published books like The Future of Painting, What Nietzsche Taught, the literary novel A Man of Promise, and Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning. 

Once he began writing mysteries, however, he used the Van Dine pseudonym so his friends wouldn’t know he was doing something so low brow. The Philo Vance mysteries were wildly successful, and one of the contributing factors was how much the eye of the art critic was involved.

The mysteries contain numerous references to artists, exhibitions, and paintings. Philo Vance is a detective almost by accident; when he’s not assisting District Attorney John F.-X. Markham with a murder investigation, he’s attending art auctions and exhibitions (always on the lookout for Cezanne drawings and watercolors) and visiting galleries in New York City. 

Where the influence of art can really be seen is in how Van Dine describes characters. Here is one character, a chief suspect, in The Canary Murder Case, the second Philo Vance mystery:

“He was a large man, and he walked with the forced elasticity of gait which epitomizes the silent struggle of incipiently corpulent middle age to deny the onrush of the years and cling to the semblance of youth. He carried a slender wanghee cane; and his checkered suit, brocaded waistcoat, pearl-gray gaiters, and gaily beribboned Homburg hat gave him an almost foppish appearance But these various indications of sportiveness were at once forgotten when one inspected his features. His small eyes were bright and crafty; his nose was bibative, and appeared disproportionately small above his thick, sensual lips and prognathous jaw. There was an oiliness and shrewdness in the man’s manner which were at once repulsive and arresting.”

This is a description worthy of an art critic describing a painting. All of the characters are described this way, including Philo Vance himself, with one exception – the narrator, usually referred to as “Van” for S.S. Van Dine.

A poster for the movie, Starring William Powell

In The Canary Murder Case, the “canary” in question is a stage performer, Margaret Odell, who’s found strangled when the maid arrives for work one morning. Her apartment has also been ransacked. The police and District Attorney Markham focus their suspicions and investigation on five men, four of whom had a strong motive – blackmail and unrequited passion. The attractive Miss Odell was not above blackmailing her various boyfriends. 

The murder is something of a locked room mystery; there was apparently no way for the murderer to have entered or left the apartment without being seen. Most of the story is devoted to Vance convincing Markham that he and the police are paying too much attention to the evidence and not enough to the psychology of the crime. But even Vance is baffled for a time, until he begins to understand that there were three people in the apartment when the victim was killed. 

The novel was published in 1927, and it retains its appeal as an engaging mystery story. The Philo Vance stories were published in the Golden Age of Mystery (roughly 1920-1945). They come close but don’t precisely qualify as noirstories like those of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but they do open a window on the underside of New York City in the 1920s and 1930s.

Related:

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

Painting: Willard Huntington Wright, oil on canvas by his brother, Stanton MacDonald-Wright Wright (1913-1914).

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

It’s 1926. It’s the Jazz Age. Calvin Coolidge is in the White House. Prohibition is in full flood, or drought; so is the crime associated with it. Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears for a time. A hurricane devastates Miami. Greta Garbo makes her American film debut. Rudolph Valentino dies. A.A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh. The St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Yankees to win their first World Series title. 

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. 

Willard Huntington Wright, aka S.S. Van Dine

But in 1923, recovering officially from a nervous breakdown but actually from a cocaine addiction, Wright began to binge on mystery and detective novels. He talked with an old Harvard classmate, the legendary Max Perkins of Scribner’s, about a book centering on a private detective who was snobbish, erudite, and educated in art and music. Perkins was intrigued, and in 1926, Wright published the first Philo Vance detective story, The Benson Murder Case. 

Too embarrassed to use his own name, he adopted the pen name of S.S. Van Dine. He even made S.S. Van Dine a character in the story – “Van,” an attorney and Philo Vance’s sidekick and chronicler. Vance is close friends with John F.-X. Markham, district attorney for New York County. 

Alvin Benson is a stockbroker and financial advisor. Early one morning, his housekeeper discovers his body in the living room of his apartment on West 48^th Street in New York City. He’s seated in a chair, legs still crossed, a book open in front of him – and a bullet hole through his head. A woman’s handbag and gloves are found on the fireplace mantle. Both the police and the district attorney’s office investigate, and Markham invites his friend Philo Vance along to learn how investigations are done. 

Vance soon realizes that Markham and the police tend to follow circumstantial evidence, ignoring what he calls the “psychology of the crime.” In his breezy, irreverent, and borderline condescending manger, Vance slowly educates his friend on how to consider and investigate the crime.

This first Philo Vance mystery is important for its introduction to how the man thinks and analyzes. Considerable and detailed attention is paid to his methods, his thought processes, and his personality, which can often be as maddening to the reader as it is to Markham and the police. The novel is also filled with descriptions of Jazz Age New York – the clubs, the concerts, the entertainments, and how people of the servant class and upper middle class lived. Almost everyone seems to smoke, and smoke rather elegantly. 

Markham considers suspect after suspect, and then he watches Vance demolish one evidentiary case after another, gradually brining the focus to the one person the killer must be. In the process, we realize that The Benson Murder Casemay be as much a sociology and psychology text as it is a murder mystery. The author has an incredibly detailed eye for people, settings, and the New York City of the period.

Wright would publish 12 Philo Vance mysteries between 1926 and his death in 1939. The books were highly successful and made him a lot of money. As successful as his mysteries were, he camouflaged his name behind the pseudonym; he was too embarrassed to acknowledge his work openly.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be looking at the Philo Vance mysteries, the author, and what place the stories have in the Golden Age of the Mystery Novel.

Top photograph: New York City in the 1920s.