S.S Van Dine
 

S.S Van Dine wrote only 13 novels. About half are really good. Of these, three or four are excellent. A must read is "The Bishop Murder Case". What I like about the book is its sense of "Evil Intellegence". I don't want to give it away. Any one else out htere read it?

I've tried reading Van Dine, but I've given up after a couple of tries. I can't really say what it is about his books that I don't like but they just don't hold my attention.

The Bishop Murder Case was the first Van Dine book I have read. I was a boy then and the book made on me a great impression. I was interested in chess then. (I wasn't really good player but liked to read about history of the game). Later I have read more his books - my favourites were The 'Canary' Murder Case and The Greene Murder Case. I haven't read his books for years, maybe I'll return to them

Jan-"The Dragon murder Case" and "Casino Murder Case " are also good. You are right about "The Greene Murder Case" , great story and what a collection of wierdos! DFL

Here is a classic sample of Philo Vance. (You can judge by this whether you will like the books or not.)

Vance himself had taken the case with unwonted seriousness. His Menander translations had been definitely put aside.[His current project was 'the uniform translation of the principal fragments of Menander found in the Egyptian papyri'.] He became moody and waspish -- a sure sign that his mind was busy with an absorbing problem. After dinner each night he went into his library and read for hours -- not the classic and aesthetic volumes on which he generally spent his time, but such books as Bernard Hart's The Psychology of Insanity, Freud's Der Witz und Seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Coriat's Abnormal Psychology and Repressed Emotions, Lippo's Komik und Humor, Daniel A. Huebsch's The Murder Complex, Janet's Les Obsessions et la Psychasthènie, Donath's Über Arithmomanie, Riklin's Wish Fulfillment and Fairy Tales, Leppman's Die forensische Bedeutung der Zwangsvorstellungen, Kelo Fischer's Über den Witz, Erich Wullfen's Kriminalpsychologie, Hollenden's The Insanity of Genius, and Groos's Die Spiele des Menschen. [He had these books in his personal library?!]

He spent hours going over the police reports....He had a long discussion one night with *** on de Sitter's conception of physical space as a Lobatchewskian pseudosphere, his object being, I surmised, to acquaint himself with ***'s mentality. He read ***'s book, World Lines in Multidimensional Continua, and spent nearly an entire day studying Janowski's and Tarrasch's analyses of the Pardee gambit [a chess-playing suspect's claim to fame].

On Sunday -- eight days after the murder [by bow and arrow] of [Cock] Robin [by 'Sparrow'] -- he said to me, "Eheu, Van! This problem is unbelievably subtle. No ordin'ry investigation will ever probe it. It lies in a strange territ'ry of the brain; and its superficial childishness is its most terrible and bafflin' aspect. Nor is the perpetrator going to be content with a single coup....The perverted imagination that concocted this beastly crime is insatiable...."

The Bishop Murder Case (© 1928), by S.S. Van Dine

Exactly.

Grobius,

Yes. Of course.

"Philo Vance
Needs a kick in the pance" (Ogden Nash)
But I remember that I have really enjoyed reading this book. And I think you also had some pleasure in reading it.
In posting in GAD group you have written:

"These books are very 'quaint' when you read them now, but are really very enjoyable. See http://www.mysterylist.com/vance.htm".

So if any Golden Age Mysteries lover hasn't read "The Bishop Murder Case" please check the above site (great site, by the way) and give the book a try. And share his opinion with us.
Jan Bilski

Oh, I like Philo Vance, Ellery Queen, and those early American
'Golden Age' detectives. I like Charlie Chan movies too (not the
books). If you haven't yet, you should read Pronzini's "Gun in
Cheek" and "Son of Gun in Cheek", which are excellent histories
of what he calls alternative literature. I wouldn't have the
patience or loving commitment he has to wading through all those
Keeler's and Black Mask magazines, but his preface is entitled
"Without Malice, a Fore Thought" and sums it all up perfectly.
George Orwell came up with an essay describing 'good bad poets'
where he described the appeal of Kipling, for example, and he
was totally right -- the best expression of the worst taste
that everybody shares, whether they admit it or not. No mystery
novel will ever come up to literary-critics' standards (at least
mainstream), but they are of course totally wrong.

S.S. Van Dine et. al
 

I've read all but one of the Vance novels, with differing degrees of enjoyment, over the years. One thing's for sure: I couldn't read them one after the other without a break. The Bishop Murder Case I'd agree is the best, albeit pretty silly. It's been many years since I read it, but I vaguely recall that by the denouement you only have two suspects to choose from, all of the others having been methodically bumped off.

The film version of The Gracie Allen Murder Case was better than the book. Gracie referred to Vance--played, I think, by Warren William--as "Fido."

In the early 1980s, having recently departed the high-end audio business (which I subsequently returned to and once again recently departed from), I wrote a satire of the business in the form of a Van Dine parody: "The Audiophile Murder Case" by D.B. Von Din, featuring Milo Rance. It was serialized over five issues of Stereophile magazine.

Agreed, Grobius: Pronzini's Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek are superb, and a great deal of fun to read. In places you'll laugh out loud. (Florence M. Pettee alone is worth the price of admission.)

But I have to disagree with "No mystery novel will ever come up to literary-critics' standards." Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald have all come to be regarded highly by some "eminent" lit-critics. You can argue that they all belong to the hardboiled school rather than the classical, but they wrote mysteries nevertheless--and some great ones at that. (Macdonald's plotting is as good as anyone's and better than most.)

On the other hand, I agree with "they are of course totally wrong." There are a lot of bad mystery novels, both classical and hardboiled, but there are probably a great many more bad "mainstream" novels and would-be "literary gems" out there.

My feelings about "The Dragon Murder Case"
 

I finished today „The Dragon Murder Case“by S.S. van Dine and I want to share my feelings about the book. After about the first third of the book I had an inkling how the murder was done but I had no idea till the end who the murderer might have been. A reason for my failure might be that I thought the motive for the first and even more for the second murder very weak and shallow.
*** Spoilers*** Just because the murderer hated the first victim and the murderer’s desire that his sister marries not the victim but someone else seems to me very unconvincing. We don’t get much of an explanation why the murderer hated his first victim so much. The reason for the second murder is equally weak. Again it’s hate and the dislike of the second victims financial dealings. I have to admit I read a german translation of the book but I don’t think the book has been cut by the translator.
***Spoilers end***
But not only the weak plot is a major negative but Philo Vance´ increasingly irritating mannerisms. I thought so too when I read “The Kennel Murder Case” and “The Scarab Murder Case” some months ago but this time I thought Vance positively offensive. Normally I need a day for a book of this length but this time it took me three days. It seems I can stand Vance only in small doses, which means a chapter at a time

"Philo Vance--the Forgotten Sleuth"
 

Re: S.S Van Dine
 

I think I have described the style of these novels as Poor Man's Poe. Same elaborate latinate diction, same hyperbole (the most amazing, gruesome, terrible crime in the history of New York, etc.). But if you can slip your tongue into your cheek, they are -- with their maps and primitive locked-room techniques and law-and-order style date-and-time headings -- great camp.

Re: "Philo Vance--the Forgotten Sleuth"
 

"In spite of the pomposity of the diction and style, these books, at least the earlier ones, are very well written, with some amusing dialogue (especially between Vance and D.A. Markham): 'You simply couldn't imagine Beethoven being called Shorty, or Bismarck being referred to as Snookums'. (The Canary Murder Case)" This is from the CWA article (August 2004).

"In spite of the pomposity of the diction and style, these books, at least the earlier ones, are very well written, with some amusing dialogue (especially between Vance and D.A. Markham): "You simply couldn't imagine Beethoven being called Shorty, or Bismarck being referred to as Snookums" (P.V.: Canary Murder Case)." This is from my web site (April 2001). Hmmmm.

Re: "Philo Vance--the Forgotten Sleuth"
 

No doubt an extraordinary coincidence of thought and expression. ;)

Re: S.S Van Dine
 

Extraordin'ry, please.

I'm not sure whether to be flattered or pissed off that I was sort of plagiarized. It's somewhat disconcerting to find a citation you made repeated word-for-word, without comment, somewhere else. Reminds me of the sort of thing that went on in my high-school days (which still goes on, except you can now do it on the Internet) when canned essays were for sale for book reports and the like. I neither bought nor wrote such things, but didn't consider it a major crime and considered it a very rational thing to do for those that did it. My teachers were rarely fooled, even if they said nothing, so my grades were based on merit not brilliance or crookedness. Kids are such amateur crooks that it is shameful that they are allowed to get away with blatant dishonesty when everybody knows that they are cheating, dealing, or whatever, even when detection of their 'crimes' is so easy.