"The Benson Murder Case" (1926) by S.S. Van Dine

It is a mystery why S.S. van Dine, the creator of Philo Vance and one of the most successful writers in the detective genre, has fallen so completely from grace. He was enormously popular between 1926 and 1936, something which is also demonstrated by how quickly Hollywood adapted his novels for the screen with such famous actors as William Powell. How is it possible that the most influential mystery writer since Doyle became just a dusty name in the history of the detective genre?

The clue to the mystery may well be the character of Van Dine's detective, Philo Vance. Vance is a wealthy aesthete and connoisseur of the arts, a genuine intellectual. Is that perhaps why modern readers don't like him? We live in sadly lowbrow times, in which intellectuals and experts feel forced to hide their light under the bushel. In contrast, Vance, who is an authority on every subject imaginable, shares his vast knowledge at every opportunity, without any sense of shame, but also without arrogance. He is not afraid to show that he is an intellectual and I love his character for that. Vance doesn't mind being an outsider.

One of the funniest scenes in the present novel comes when a police sergeant asks Vance, who is looking at some cigarette stubs perhaps related to the murder, with ill disguised sarcasm: "Tobacco expert?" "Oh, dear no." Vance’s voice was dulcet. "My specialty is scarab-cartouches of the Ptolemaic dynasties."

"S.S. Van Dine" is actually the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939), who in real life was an important art and theater critic who moved in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York. Besides several books on art, and many articles of literary criticism, he also wrote about philosophy in an introductory study about Nietzsche. Between 1926 and his death, he wrote 11 detective novels and novellas, of which the first six are generally considered as the best. "The Benson Murder case" was his first novel, written when, while recovering from an illness, he was not allowed to do any exhausting work.

"The Benson Murder Case" shows how Philo Vance first became a detective. The police - including his friend Markham, the district attorney, who has asked for his help - still have to get used to his personality and to collaborating with him. Vance argues convincingly that alibis are useless and also demonstrates how dangerous it is to trust circumstantial evidence. Interestingly, the whole first chapter is devoted to a description of Vance's collection of world art.

As the first novel in the series, "The Benson Murder Case" is focused on the reasoning mind of Philo Vance, at work in solving the mysterious death of a stockbroker, who is found in his brownstone mansion with a bullet through his head. By the way, all the Philo Vance novels are set in central New York and give a nice picture of Manhattan in the late 1920s.

One of the greatest things in Van Dine's novels is his magnificent and sometimes ornate English prose style. This style is radically different from the plain (and often simplistic) vernacular used by other detective writers as Agatha Christie and may be a second reason for Van Dine's present neglect. But I love the rhythm of his sentences - detective novels usually don't get beyond the B-level, but Van Dine writes on a decided A-level. Another feature I admire is the fine characterization and interest in psychology.

The following aspects of the Philo Vance novels became "classical" and were often imitated by other detective writers:
- The fair play puzzle plot: the detective reaches the solution based on clues provided also to the reader - different from for example the Sherlock Holmes stories and most other, older detective fiction; in 1928, Van Dine formulated his famous "20 rules for writing a detective novel."
- The use of elaborate diagrams and maps, which are meant to give a realistic, "documentary" quality to the story.
- To give the name of the author "S.S. Van Dine" to the first-person narrator of the books (usually called "Van" by Philo Vance). This trick would later be be copied by Ellery Queen (and Japanese Shin Honkaku writers like Alice Arisugawa and Norizuki Rintaro).

Van Dine indeed exerted much influence on later writers as Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, and Agatha Christie. One element not copied by them and rare in detective fiction is Van Dine's copious use of footnotes, which often have a role in the novel as well (I am very fond of footnotes - one of my favorite novels is Nabokov's Pale Fire, which consists of a poem and footnotes in which a novel is hidden).

Van Dine's clever plots are still fascinating, as are his strong sense of place and time - plus the excellent style of writing. Although I object to too fanciful puzzle plots (as in my review of Murder in the Crooked House), Van Dine is very different: his puzzle is perfectly realistic (it is not a closed room mystery here - although he would write a very good one in The Kennel Murder Case) and he doesn't include a childish "challenge to the reader" as Ellery Queen did. He had exactly the right idea at the right time, but fell out of favor when the "hard-boiled" school of detective fiction became the dominant type in the U.S. in the 1930s. And as he died at a rather young age, he unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to adjust his writing to the new times.

I love S.S. Van Dine’s detective stories with their imaginative and elaborate problems. Above all, in these novels Van Dine proved himself to be a cultured cosmopolitan.

The Benson Murder Case at Faded Page (public domain in countries where the copyright term is life+50 years and where the copyright term is life+70 years (author died in 1939))