The Greene Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine, Otto Penzler (Introduction)

Overview

Death stalks the halls of a New York City mansion in this celebrated Philo Vance mystery.

A dark cloud has descended upon the elegant mansion of Jazz Age New York’s illustrious Greene family as, one by one, the heirs to the fortune die off under mysterious circumstances. It begins when an intruder shoots two daughters, leaving one dead. Soon after, another heir is shot dead in similar circumstances. Do the footprints in the snow belong to the killer, or were they left as a red herring? And will the authorities on the case find the answer before more family members die off?

Philo Vance, monocled New York bon vivant and part-time supersleuth, is on the case, but it will take all of his deductive powers and cultural knowledge to reveal the culprit. Along the way, he—and the reader—will consult detailed floor plans, fairly-clued testimonies, and the obscure yet illuminating texts discovered in the Greene home’s secret criminology library. All of the evidence in the case is present in the text, but only the most astute armchair sleuths will be able to solve the crime before Vance delivers his brilliant solution.

S. S. Van Dine’s Vance novels were a crime fiction sensation. Major bestsellers in their time, the books went on to shape generations of mystery writers working in their shadow. The Greene Murder Case is the third chronicle in the saga of the iconic detective and remains to this day one of the most celebrated entries in the series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613165683
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Series:	An American Mystery Classic
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	377,111
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	10 Years

About the Author

S. S. Van Dine is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 – April 11, 1939) when he wrote detective novels. Wright was an important figure in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York, and under the pseudonym (which he originally used to conceal his identity) he created the immensely popular Philo Vance character, one of the most influential detectives in American mystery fiction and, in turn, in film and radio as well.

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Editorial Reviews

"The perfect sleuth for the Jazz Age."

CrimeReads

2024-03-23
The year 1928 finds dilettante Philo Vance rousing himself from his fascination with antiquities, music, and obscure languages to ask who’s decimating the family left behind by wealthy Tobias Greene’s imperious will.

When Tobias died 12 years ago, he divided his estate equally among his wife and five children with one notable exception: Anyone except his adopted youngest daughter, Ada, would be disinherited if they left the family manse before 1932. The news that his eldest daughter, Julia, has been shot to death, presumably by her brother Chester’s missing revolver, is the first indication that the Greene home has turned into a death trap. Since the paraplegic Mrs. Greene and siblings Chester, Rex, and Sibella all act as snobbishly entitled in their different ways as Vance, who joins D.A. John F.-X. Markham in an attempt to catch the killer before the house is left vacant, it’s no big deal to watch them get picked off to the accompaniment of Vance’s oracular announcements that there’s something very, very wrong about the Greene home and its tenants. None of the characters’ motives or behavior is any more believable than the logistics of the individual crimes, but in some ways that’s exactly the escapist point. Casual fans will identify the killer early on, but only serious devotees of real-life criminologist Hans Gross will realize that the murderer has borrowed impossible murder methods from Gross’ encyclopedia of real-life criminal cases, which the denouement quotes at amusing length, as sedulously as if following recipes from The Joy of Killing.

For better or worse, this third of Van Dine’s deliriously dated 12 detective novels is Philo Vance’s ultimate case.

Kirkus Reviews

"With his highbrow manner and his parade of encyclopedic learning, Philo Vance is not only a detective; he is a god out of the machine."

New York Times