This early work by S. S. Van Dine was originally published in 1928 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'The Greene Murder Case' is one of Van Dine's novels of crime and mystery. S. S. Van Dine was born Willard Huntington Wright in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1888. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College and Harvard University, but failed to graduate, leaving to cultivate contacts he had made in the literary world. At the age of twenty-one, Wright began his professional writing career as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times. In 1926, Wright published his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright went on to write eleven more mysteries. The first few books about his upper-class amateur sleuth, Philo Vance, were so popular that Wright became wealthy for the first time in his life. His later books declined in popularity as the reading public's tastes in mystery fiction changed, but during the late twenties and early thirties his work was very successful.

Philo Vance, the snobbish art collector who happens to be the longtime friend of District Attorney John Markham, once more finds himself drawn into a criminal investigation. Margaret Odell, the beautiful and talented theatrical singer nicknamed “The Canary,” has been strangled during the night, and from the very beginning there are signs that nothing in the case is quite what it appears to be. Accompanied once more by Sergeant Heath, the unlikely trio struggle to make sense of the evidence. S. S. Van Dine found even more success with this novel, his sophomore outing as a mystery writer. Spending months on the bestseller lists, it was also the first of his books to be made into a movie, with William Powell starring as Philo Vance. At a time when a majority of successful mystery writers were English, Van Dine’s novels evoked an atmosphere that was distinctly American, with Vance’s cultured perspective colliding with Markham’s pragmatic sensibilities and Heath’s no-nonsense street smarts. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

At the height if his popularity, S.S. Vane Dine pens a locked-room mystery with a lethal dose of sex and sin where infamous actress, "The Canary," is murdered in her cage after a passionate night with her lover. Margaret Odell, the famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl known as "The Canary", is found murdered in her ransacked apartment, her jewelry stolen. It appears to be a robbery gone wrong, but the police can find no physical evidence to pinpoint a culprit. No one witnessed anyone entering or leaving, and the only unwatched entrance to the apartment building was bolted from the inside. Who could have killed the Canary in her locked cage? Margaret was seeing a number of men, ranging from high society gentleman to ruthless gangsters, and more than one man visited her apartment on the night she died.

This early work by S. S. Van Dine was originally published in 1933 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'The Dragon Murder Case' is one of Van Dine's novels of crime and mystery. S. S. Van Dine was born Willard Huntington Wright in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1888. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College and Harvard University, but failed to graduate, leaving to cultivate contacts he had made in the literary world. At the age of twenty-one, Wright began his professional writing career as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times. In 1926, Wright published his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright went on to write eleven more mysteries. The first few books about his upper-class amateur sleuth, Philo Vance, were so popular that Wright became wealthy for the first time in his life. His later books declined in popularity as the reading public's tastes in mystery fiction changed, but during the late twenties and early thirties his work was very successful.

The beloved 1930s comedienne becomes the famed detective’s sidekick in the series that “transport[s] the reader back to a long-gone era of society” (Mystery Scene). During a glamorous night on the town, Gracie Allen finds a dead body—and a cigarette case nearby that belongs to her date for the evening. Detective Philo Vance is on the scene, but questioning Gracie is causing more confusion than enlightenment. To prevent her from creating more chaos, Vance decides to keep her close by as his unofficial sleuthing partner. Now, with the help of the zany star—or in spite of it—he intends to find the real killer . . . “Mr. Van Dine’s amateur detective is the most gentlemanly, and probably the most scholarly snooper in literature.” —Chicago Daily Tribune “The best of the American mystery men.” —The Globe