This, a 1927 novel by S.S. Van Dine (1888-1939), was a tip straight out of The Mysterious Honjin Murders...

When we were stuck on the only Japanese train in railway history that's ever been late, and I didn't feel like tackling any challenging reading, this was my pick. Excellent choice, as it's very entertaining.

Like Honjin (and the reason it's mentioned there), this is a locked-room murder mystery. Margaret Odell, nicknamed "the Canary", is a singer/dancer, a "famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl". She's found dead in her flat. Yet the only door to the apartment was locked, the layout of the building precludes the possibility that anyone can enter without being seen, and she was heard to speak AFTER the egress of her final visitor. Apparently.

Of course, there's an explanation. And, of course, it's ingenious (if unlikely). But the locked room definitely isn't the be-all and end-all of the plot. As Michael Grost explains: "Van Dine's are novels in which the unfolding plot in all its details is more interesting than the solution... [His] locked rooms are simpler, and more mechanical in their solution, than [John Dickson] Carr's or [G.K.] Chesterton's. Van Dine usually treats them as just one more ingredient he has thrown into the stew of his plots." And in this one, certainly, the interesting part is the troupe of suitors that has clustered around Odell, and their changing relations with her and with each other.


California (where Van Dine grew up), in 2001

The locked-room business isn't the only connection between Canary and Honjin. But before we go into that, here's a quick run-down on the characters.

Of course, we have a crack detective. He's Philo Vance (a pseudonym, we're told), and he's "a young social aristocrat", with an array of gifts and talents that extends well beyond his forte for detection. He's American, but he was educated in Europe, and he still has a slight English accent, which comes complete with all the affectations of the day. Examples:

"Most distressin'!"
"Dashed confusin', ain't it?"
"It was rather obvious, don't y'know."

(By the way, as this article points out, "g-dropping" is today identified with working-class speech, but in the early years of the 20th century, it was fashionable among the British upper classes, who regularly went in for huntin', shootin', and fishin'.)

Vance's social status, proclivities, and manner of speech make him terribly reminiscent of Lord Peter Wimsey (and there could, indeed, have been some influence), but I have to say he's a LOT less likeable. Whereas Wimsey is affable, and even compassionate, Vance -- on account, we're told, of his sensitive and solitary nature -- comes across as aloof and cynical. In his early thirties, he's "impressively good-looking", but his features have a stern, sardonic cast that creates a barrier between him and the rest of the world. He regards life as though he is "a dispassionate and impersonal spectator at a play".

We have a narrator (named Van Dine...); he's a lawyer, but he works as Vance's personal legal representative and adviser. He is very unassuming, playing no real role of his own, but simply telling the story of how the case unfolds, and making sure everything Vance says and does is put up in lights.

And, of course, we have the police, primarily John F.-X. Markham (New York district attorney, and under public pressure for success following some lurid cases related to the city's underworld), and Sergeant Heath, his right-hand man.

Despite the chalk-and-cheese differences between the detectives in Honjin and Canary, they are linked by their un-Holmesian, psychological methods. Kindaichi specifically says that he doesn't intend to run round with a magnifying glass and a measuring tape; rather, he intends to use his head. Later, he explains: "The police look for footprints and fingerprints. I categorize and combine their results until I arrive at a conclusion. That is my method as a detective." Vance goes further: "I warn you that no clever criminal is going to leave his own footprints for your tape measure and calipers." It is the psychological elements in the Canary case that draw him, and he is convinced that "a final answer could never be obtained along the usual police lines". Later, he even attests: "When material facts and psychological facts conflict, the material facts are wrong."

There are also other elements that recall Honjin, however:

-- Vance and Markham argue about how to interpret a set of footprints in the snow...
-- Both suspect a scenario that they see as too perfect, reminiscent of a novel. Kindaichi's suspicions are raised when he realizes there's a crime-fiction enthusiast in the house. And here's Vance: "Regard this particular crime: look at it closely. What do you find? You will perceive that its mise en scene has been staged, and its drama enacted, down to every minute detail -- like a Zola novel... And nothing flawless, my dear fellow, is natural or genuine."
-- There are wardrobes... In Honjin, a man is thought to be hiding in the wardrobe (part of the staged scenario). In Canary, a man really is hiding in the wardrobe (and witnesses the murder).
-- And there's the taut string thing... In Honjin the weapon is borne away on a koto string. In Canary, a length of purple twine is used to unbolt a door.



All in all, this was a good read. Granted, I didn't like Vance much. And the poor old Canary (who's constantly referred to as "the Odell girl") is very much a caricature: "Hers was the type of face, voluptuous and with a hint of mystery, which rules man's emotions and, by subjugating his mind, drives him to desperate deeds." Oh yawn, the old femme fatale trope...

But as Grost points out, Van Dine is progressive in other ways: "The detective actually congratulates the Canary's black maid [she's described as 'mulatto'] on her intelligence, a startling comment with political implications at the time, when so many black people were depicted in the racist literature of the day as of low mentality." And there have been suggestions that Vance was gay... If so, the author offers an "integrationist" perspective, "showing both Vance and society being better off for Vance's inclusion".

The Canary Murder Case (the second in the Philo Vance series) was a runaway success in its day. This was the book that "launched the Philo Vance phenomenon, selling 60,000 copies in its first month". By the time the next Vance came out, in 1928, Van Dine "was one of the best-selling authors in the United States".

Contemporary reviewers were highly complimentary. Here's Arthur Stanwood Pier, writing in 1927: "Mr. Van Dine’s new detective story has not only an ingenious plot but also background and atmosphere and literary distinction. He transfigures drab material and gives it color, sketches character vividly and with deftness, interprets subtleties of thought, and writes with gayety and humor... The circumstances which finally establish the correctness of [Vance's] inference form an extraordinarily effective climax. There is an air of actuality, of truth to fact, in all the scenes; the various experts who figure in the investigation have the manner and vocabulary of experts; the story is well buttressed in every detail, firmly grounded on an accurate knowledge of the essential matters." True, Stanwood Pier admits that the "ordinary" reader might "wish that the author hadn’t felt it necessary to swallow the dictionary before sitting down to write". (Personally, I regard it as a plus if I have to -- and I did have to -- look up English words.)

And here's none other than T.S. Eliot (or at least that's the reviewer to whom the editors of The Monthly Criterion attribute this piece), also writing in the year of publication: "Several months ago we praised very highly the same author’s first book, The Benson Murder Case. The Canary Murder Case is equally good... The poker game scene near the end of the book is really brilliant." (For my part, I hated the poker scene, but that's probably because I don't play poker. I could, on the other hand, appreciate why it was there.)



Isn't it interesting, then, that hardly anyone has heard of S.S. Van Dine or Philo Vance today?

Carol Westron offers a good rundown of the author's life. His real name was Willard Huntington Wright. Born in Virginia, and brought up in California, he failed to graduate from Harvard, married at the age of 19, and divorced soon afterwards. He worked as a critic (a pretty acerbic one, by all accounts), editor, and literary writer, and for much of his life he looked down on detective fiction and other commercial writing...

Things started to go south during the war-time period: "In 1917, rumours that he was spying for Germany caused him to be blackballed from journalism for over two years"; friends he had valued, such as mentor H.L. Mencken and author Theodore Dreiser, turned away from him. It sounds as though his people skills had never been terrific, but now he fell into a full-on, drug-fuelled mental and physical crisis. By 1923, his health had broken down catastrophically. But while he was confined to bed, recovering, he turned to reading and writing detective fiction. In 1926, he published the first Philo Vance story -- under the name of S.S. Van Dine, to make sure it was nicely separated from what he would have seen as his "real" writing.

In 1930, Wright/Van Dine remarried. But his life started to feel like a bit of a trap: "He had gained fame and wealth but he had lost his reputation as a literary writer and was condemned to write stories that he could not respect. However he and his wife were too accustomed to their extravagant lifestyle for him to walk away. Therefore Van Dine continued to write crime novels, although the quality and popularity of these declined... In 1939 Van Dine died of a heart condition made worse by heavy drinking. He had achieved fame and wealth but, at the same time, it seems he was a disappointed man, deprived of the literary fame he longed for."

Westron concludes: "When his creation is considered beside his own life, it seems possible that Philo Vance was the person that Van Dine thought he should have been, if an unkind fate had not deprived him of immense inherited wealth and a loyal and adoring 'Boswell' to record his brilliance and success."

Van Dine might have loved Vance, but not everyone has shared his enthusiasm. This reviewer sees him as "perhaps the most divisive of all the great fictional detectives", about whom it's hard to be neutral. And Van Dine’s writing style is inseparable from his hero, "so that if you’re a Philophile it increases your enjoyment even further while if you’re a Philophobe it will merely increase your irritation". Both points are probably true of Hercule Poirot, too, though -- and he has lived on, whereas Vance has passed into obscurity.

Michael Mallory contends: "In all of mystery, no major writer has fallen from grace as completely as S.S. Van Dine." He continues: "In the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Van Dine was one of the most popular and successful writers around, in or out of the mystery genre. The public demand for his aristocratic amateur detective seemed insatiable, both in book form and on movie screens. Then, in a plummet almost as dramatic as the rise, it was over -- a scant quarter-century later... How could one of the mightiest fictional sleuths of the 20th century fall so far, so fast?"

He speculates that the "harsh realities of the Great Depression" might have made the rich-and-privileged Vance seem less congenial; additionally, there were plenty of other talented detective writers on the rise. We shouldn't forget, though, he adds, that Philo Vance had a important influence on future detectives, including Ellery Queen.

I've read in several places that the first six in the series are the best, and it would definitely be interesting to read the first, where Vance is introduced. So -- I'm pretty sure Vance will be appearing on the Cushion again...