THE BENSON MURDER CASE

The most polarizing detective from the golden age, or maybe ever, returns in this reprint of his debut appearance.

As both the first chapter and the introduction by Ragnar Jónasson make clear, Philo Vance is a languid Oxford-educated dilettante with an interest in art, philosophy, and contempt. So it’s only natural that Manhattan District Attorney John F.-X. Markham would indulge his friend’s desire to traipse along to the apartment of financial broker and man about town Alvin H. Benson, who’s been shot through the head as he sat reading in an easy chair (no rationale is given for the DA’s own need to be on the scene). Vance, accompanied by Van Dine, his legal adviser, agent, and virtually mute amanuensis, solves the crime, as it turns out, within five minutes. Instead of enlightening Markham or the Homicide Bureau’s Sgt. Ernest Heath, though, he stands idly by for nearly a week, bestirring himself only to scoff at Markham’s plans to arrest first Muriel St. Clair, who shared Benson’s last dinner, then her fiance, Capt. Philip Leacock, then Benson’s old friend Leander Pfyfe. When the action lags, Vance weighs in with opinions about classical music or the inferiority of Japanese to Chinese art or apothegms like “the only crimes that are ever solved are those planned by stupid people.” Vance pooh-poohs so many of the suspects that the identification of the last man standing will come as a surprise only to Markham. This first of his dozen cases was an instant bestseller in 1926, presumably because your great-grandparents were able to find real ingenuity in Vance’s scorn of material evidence in favor of high school psychology.

An acknowledged historical landmark whose insufferable hero retains all his power to annoy.