Having curbed the slaughter in his first two books, S.S. van Dine’s early promise that The Greene Murder Case (1928) is “the first complete and unedited history of the Greene holocaust” certainly sets you up for carnage galore. And the book offers this and more: a veritable cornucopia of almost everything the detective novel should have, as if, having learnt from his opening brace, Van Dine was keen to cram in just about every trick, revelation, and reversal1 he could possibly envisage. And yet, for all its trappings, the book does suffer from the same problem as its predecessors in that the killer is blindingly obvious, and no amount of telling me otherwise will change my mind.
Now, full disclosure, this was spoiled for me ahead of time in, I think, the significantly inferior The Noh Mask Murder (1949) by Akimitsu Takagi, but, even then, if you haven’t spotted the guilty party by, say, halfway then you have a wonderful life ahead of you being surprised by every single murder mystery ever written. As the Greene siblings are shot down in their prime, and as footprints appear in the snow to show that someone is entering and leaving the house around the time of each shooting, you really do have to wonder at Vance’s “plodding with leaden feet in a bog of ignorance” — isn’t this guy supposed to be amazing at this? It’s in keeping with his failing to spot the obvious killer last time around, but, c’mon, when reading a book featuring a Genius Amateur Detective we’re here more for the genius than then amateur.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the first two entries in this series, however, I found much else here to enjoy — just as anyone who hated those will inevitably despise this. It helps that I like Vance himself — he’s witty (“I see you have misread Isaiah.”), completely open about the frank bafflement he’s wading in, rather than playing it close to his chest like a know-it-all pillock, and anyone who refers to New York’s Metropolitan Museum as “that mausoleum of Europe’s rejected corpses” is okay by me — and the cloud of police officers surrounding him and D.A. John F.-X. Markham who do exemplary, Humdrum investigative work in an intelligent and rigorous way. As procedural novels, these are pretty good.
The writing is strong, with some superb atmosphere evinced throughout, especially in the page or so in chapter VII starting “There are depths beneath depths in what happened last night…” which gives a pretty good précis of why Vance is so worried about these shootings. This bleeds through into the characters, too, with the elderly, bedridden Mrs. Greene an especially vile creation who almost takes joy in the knowledge that her children are being slaughtered around her, and some unusual patterns at work behind the scenes from the very off — such as Dr. Von Blon’s solicitousness to Sibella Greene, the permanently wooden nature of butler Sproot, and even the ravening nature of the unseen public who, we know, are taking such interest in events off-page:
The story of the Greene murders spread over the entire country, and even the press of Europe found space for it. The tragedy, taken in connection with the social prominence of the family and the romantic history of its progenitors, appealed irresistibly to the morbidity and the snobbery of the public.
It’s very much Vance’s show, however, though his job would undeniably be made easier if anyone in the Greene ménage could investigate the sound of a gunshot in the next room in under three minutes. Whether holding forth magnificently on the fundamental differences between a painting and a photograph, or extolling his apparent disdain for the rapaciously facile nature of society’s need for justice (“…a pack of wolves watering at the mouth for victims on whom to vent its organized lust to kill and flay.”), it really feels like Van Dine has gotten under the skin of his detective this time around, making him less the mannerisms that frustrate so many and more of a flesh and blood man…complete with the flawed inability to see the answer that is staring him in the damn face.
It’s frustrating, then — and I think he’d written his twenty rules by this time, though I’m happy to be corrected — that once again the game is not played fairly, and that a development is held back only to be revealed once Vance is sittin’ and explainin’ at the end. Hell, it’s not even cleverly hidden in the many floorplans we’re given (I love these floorplans, the style of them is simply delightful) which would have been perfectly acceptable. And, lawks, Sergeant Heath, isn’t it premature, when the technology exists to confirm it, to start making declarations about bullets like you do at the end of chapter IX? For god’s sake, man, be a professional! It’s interesting to note, too, how little evidence there is to actually pin the killings on our killer come the end. About 15 years later, Freeman Wills Crofts would become fixated on circumstantial evidence, and Van Dine cooks up an excellent case of it here; just a shame not much is done with it.
A few historical touches interested me — is an ash tray not the same as an “ash-retriever”? — and of course I learned a new word (“Gyve”, if you’re interested), and so this proved to be as lovely an experience as I’ve now come to take for granted with Van Dine. It’s easy to see why he went out of style, because he doesn’t yet have the plotting chops that the greats who were about to start their careers would deploy, but this series remains light, fast, cleanly-written fun, and I am absolutely here for that sort of book. But please can he play fair next time? Just to try it once, like?
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See also:
Mike Grost @ GADetection Wiki: The revelation of the killer’s identity in the solution has some unusual aspects. There do not seem to be any actual clues, that directly identify or point to the murderer. In the previous Chapter 25, the killer is revealed at the end of a suspense passage. And Vance simply takes it for granted from this moment on, that the killer is now revealed. But: if there are no clues, there are lots of ingenious ideas about how this particular killer could have done the crimes. The book is a real puzzle plot mystery: how this killer pulled of [sic] the murders involves some ingenious, clever surprises, all of which are logically and fairly developed from evidence in the story. This situation: “a puzzle plot about a killer, without actual clues to the killer’s identity”, gives the book an unusual logical structure. One suspects that it is hardly unique in mystery literature in this regard, though.
Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertzig Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime (1989): An overblown and overfootnoted tale recording the exploits of [Philo Vance]. He solves a series of murders in an old New York mansion…by waiting until the criminal has disposed of most of the family.
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S.S. van Dine on The Invisible Event
1. The Benson Murder Case (1926)
2. The ‘Canary’ Murder Case (1927)
3. The Greene Murder Case (1928)
4. The Bishop Murder Case (1929)
- And footnotes! Ye gods, the endless footnotes… ↩︎
The Invisible Event 
So glad you are enjoying these – phew! Like Sayers, the villains are often easy to spot early but as you say, there is much to enjoy, especially in the first seven. And since you asked, he published his 20 rules in September 1928, 6 months after the publication of GREENE.
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Hey, every so often I get something right 🙂
Having really not got on with Queen, and with the understanding that SSVD was such a big influence on them, I was reluctant to try him, but there’s so much more atmosphere and character to these early books than in the likes of Roman Hat and French Powder.
It’s been a delightful journey and one I’m keen to continue…even if, yes, the accepted wisdom is that he declines in later volumes…but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
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The next one, BISHOP, remains my favourite.
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Good to know.
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For me Greene was definitely a step up from Benson and Canary in terms of atmosphere and pacing, but Van Dine’s reliance on one of the most common tropes regarding the murderer’s identity does make the shock factor there fall completely flat. He uses another really common trick for who the murderer is in Scarab that’s blindingly obvious by like 15% in.
The movie adaptation with William Powell is pretty decent, not a masterpiece or anything but worth a watch. Funnily enough in the movie, they mention the Canary case a lot, but in the adaptation of Canary they mention the Greene case.
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Yes, the pacing here is better, I would agree, with more incident meaning that things rarely stand still.
It would all be wrapped up so much more quickly, though, if on the, like, four occasions there is a gunshot in the next room someone would actually rush into the room to see what had happened, rather than sending four minutes wondering if they should go and find out. Seriously, people!!
Love that about the movies, too. Clearly The Doctor got involved at some point and the timeline went all wibbly-wobbly.
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Or perhaps Philo Vance is a Time Lord and has his own TARDIS!
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I feel like I often tend to agree with you on reviews but here we very much diverge. I usually can live with a sloppily plotted book as long as the writing is good, but I really couldn’t enjoy it- to quote my Storygraph review (because I don’t really have anything to add to it), “I read a lot about Philo Vance/Van Dine not being everyone’s cup of tea, and turns out this book was NOT mine. So dull, and Vance was like Peter Wimsey’s empty skinsuit. The writing was hard to stay interested in and the characters’ speech patterns seriously grated. The mystery was acceptable, but as I’ve seen mentioned in some parodies/references in other books, it’s basically just a waiting game to see who doesn’t get murdered, whoever survives must have done it… I don’t think this is an author I’ll be returning to.”
And now I’m trying to remember WHICH book I’m referring to there- maybe it was a Tommy and Tuppence? There’s some dialogue about how “if this crime were done by X author how would it be solved” and there was something about how “if this was a Van Dine novel then we’d just watch people get murdered and have the field narrowed down for us.”
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(I’m still noticing I gave it three stars, though, so I must not have HATED it… I can tend to score inflate but I assume from this that I just didn’t particularly enjoy it, rather than actually HATING it like I recently did The Alienist.)
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Oh, I couldn’t get through The Alienist when I tried reading it at uni. My impression all these years later is gratuitous violence, voluble prose, and a general ick factor.
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I had almost the same story- tried reading it in… high school, I think, and dropped it in the first 50 pages. Then I found it in the library a month or two back and was like “okay, people like this and I WILL read it to find out why,” a plan which absolutely failed. All of the impressions you have of it ring true to my experience and in fact, IMO, understate it.
I think part of it was that I’m trying to find mysteries I’ll enjoy that were written within my lifetime lol (though actually I just searched it and The Alienist doesn’t quite qualify!). Whenever I pick up contemporary mysteries that are “written in the golden age tradition” or “cozy mysteries” they all seem either twee or trying to be much cleverer than they are. Recently read Janice Hallett’s Alperton Angels after finding it in the library, and that definitely scratched the itch somewhat (at least, enough that I do plan to reserve The Appeal at the library), but otherwise it’s been diminishing returns. Maybe I have a higher tolerance for sloppiness in older books because they feel more “foreign” (at the very least in a “the past is a foreign country” kind of way)? Or just I have a feeling in my head that they’re SUPPOSED to be that way, and books written in a false-seeming simulacrum of the style but where people have cell phones feel inherently sillier? Idunno, who knows.
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Yeah, Alperton is, for my money the best Hallett has done since her debut; I wonder if there’s pressure to produce a book a year — a fabulously impressive rate, frankly, given the complexity of some of what she’s come up with — and if maybe a little more time between titles might result in better returns.
I, too, struggle to find much in modern mysteries that scratched gthe Golden Age itch, and most of what there is will be historical mysteriesfor obvious reasons. Anthony Horowitz gets about as close as anyone doing it in a modern milieu, and even he is suffering from having to over-produce, I feel.
There’s always The Red Death Murders, remember. The guy who wrote that is a bit of a GAD nut, I believe…
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A bit of a GAD nut, you say? Intriguing! Will have to figure out who that is 🙂
(That said, the synopsis looks interesting so thank you! I’m mildly allergic to historical fiction but as you note, in contemporary books in the GAD tradition this does seem to be a necessary evil, and at least you do it as a homage.)
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There is a T&T book — Partners in Crime (1929) — wherein they undertake a variety of cases in the idioms of different popular sleuths at the time, so maybe this happens there? I intend to reread it in the coming years, if you’re willing to wait for confirmation… 🙂
As to Greene — as I’m fond of saying, we read the same words but very different books. I can 100% see why these books would grate on people, and I’m aware that if I pick something up in the wrong mood my response to it could be very different. At the moment, though, SSVD is working for me, and I’m amazed — my response could so easily have been your own.
But then I’ve suffered enoughj with Ellery Queen as it is, so the universe owes me a favour or two…
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Yes, I was wondering if it was Partners in Crime! I really enjoy that one- on the one hand the stories are a bit cheesy (though I will admit, I do like cheese), on the other hand the fun Christie has with the parodies is infectious and now that I’ve read a bunch of stories from the series she’s parodying it makes it even more fun. Either way, the answer will probably pop into my head when I’m least expecting it- otherwise expect me to pop up in the comments in five years asking about it lol
But yeah, I figure there has to be SOMEONE who is the type to like Van Dine or they wouldn’t have been as popular back in the day as they obviously were (or as ripe for reprinting)! I wonder if I should check out the movies- I have to assume William Powell has the charisma to make this sort of thing more palatable for me…
And lolol fair enough about Ellery Queen- definitely someone who I tried to like more than I actually did. Cat of Many Tails would have been great had it been shortened by about 10% and had someone go through it to kill some darlings prose-wise. That said, I enjoy some of the earlier short stories (as well as, for the most part, The Siamese Twin Mystery- which Dorothy L Sayers panned in her review, and I’ve always wondered if it’s because Dannay and Lee have a character criticize Sayers’s murder method in one of her books…), and as a NYC resident I always get a kick out of stuff set here. Out of curiosity, have you read The Tragedy of Y (under the pen name Barnaby Ross)? I saw you read The Tragedy of X, which is soporifically dull- The Tragedy of Y is exactly the opposite, possibly too much going on. I’ve always wondered whether a particular Agatha Christie novel was based on it, though I’m sure the central idea wasn’t original to either of them. Like Cat of Many Tails, it’s sloppy and not totally satisfying but has a lot in there that can be bonkers in a fun way.
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I just tried to read Cat of Many Tails for my book club, and you’re being generous by saying that only 10% needed cutting. When it starts “there have been 5 murders, and here in tedious detail are the facts about them…” you know things are off to a bad start.
I tried reading The Tragedy of Y following assurances that it was better than X (what isn’t…?!), but, for reasons that elude me now — mainly, I imagine, that I just do not click with the Queen style — I only got a short way through. It’s fine, it’s not like I lack for GAD books outside of Queen, and I imagine everyone is sick of hearing me go on about how much I don’t get on with them, anyway.
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That’s perfectly fair- I didn’t ask from “oh if you just read THOSE books you’d like Queen,” but more because, before asking, I checked your Ellery Queen tag and found that the ones you reviewed were ones I found duller. The above are ones that I thought weren’t necessarily stellar books, but if they were bad it was at least in a more interesting way, if that makes sense? Which sometimes I can enjoy. (Though I genuinely liked Siamese Twin.) It does sound like I liked Cat of Many Tails a bit more than you did- never felt the urge to reread though, which to me is the sign of whether I ACTUALLY liked it or not.
(Though- sometimes it probably is better to let it be one and done even if you liked it, I’m realizing? Only because yesterday I reread The Franchise Affair after remembering I’d liked it and I found it absolutely insufferable this go round. Such a shame to have spoiled my memory of one of the vanishingly few Tey books I’d liked.)
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