Customer Reviews

The Bishop Murder Case: A Philo Vance Mystery (A Philo Vance Mystery)

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The Bishop Murder case is the fourth novel by S. S. Van Dine (pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright)featuring his detective Philo Vance. Philo Vance was much in the mode of British fictional detectives of the period such as Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey who had made his appearance in 1926 in Whose Body?. The Philo Vance mysteries were wildly popular in the United States.

Vance is a wealthy dilettante and aesthete who was portrayed as a dandy and bon vivant. The books were narrated by a fictional Van Dine who took the part of the Watson figure. His admiration for Vance was based on the fact that Vance excelled at any lofty, upper class thing he attempted. In short, Vance is a bit of an insufferable bore with a heavy smoking habit.

However, there is an entertaining, campy quality about the stories and The Bishop Murder case is generally acknowledged as one of the better of the Vance stories. It is constructed around a number of Mother Goose rhymes where, for instance, a character named Christopher Robbin is found pierced by an arrow as in "Who Killed Cock Robin".

Frankly, if you don't already have a soft spot for Vance or don't want to read one of the seminal works of the Mystery Genre then you might well find this book a bit heavy going. However, if you are prepared to suspend *a lot!* of disbelief and just going along for the campy ride then you might find yourself enjoying The Bishop Murder Case.