S S Van Dine

The Philo Vance Murder Cases: 4-The Dragon Murder Case & the Casino Murder Case S S Van Dine

Dragons and games of chance and Philo Vance's game of death

In the fourth Leonaur volume of the Philo Vance Murder Cases we find the urbane New Yorker tackling a particularly puzzling crime. In 'The Dragon Murder Case'-the seventh tale-a guest visiting a country house dives into the swimming pool and instead of climbing out again disappears completely. Suspicions are quickly raised concerning the intervention of a vengeful dragon, but Philo Vance is not so sure. He is, as devotees know, an expert in disappearances, criminals, dragons and how to solve a whodunit that would baffle anyone else. In the 'The Casino Murder Case', Vance receives an anonymous letter alerting him to imminent danger to a member of his own family. If he wants information which will assist him in averting the threat he must visit a certain Casino to find it. Predictably, once there the body count starts to rise . Vance once more has a case on his hands and a killer to uncover-and this time the preferred weapon is the poison bottle. This is another satisfying helping of detective fiction by one of its masters-with more to come as Leonaur publishes the complete collection of these classic stories.