The Benson Murder Case Audiobook By S. S. Van Dine cover art

The Benson Murder Case

The Philo Vance Series, Book 1

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The Benson Murder Case

By: S. S. Van Dine
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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About this listen

“Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization.”

The Benson Murder Case introduces S. S. Van Dine’s brilliant and iconic detective to the world in one of the most popular detective novels of the twentieth century, inspired by the real-life murder of a famous bridge player.

Alvin Benson is found slumped over an easy chair in a room locked from the inside with a bullet in his head, and Wall Street and the high society of Manhattan are set ablaze with the news of the playboy stockbroker’s death. But when NYPD’s top detectives and ballistics experts can’t solve the mystery, it falls to Philo Vance, an art connoisseur and amateur sleuth, to find the killer. Vance’s intellectual and artistic background helps him uncover a series of odd clues, starting with a missing toupee and false teeth, and soon he is delving deep into the case. In a Holmesian display of deduction, Vance also uses a recreation of the crime scene to determine several details about the killer—even down to their height. But he will have to uncover more than these small but vital details in order to find the real killer, deconstruct their alibi, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they in fact killed Alvin Benson.

Originally published in 1926.

Public Domain (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing
Detective Mystery Fiction
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Insufferable

Very much a product of it's time. It's 1926. The latest New Thing, Psychology, holds the key to everything. The normal means by which crimes are solved are labelled Medieval by Philo Vance, gazing down from his secure, wealthy, cultured eminence, collecting rare prints and porcelains as he scorns the common man with his common mind. This is the sort of faith in science that was so artfully challenged by better mystery writers like Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. This is the sort of blind faith in science that led to the gulags and the gas chambers just a few years after this book was published.

It may turn out differently. Vance may get his theories handed to him on a skewer. But I don't think so. And I don't have the patience to find out. He's just too insufferable. Bought this on sale so I can't return it. What a pity.

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