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S.S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright)

pseud. S. S. Van Dine,1888-1939, American art critic and mystery story writer, b. Charlottesville, Va. He attended college in California and later studied art in Paris and Munich. Wright was literary critic for the Los Angeles Times and several periodicals and was editor (1912-14) of the Smart Set. Before 1923 he wrote nine books, chiefly art criticism, including Modern Painting (1915), The Creative Will (1916), and The Future of Painting (1923). After suffering a breakdown of health, he began writing highly successful detective stories under his pseudonym, modeling the erudite detective, Philo Vance, after himself. The best of these works include The Benson Murder Case (1926), The Canary Murder Case (1927), and The Bishop Murder Case (1929).

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2000 Columbia University Press.

Books by S.S. Van Dine:

The Benson Murder Case

The Bishop Murder Case

The Canary Murder Case

Had it not been for Philo Vance's participation in its solution, the strangeness, the daring, the seemingly impenetrability of the brutal murder of Broadway playgirl "Canary" Margaret Odell would have marked it as one of the great unsolved mysteries of this country.

 

The Greene Murder Case

Had it not been for Philo Vance's methods of criminal deduction, the fiendish ingenuity which attended the double murders of Ada and Julia Greene, the warped psychological motives that inspired it, and the strange hidden sources of its technic would have marked it as one of the outstanding unsolved mysteries of modern times.

 

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