The "Canary" Murder Case

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The acclaimed Library of Congress Crime Classics series presents, a fiendishly clever locked-room mystery first published in 1926, with an all-new introduction and commentary by series editor, Leslie S. Klinger. Nightclub singer Margaret Odell, the famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl known as "The Canary", is found murdered in her ransacked apartment, her jewelry stolen. It appears at first to be a robbery gone wrong, but the police can find no physical evidence to pinpoint a culprit. No one witnessed anyone entering or leaving, and the only unwatched entrance to the apartment building was bolted from the inside. Who could have killed the Canary in her locked cage The victim was seeing a number of men, ranging from a high society gentleman to ruthless gangsters, and more than one man visited her apartment on the night she died. When the D.A. is stumped, he turns to his friend Philo Vance, an erudite and snobbish aristocrat, who applies his brilliant observations of human nature during a poker game with the suspects to determine who in fact knocked the Canary from her perch-permanently.

Author Bio

S. S. VAN DINE is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright when he wrote detective fiction. He began his writing career as the literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, but also worked for a New York literary magazine. In 1926 he published a seminal essay on the history, traditions, and conventions of detective fiction as an art form and within two years and three mysteries, he was one of the best-selling authors in the United States. His title The Canary Murder Case was made into a film starring William Powell and Louise Brooks.