S. S. Van Dine: The Kidnap Murder Case (USA 2020)

From the Publisher:
"Philo Vance: Man of Action," said nobody never. And yet Kidnap shows real signs of Van Dine's responding both to the changing times -- friends, it's not the Jazz Age any more -- and to the public's changing tastes, as Philo does much less sitting around pontificating and much more running around chasing bad guys. To accommodate this new, Action Philo, the plot is somewhat simplistic, featuring not only a purloined playboy but also a demand that the ransom be left at midnight in a hollow tree. However, Philo's newfound skills with a pistol are additions to his bag of tricks, rather than replacements for the tricks we know and love; rest assured that he retains every ounce of his customary implausible charm.

Kidnap is the last of the Philo Vance novels to have been written as a book, with a film to follow (the remaining two were written after the movies were made). Given the ability that Van Dine shows here to adapt his style -- and his protagonist's -- as the times dictate, it's a great pity that we never got a chance to see Philo go up against the Nazis.

"Vance now reveals himself as a gun-fighter... [but] he is the same Philo, distinguished for his keen observation of details... and for his adroit questioning of witnesses and suspects." -- New York Times

S. S. Van Dine: The Kidnap Murder Case. Philo Vance #10. Felony & Mayhem, ISBN: 9781631942044 (December, 2020), 264 p., $14.95, eBook $9.99.

S. S. Van Dine: The Kidnap Murder Case (USA 1994)

From the Publisher:
The detective story is an American invention, created by Edgar Allan Poe, and America's Golden Age produced some of the genre's finest practitioners. While it is common for readers to associate British writers with the traditional, fair-play school of crime, and American authors with the hard-boiled style, the fact is that many of mystery's most perfect puzzle stories were produced by Americans.

This new series of well-made, affordable editions of often hard-to-find vintage gems offers the opportunity to acquire a distinguished library of the best of American mystery fiction.

T H E  K I D N A P  M U R D E R  C A S E
"The most popular detective of the Golden Age of Crime Fiction." -- Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection

The pleasures of encountering Philo Vance, amateur sleuth extraordinaire, are many -- whether one is rereading his sophisticated Golden Age cases or discovering their charms for the first time. Philo Vance is summoned when playboy Kaspar Kenting disappears from his family's Manhattan brownstone, the "Purple House." Open window, ladder, ransom note -- all indications point to another in the string of kidnappings that is giving the New York City police a major headache, and it's only through the most brilliant detective work that Vance is able to both save a life and solve a baffling case.

S. S. Van Dine was the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939), distinguished art critic, editor from 1912 to 1914 of The Smart Set, and bestselling mystery novelist

S. S. Van Dine: The Kidnap Murder Case. A Philo Vance Story. Otto Penzler's Books, ISBN: 188340293X (November, 1994), Otto Penzler's Classic American Mystery Library, 336 p., $7.00.