Saturday, January 29, 2022

S. S. Van Dine's The Garden Murder Mystery

 "Chacun à son cheval"

Since I can't be reading Edmund Wilson all the time...

In The Garden Murder Case, Floyd Garden is playing the ponies. He's a rich dilettante and he's set up an off-track betting station in his elaborate New York home with a direct line to a bookmaker and a speaker system that reveals the results of the races. He invites a bunch of friends to join him for the Riverton Stakes and Philo Vance wangles an invitation after he receives an anonymous phone call suggesting trouble.

And trouble there is. Woode Swift, Floyd's cousin, is in over his head, laying out ten thousand dollars on Equanimity to win, money he doesn't have, and money he desperately needs. But after Equanimity fails to even show, Woody (to his friends) is found dead, with a bullet to the head. It looks like suicide.

But, of course, you didn't fall for that, and neither did Philo Vance, who immediately announces it's murder. 

Various romantic entanglements and inheritance questions supply the needed number of suspects for this one. Floyd's mother is also murdered before Vance solves it. One suspect falls in love with Vance and another tries to murder him. Or are they the same suspect?!

Philo Vance may very well be best known nowadays because Ogden Nash said, "Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance." 😉 At one point I tried to figure out where and when that Nash quote came from, but never succeeded. But now I do know when Van Dine first read it: as he was writing this 1935 novel. He alludes it four times over the course of the novel... (I think it may have got to him.)

"She shrugged and then added: 'I'm beginning to think that maybe Ogden Nash had the right idea.'"

That's the suspect who fell in love with him. 

I finished the novel a week or so ago. I was going to watch the movie, which is available-ish on YouTube, but, alas, is geo-blocked out of Canada. Which is too bad because the preview looks pretty amusingly crazed:


Is this the only classic mystery I will read this year? Will it be the best? Certainly not, and quite probably not. But it was fun and it was the first, so I'm counting it for:


A Mystery/Detective/Crime Classic!

Does Philo Vance need a kick in the pance?

11 comments:

  1. i blush at a hidden affection for Philo Vance... Van Dine's detective is certainly an elitist figure, but there's something alluring about him. i liked the one about the Dragon the most, so far... altho they're all good...

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    1. The Dragon is a good one, though I think my favorite is the Canary.

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  2. Classic mysteries are always fun. That'll be the easiest classics category for me to fill this year. :)

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    1. It's a little shocking it wasn't the first category I filled!

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  3. Oh Ogden Nash is witty, isn't he? "God in his wisdom made the fly; and then forgot to tell us why." That made me laugh. In any case, bravo for finishing a Back to the Classics title. I'm almost through my first one too; a mystery as well. I perhaps should have targeted a longer/harder one but at least I have one knocked off the list!

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    1. It is nice to get a fast start out of the gate, isn't it? (To keep up the horse racing theme!) I always knew that was going to be the easy one.

      Ogden Nash is so much fun. The Termite! The Seagull! ;-)

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  4. Ha! Doesn't sound like Vance had much of a sense of humour.

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    1. He's pretty light-hearted about it, but four! times. That's the giveaway... ;-)

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  6. Gah, it's so frustrating when you think you are going to be able to sink into an older film on YT only to be slapped with that "not in Canada" screen. So unfriendly!

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