The Benson Murder Case is the first novel in the Philo Vance series of mystery novels by S. S. Van Dine, which became a best-seller. The novel was very loosely based upon a real-life case that had made headlines, the unsolved 1920 murder of bridge expert Joseph Bowne Elwell. It was considered a roman à clef because the circumstances under which Elwell's body was found he was shot to death in a room in his home which was found to be locked from the inside, and he was not wearing his toupee are duplicated in the novel. Modern knowledge of ballistics reveals that one of the central premises of the novel is fanciful, because the reconstruction of the height of the murderer is impossible (Dashiell Hammett had said as much at the time, in a 1927 book review).

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• Literature & FictionClassics

• Publication Date: February 18, 2023
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 286 Pages
• File Size: 457 KB