Double Crossing Van Dine

DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!

As the Golden Age of Mystery began to flourish, the books spread their wings and, in some cases, stretched believability. These authors sometimes shocked the readers, but at other times, the books seemed to be oh-so-similar to other mysteries.

Of course, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd fell into the former category. A hundred years later, readers are still fascinated by the solution to the story. At the time, people were up in arms about the “trick” in the story.

To prevent another Ackroyd, authors began to develop a code of fair play. What should the author do – and not do—to give the reader a shot at solving the crime? Ellery Queen issued a Challenge to the Reader, which informed them that all the clues had been presented.

Writers have never been ones to color inside the lines, and being told not to do something brought out their creative ideas. Crippen & Landru presented School of Hard Knox in 2023, breaking all of Father Knox’s rules, and we’re publishing a second, similar volume this year.

In the 1920s S.S. Van Dine wrote a list of twenty rules that must be followed. We’ve broken each of them. Willard Huntington Wright, who wrote as Van Dine, was not the usual mystery writer. He had written for literary magazines and lectured on philosophy before he had a breakdown in 1923. While he recovered, Wright completed the synopses for six novels featuring a dilettante sleuth, Philo Vance. Scribner was interested and thus began his twelve-novel career. The twenty rules were written in 1928, the same year as his third novel, The Greene Murder Case. The article was published by American Magazine.

Introduction by Catriona McPherson

The Chapbook is “The Vanity Murder Case,” a S.S. Van Dine pastiche by Jon L. Breen.