The beautiful Margaret Odell, famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl known as "The Canary", is found murdered in her apartment. She has a number of men in her life, ranging from high society to gangsters, and more than one man visited her apartment on the night she dies. It is Philo Vance's characteristic erudition that leads him to a key clue that allows him to penetrate a very clever alibi and reveal the killer.

Philo Vance unravels rhymes in a deadly key. “Without question one of Van Dine’s finest achievements. . . his construction of plot is really quite superb” (Tipping My Fedora).
After solving the Greene murders, Philo Vance has taken a well-earned holiday in Switzerland. Returning to New York City he finds his old chum, District Attorney Anthony Markham, up against a bizarre series of murders inspired by children’s...

“Outrageous cleverness . . . among the finest fruits of the Golden Age” featuring amateur sleuth Philo Vance—from the author of The Canary Murder Case (Bloody Murder).
Members of the Greene family keep dying while the pool of possible perpetrators keeps shrinking. Philo Vance—the independently wealthy, staggeringly brilliant, not remotely modest (and did we mention handsome?) amateur sleuth—uses...

A horse race turns into a murder case . . . “Mr. Van Dine’s amateur detective is the most gentlemanly, and probably the most scholarly snooper in literature.” —Chicago Daily Tribune
Aristocratic detective Philo Vance has gotten an anonymous invitation to a New York rooftop garden, where a group of wealthy friends gather to listen to the horse races. But on the night Vance attends, a guest...

A whodunit that “presents a good puzzle, and that, according to Mr. Vance and his tens of thousands of readers, is what murder mystery books are for” (The New York Times).
No question, The Dragon Murder Case showcases Our Philo at his most supremely irritating. The book is set at a Manhattan mansion complete with picturesque pool. Into that pool dives Sanford Montague, never to be seen again. Fools rush to blame...

These Egyptian hieroglyphics spell “murder.” “Classic, almost textbook, golden age detective fiction. The plotting is ingenious and fiendishly convoluted.” —Vintage Pop Fictions
In 1922, English anthropologist Howard Carter discovered the long-hidden tomb of King Tutankhamun, and the world went Egypt-crazy. Just a few years later, New York is not immune to the craze, and even Philo Vance, that eminent...

[Kennel murder case] A Philo Vance mystery, about an apparent suicide which Vance believes was really murder, tied to intrigue among rivals competing in a Long Island dog show. [Nancy Drew, reporter] School newspaper reporter Nancy is determined to prove a girl innocent of murder charges.