From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Casino Murder Case is a 1934 novel
written by S. S.
Van Dine in the series about fictional detective Philo Vance. In this
outing, a murder investigation is connected with a private casino
on New York's upper west side, and the wealthy and unorthodox
family that operates it. It was adapted into a film in 1935.
Plot
summary
Philo Vance receives an anonymous letter alerting him to the
possibility that violence will soon be done within a well-known
family, and the letter also suggests that something of interest
will take place that night at the casino. Vance attends and
witnesses the collapse of the son and heir to the family fortune, a
heavy gambler, due to his having been poisoned—immediately after he
drinks a glass of water from the casino manager's private decanter.
At approximately the same time, across town, the son's wife, a
former Broadway musical star, dies from poison. The curious factor
is that the medical examiner cannot identify the way in which the
poison was administered to the wife, except to say that no traces
were found in the stomach (and no marks of a hypodermic are found).
Vance attends the son's home and investigates the wife's
death—later that evening, the sister of the son and heir is also
poisoned. When he recovers, the son suggests that his mother may
have been responsible for the poisoning, but Vance also finds a
note that suggests that the wife committed suicide. There are other
characters connected with the family upon whom suspicion falls,
including the sister's two suitors, one of whom is the family
physician and the other the chief croupier at the family casino,
and the children's uncle, who manages the casino. Vance must
determine the method by which the poison was administered and at
the same time follows a trail that leads to one of the character's
research into the production of deuterium, or "heavy water", which had just
been discovered in 1934. Having worked out the murderer's plot and
identity, Vance puts himself at the mercy of the murderer, who is
holding Vance at gunpoint, in order to hear a confession—then the
murderer is killed in an exciting climax.
Literary significance and
criticism
"The decline in the last six Vance books is so steep that the
critic who called the ninth of them one more stitch in his literary
shroud was not overstating the case."[1] This
book is the second of the final six Vance books.
Film
adaptation
The Casino Murder Case (1935) starred Paul Lukas as Philo Vance
and was a fairly faithful reproduction of the principal details of
the novel.
References
- ^
Symons, Julian, Bloody Murder, London: Faber and Faber
1972, with revisions in Penguin Books 1974, ISBN 0 14 003794 2
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