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2 unusual facts about The Winter Murder Case


The Winter Murder Case

"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." wrote Julian Symons in Bloody Murder.

"This is Van Dine's last work, left in an only semi-expanded outline form at the time of his death. Philo Vance is still the detective but the pseudo-scholarly footnotes are not in evidence nor is the pearl-handled telephone. In fact, this short book is pleasant reading; add your own nostalgia if you wish.", according to Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime.


S. S. Van Dine

On April 11, 1939, at the age of fifty-one, Wright died in New York of a heart condition exacerbated by excessive drinking, a year after the publication of an unpopular experimental novel that incorporated one of the biggest stars in radio comedy, The Gracie Allen Murder Case, and leaving a complete novelette-length story that was intended as a film vehicle for Sonja Henie and was published posthumously as The Winter Murder Case.


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