Van Dine, SS - The Dragon Murder Case (1933)

Review by Nick Fuller

2/5

A man jumps into a swimming-pool supposedly haunted by a dragon—and vanishes. His body later turns up in a pot-hole, bludgeoned and strangled to death, with three claw-marks across his chest… Did the dragon kill him? Obviously not, says the experienced reader. Obviously not, says the amazin’ly effete Philo Vance, who (knowing from past experience the effect he has on his audience) apologises for wastin’ the reader’s time before deliverin’ a simply borin’ and irrelevant lecture on mythology and tropical fish. Despite the possibilities inherent in the dragon, there is no atmosphere. Vance either brings everythin’ down to the commonplace (although there is something ludicrously silly in the idea of the diving-suit-clad killer fishin’ for men with a grapplin’-hook), or we are treated to the narrator’s imperially purple descriptions of blood-chillin’ / curdlin’ screams and the effect they have on his delicate susceptibilities.

Note the use of the spooky old house with psychologically warped inmates (The Greene Murder Case, The Bishop Murder Case, The Scarab Murder Case) and the “damaged” old woman (Greene, Bishop, The Casino Murder Case).

The plot bears distinct similarities to Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (the mysterious footprints of the family monster) and to John Dickson Carr’s A Graveyard to Let (the vanishing man in the swimming-pool, the graveyard, the motive, the setting).

The Dragon Murder Case is kicked off when weekend house-guests on the Stamm estate decide to go for a nocturnal swim during torrid weather. All of them have been imbibing too much alcohol and when one of the men dives into Dragon Pool...he vanishes.

The estate itself is an oddity, being situated in a heavily wooded rocky area of Manhattan and yet more or less cut off from the busy city. Mine host is exotic fish fancier and semi alcoholic Rudolph Stamm. Also present is his sister Bernice, fiancee of Montague, the man who went missing. Then there is stockbroker and family financial advisor Alex Greeff, dissipated man about town Kirwin Tatum, widowed Mrs Teeny McAdam, who may have been a past flame of Montague's, Ruby Steele, an artiste much enamoured of dramatic gestures, and the level-headed Mr Leland, who lives in a cottage on the estate and is routinely insulted by certain guests for his Native American blood. Most of them have reason to wish Montague ill and none seem particularly upset about his death. In addition, Rudolph Stamm's ailing mother, given to oracular announcements and mentally unwell, lives under the care a nurse on the top floor of the mansion and tells the investigators rambling stories of the strange sights she has seen, such as the flying dragon who protects the family.

Once Philo Vance and company are called in, events unfold in sometimes startling fashion, most notably when Dragon Pool is drained. The operation discloses a trail made across its silt floor by l4" long feet, accompanied by prints from a three-clawed beast. Could the latter be the dragon of local and family legends?

My verdict: It's always fun trying to work out how a seemingly impossible crime is carried out. My theory on how a body could be removed from the pool without other guests noticing was nothing like the solution advanced by Vance -- and mine was (of course) wrong. Bizarre as it is, Vance's explanation is workable in the scene as given, even though it must be one of the most outrageous methods to remove a corpse without being discovered in the act ever utilised in a mystery. An aside: readers will learn Vance bred exotic fish as well as Scotties. Is there nothing Vance can't undertake?

Etext

Mary R

The Dragon Murder Case (1933) shows a return to form for Van Dine:

The Dragon Murder Case has a memorable impossible crime in its opening half, one that is completely original in its puzzle. The solution is not as clever as the problem itself. But it is workable, and has the merit of extending the detailed, weirdly atmospheric storytelling of the impossible crime problem. When I first read the book, I found the solution terribly disappointing - and so do other readers, to judge by their comments on the discussion group GAdetection. The solution is brief, simple, and brute force in coming up with a way to commit the crimes. But re-readings remind one that the solution is fair, and also in keeping with the surrealistic tone of the book.

The story takes place in an imaginative setting, the Dragon Pool. This narrow pool channel recalls the narrow gap between buildings where The Bishop Murder Case is set. Both locales are fully three-dimensional, with height and depth playing a role, along with East-West and North-South coordinates. Both include balconies, from which people can look down over the locale. While The Bishop Murder Case takes place in a pure cityscape, the Dragon Pool combines natural features such as a cliff and stream, with man-made landscape architecture modifications.

Van Dine slowly builds up more and more detail about the Pool region. He is still going strong adding information in Chapter 10, half-way through the book. This gives the whole locale an impressively complex imaginative existence. The impossible crime mystery puzzle also keeps getting meaningful detail added.

It is important to read The Dragon Murder Case along with the landscape map that accompanied the original hardback - which is also present in the Internet version. The paperback version I originally read years ago lacked the map, and the tale was much impoverished and confused.

It might also help to search out information on the real life Inwood Hill region of Manhattan in which the tale takes place. Both maps and articles are available on the Internet. The wild forest area where the novel transpires is now Inwood Hill Park, run by New York City. The current real-life Park still contains the foundation of the now torn down Straus mansion, the 19th Century country home of a millionaire family that went down on the Titanic in 1912. Similarly, The Dragon Murder Case is set at the fictitious Stamm mansion - and we learn in an epilog at the end of the novel, that the mansion has been torn down, and that only its foundation now remains. I don't know if the Dragon Pool also has some real-life antecedent.

Reviews of The Dragon Murder Case are frequently filled with spoilers. Readers are advised to read the novel, before reading too many reviews of it. The "problem" here is that the most imaginative parts of The Dragon Murder Case occur in the novel's first half, where Van Dine is setting up the basic impossible crime mystery puzzle. Reviewers seem to feel little compunction about summarizing this first half - after all, they are not giving away the solution at the end! (The same spoiler problem occurs in reviews of another mystery, Ellery Queen's Halfway House. It too is most creative in its first half, which sets forth the book's mysterious situation.)

Mike Grost