THE BISHOP MURDER CASE

Philo Vance’s fourth case, originally published in 1929, features a serial killer whose playbook is from Mother Goose.

In case there was any doubt that Joseph Cochrane Robin’s death by arrow was inspired by the fictional death of Cock Robin, a note makes the connection explicit and implies that the killer was Raymond Sperling, whose last name means “sparrow.” Who is THE BISHOP, the phantasm who signs this and later messages? Vance’s friend and amanuensis Van Dine, the most self-effacing narrator in the mystery genre, reveals in advance that this sobriquet has nothing to do with religion. Most of the leading suspects—Sperling, retired Prof. Bertrand Dillard, his adopted son Sigurd Arnesson, his niece Belle Dillard, and scientist Adolph Drukker—pass the time till the next fatal incarnation of a nursery rhyme chatting about mathematics and theoretical physics. It’s particularly helpful that Arnesson talks himself into an active role into the investigation along with Vance, Sgt. Ernest Heath, and D.A. John F.-X. Markham, who casually accept his participation. Arnesson takes the edge off detective fiction’s most irritating sleuth by managing to be even more flippant about murder than Vance, who calls the series of homicides that follow “a kind of Juvenalian lark” and finds time to entertain his companions with a long list of virtuous suicides that includes Aristotle and Judas Iscariot. Despite all the implausibilities, the plot here is Van Dine’s strongest, with clues that are logical (though not always readily accessible to the unlettered), a plausible motive and a compact windup with a highly satisfying final twist.

All in all, the finest of the dozen whodunits that mysteriously catapulted their author to the bestseller list.