The Bishop Murder Case

Rating:
Summary: An otherwise great novel destroyed by an incompetent finale
Review: Apparently van Dine's nursery rhyme mystery is a forerunner of Dame Christie's. However, there's no Christie's playful tone in van Dine's novel, where a sinister and evil atmosphere prevails throughout the pages.

Taking place in a circle of talented math physicists, the murders were most eerie and anyone of the physicists could be the evil genius behind them, yet van Dine, indulged in his dramatic sense, supplied the most incompetent, if not disastrous, finale in spite of the existence of a much more likely one. Aged and handicapped by disability, van Dine's murderer knocked out 3 men in their prime ages without fail and ran back and forth between murder scenes and his own house like a Kung Fu master.

As if 3 had not been enough, van Dine's macabre sense pointlessly sacrificed a 4th victim, whose death neither coincided with any nursery rhyme nor threw suspicion to the intended scapegoat. On the contrary, the staged suicide had almost successfully freed the scapegoat from any suspicion if not for our marvelous Mr. Vance, whose art of detection climaxed in this novel and can be summarized as: let all but one suspects die, whoever left must be the bad guy. Now everyone can start to pity M. Poirot for wasting his "little gray cells".

Rating:
Summary: Mathematics and Nursery Rhymes = Good Myster
Review: The Bishop Murder book focuses around a series of murders that are connected to nursery rhymes in the house of a mathematics professor. All of the victims are themselves mathematicians, and Philo Vance is attracted to this case because of mathematics solutions are connected to these nursery rhymes. He solves the equations, thereby producing the murderer.

Philo Vance in his complex explanation of the crime says, "In order to understand these . . . we must consider the stock-in-trade of the mathematician, for all his speculations and computations tend to emphasize the relative insignificance of this planet and the unimportance of human life." This is the focus of the mind and personality of Philo Vance, the human intellect at work solving the crime.

Rating:
Summary: Mathematics and Nursery Rhymes = Good Myster
Review: The Bishop Murder book focuses around a series of murders that are connected to nursery rhymes in the house of a mathematics professor. All of the victims are themselves mathematicians, and Philo Vance is attracted to this case because of mathematics solutions are connected to these nursery rhymes. He solves the equations, thereby producing the murderer.

Philo Vance in his complex explanation of the crime says, "In order to understand these . . . we must consider the stock-in-trade of the mathematician, for all his speculations and computations tend to emphasize the relative insignificance of this planet and the unimportance of human life." This is the focus of the mind and personality of Philo Vance, the human intellect at work solving the crime.

Rating:
Summary: Mathematics and Nursery Rhymes = Good Mystery
Review: This book is the first of Van Dine's mysteries, and it introduces Van Dine's sleuth, Philo Vance. Vance is a wealthy, but rather cynical, connoisseur in the arts and finer things of life. He has another hobby, though, helping the New York assistant district attorney solve complex murders.

This book focuses more on Philo Vance, showing the reader what to expect in the mysteries to follow. S.S. Van Dine, whose real name was Willard Hunting Wright, while writing mysteries, was also an art critic, and it shows in this book. The whole first chapter concerns Vance's view of the art world.

This book plot, though, focuses around a series of murders that are connected to nursery rhymes in the house of a mathematics professor. All of the victims are themselves mathematicians, and Philo Vance is attracted to this case because of mathematics solutions are connected to these nursery rhymes. He solves the equations, thereby producing the murderer.

Philo Vance in his complex explanation of the crime says, "In order to understand these . . . we must consider the stock-in-trade of the mathematician, for all his speculations and computations tend to emphasize the relative insignificance of this planet and the unimportance of human life." This is the focus of the mind and personality of Philo Vance, the human intellect at work solving the crime.