The SCARAB MURDER CASE (Scarab Murder Case Paper)

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best of the Philo Vance Mysteries
Review: I think The Scarab Murder Case is one of the best of the Philo Vance series. It involves an eery atomosphere at a museum of Egyptology (a very popular subject in the 1920's and 1930's), a mysterious murder, and a complex plot on who did the murder and how. The how being the most interesting in the book. Was it a curse, or was just a complex murder?

As with the other Van Dine books, he throws in a lot information on the Egyptian art. But of course, Philo Vance, the detective, knows all there is to know about the subject, just as he with any other subject.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best of the Philo Vance Mysteries
Review: I think The Scarab Murder Case is one of the best of the Philo Vance series. It involves an eery atomosphere at a museum of Egyptology (a very popular subject in the 1920's and 1930's), a mysterious murder, and a complex plot on who did the murder and how. The how being the most interesting in the book. Was it a curse, or was just a complex murder?

As with the other Van Dine books, he throws in a lot information on the Egyptian art. But of course, Philo Vance, the detective, knows all there is to know about the subject, just as he with any other subject.

Rating:
Summary: The best of Vance Series
Review: This novel is probably the best one in the Philo Vance series. The story is about a murder committed in an Egyptian Museum in New York. The owner's head was bashed in, supposedly with a statue of some Egyptian God. While many clues led to the in-house Egyptologist and explorer, the native Egyptian servant insisted that it was a curse of the Egyptian God. Naturally, abiding the rules of detective fictions, Mr. Vance was able to pick out a human culprit at the end.

The case itself may not be complicated, and the culprit may be too obvious, yet there's a very interesting and unique plot, in which the amateur and the professionals, unlike in most detective fictions, shared a common solution at the end though based on totally different evidences. The only weakness of this novel is the excessive elaboration on Egyptian arts, which few readers would care.