The Bishop murder case

S. S. Van Dine
New York Charles Scribner’s Sons
Copyright, 1929, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
The Earth is a Temple where there is going on a Mystery Play, childish and poignant, ridiculous and awful enough in all conscience.
Philo Vance John F.-X. Markham District Attorney of New York County. Ernest Heath Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau. Professor Bertrand Dillard A famous physicist. Belle Dillard His niece. Sigurd Arnesson His adopted son: an associate professor of mathematics. Pyne The Dillard butler. Beedle The Dillard cook. Adolph Drukker Scientist and author. Mrs. Otto Drukker His mother. Grete Menzel The Drukker cook. John Pardee Mathematician and chess expert: inventor of the Pardee gambit. J. C. Robin Sportsman and champion archer. Raymond Sperling Civil Engineer. John E. Sprigg Senior at Columbia University. Dr. Whitney Barstead An eminent neurologist. Quinan Police Reporter of the World . Madeleine Moffat Chief Inspector O’Brien Of the Police Department of New York City. William M. Moran Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau. Captain Pitts Of the Homicide Bureau. Guilfoyle Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Snitkin Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Hennessey Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Emery Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Burke Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Captain Dubois Finger-print expert. Dr. Emanuel Doremus Medical Examiner. Swacker Secretary to the District Attorney. Currie Vance’s valet.
(Saturday, April 2; noon)
Whether or not he would have completed the translations, even had his labors not been interrupted, I do not know; for Vance was a man of cultural ardencies, in whom the spirit of research and intellectual adventure was constantly at odds with the drudgery necessary to scholastic creation. I remember that only the preceding year he had begun writing a life of Xenophon—the result of an enthusiasm inherited from his university days when he had first read the Anabasis and the Memorabilia —and had lost interest in it at the point where Xenophon’s historic march led the Ten Thousand back to the sea. However, the fact remains that Vance’s translation of Menander was rudely interrupted in early April; and for weeks he became absorbed in a criminal mystery which threw the entire country into a state of gruesome excitement.