The Casino Murder Case

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934.

Price: $1,500.00

Hardcover. First edition. A very good copy with some smudging and light staining in a supplied but sympathetic, very good, price-clipped dustwrapper with slight internal stains. Inscribed by the author: "To Dr. Hugh Stott Taylor With great appreciation for his gracious assistance, and with warm personal regards. S.S. Van Dine." The English-born Taylor was a chemist who spent much of his life at Princeton, and who in World War II played a prominent role in the American scientific effort, directing a number of research projects, and contributing to the development of the atomic bomb with his discovery of the most effective catalyst for producing heavy water. He was knighted by both the Queen and the Pope in the same month. A Chair in chemistry is named for him at Princeton. The inscription would seem to indicate that Taylor provided advice to Van Dine about the novel (or at least to Willard Huntington Wright, as Van Dine was a pseudonym). A Philo Vance novel, filmed in 1935 with Paul Lukas as Vance, starring opposite Rosalind Russell in one of her earliest roles.

Item #83668

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Item #83668 The Casino Murder Case. S. S. VAN DINE.

S.S. Van Dine
birth name: S.S. Van Dine
born: 10/15/1888
died: 4/11/1939

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Biography

American critic, editor, and author of a series of best-selling detective novels featuring the brilliant but arrogant sleuth Philo VANCE. Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore