"Van Dine's last two full-length novels show his storytelling talent operating at full force. The Kidnap Murder Case (1936) adds more physical action than the usual Van Dine cerebral plotting allows, perhaps as an attempt to keep up with...
It was exactly three months after the startling termination of the Scarab murder case that Philo Vance was drawn into the subtlest and the most perplexing of all the criminal problems that came his way during the four years of John F.-X....