On a whim one day, New York dilettante Philo Vance asked his friend, the District Attorney FX Markham to take him on his next big case. This transpires to be the cold blooded murder of one Alvin Benson at his home just after midnight.
The police have a wealth of clues, and no end of suspects... but are any of them guilty? Vance thinks not. Now all he has to do is convince his friend the District Attorney as well as the wider New York police force, to ignore all clues, suppositions, inferences and circumstantial evidence to find the guilty man!
The first in S.S. Van Dines Philo Vance mysteries, The Benson Murder case marks the start of a widely successful chain of crime novels that would earn much acclaim over the next twenty years.
