The «Canary» Murder Case / Смерть Канарейки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

It is fortunate that I performed this gratuitous labor of accumulation and transcription, for now that circumstances have rendered possible my making the cases public, I am able to present them in full detail and with all their various sidelights and succeeding steps.

In another volume—“The Benson Murder Case”—I have related how Vance happened to become involved in criminal investigation, and have also set forth the unique analytic methods of crime detection by which he solved the problem of Alvin Benson’s mysterious murder.

The present chronicle has to do with Vance’s solution of the brutal murder of Margaret Odell—a cause cеl?bre[1 - cause cеl?bre (фр.) – громкое дело. – Здесь и далее комментарии на русском языке принадлежат редактору.] which came to be known as the “Canary” murder. The strangeness, the daring, the seeming impenetrability of the crime marked it as one of the most singular and astonishing cases in New York’s police annals; and had it not been for Philo Vance’s participation in its solution, I firmly believe it would have remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of this country.

S. S. Van Dine.

New York.

Characters Of The Book

Philo Vance

John F.-X. Makkham – District Attorney of New York County.

Margaret Odell (The “Canary”) – Famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl, who was mysteriously murdered in her apartment.

Amy Gibson – Margaret Odell’s maid.

Charles Cleaver – A man-about-town.

Kenneth Spotswoode – A manufacturer.

Louis Mannix – An importer.

Dr. Ambroise Lindquist – A fashionable neurologist.

Tony Skeel – A professional burglar.

William Elmer Jessup – Telephone operator.

Harry Spively – Telephone operator.

Alys La Fosse – A musical-comedy actress.

Wiley Allen – A gambler.

Potts – A street-cleaner.

Amos Feathergill – Assistant District Attorney.

William M. Moran – Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.

Ernest Heath – Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.

Snitkin – Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

Guilfoyle – Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

Burke – Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

Tracy – Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

Deputy-Inspector Conrad Brenner – Burglar-tools expert.

Captain Dubois – Finger-print expert.

Detective Bellamy – Finger-print expert.

Peter Quackenbush – Official photographer.

Dr. Doremus – Medical Examiner.

Swacker – Secretary to the District Attorney.