S.S. Van Dine invented the nursery-rhyme mystery in 1929, and no one has ever done it better. Philo Vance, perhaps the most infuriatingly brilliant detective in Golden Age fiction, returns from Switzerland to find New York convulsed by a series of murders based on Mother Goose verses. The first victim is Joseph Cochrane Robin, a champion archer found dead with an arrow through his heart on a private shooting range. The police see a bizarre killing. Vance sees a pattern. As more bodies appear following the logic of children's rhymes, he must decode a trail of clues that transforms innocent verse into murder instructions. The killer isn't merely murderous - they're literary, conducting a lethal experiment that only a sophisticated mind could devise. Vance's insufferable arrogance and encyclopedic learning have never been deployed to better effect. The solution is both surprising and inevitable, a testament to Van Dine's masterly construction. For readers who crave their mysteries with intellectual showmanship, aristocratically disdainful detectives, and puzzles that actually surprise.
