The Scarab Murder Case - A Graphic Mystery Classic

Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey: Graphic Publishing, 1954. First Paperback Edition . Mass Market. Very Good. 191 Pages. Graphic #89 Abridged Edition. A tight square book with red page edges. Wrap-A-Round cover with red and pale yellow lettering with keyhole cover art of a brunette looking at a guy holding a dagger. The Scarab Murder Case is fifth in Van Dine's Philo Vance novels of crime and mystery. S. S. Van Dine was born Willard Huntington Wright in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1888. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College and Harvard University, but failed to graduate, leaving to cultivate contacts he had made in the literary world. At the age of twenty-one, Wright began his professional writing career as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times. In 1926 Wright published his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright went on to write eleven more mysteries. The first few books about his upper-class amateur sleuth, Philo Vance, were so popular that Wright became wealthy for the first time in his life. His later books declined in popularity as the reading public's tastes in mystery fiction changed, but during the late twenties and early thirties his work was very successful.