Riassunto
Riassunto di Il caso Greene
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love a closed circle of suspects, a house full of secrets and a clever detective who lectures. It also suits anyone who enjoys seeing where later mysteries came from.
Che cos’è questo libro
The Greene Murder Case is a detective novel by S. S. Van Dine, the pen name of the American art critic Willard Huntington Wright. It came out in 1928 and was the third book about the amateur detective Philo Vance. Wright wrote the Vance novels after a long illness left him unable to do his usual work. He chose detective fiction as light reading and then set out to build it with care.
The story takes place in New York, in a gloomy old mansion that has stood too long on the same ground. The Greene family lives there under one roof. They are a crowded and quarrelsome household, and they hold more secrets than the neighbors guess. Then someone begins shooting them, one at a time, and the police cannot see why or who.
You get a puzzle that is fair on its face and a detective who solves it by reading people rather than by chasing clues. You also get a picture of a rich family rotting from within, told by a friend who stands at Vance's elbow and writes it all down. Many later mystery writers borrowed from this book and its two earlier companions. It begins with a telephone call, a house in the snow, and a family that does not want to answer questions. Let us step through the front door.
In questo riassunto
- 1A shooting at the Greene mansionFree
- 2The family and its odd household
- 3Heath's methods meet Vance's
- 4Secrets and grudges inside the walls
- 5The killer strikes again
- 6Vance reads the clues and the people
- 7What the story is about: a family and its money
- 8What the story is about: reason against appearances
- 9How the story is told
Punto chiave 1 di 9
A shooting at the Greene mansion
The story opens with the District Attorney of New York County, John F.-X. Markham, being called to a crime. It is a shooting inside the Greene mansion, a large old house that stands apart from the modern city around it. The Greenes are among the last of an old and wealthy family, and their home shows the same decline as their name. Markham takes with him his friend Philo Vance, who has helped him on earlier cases, and the narrator, a lawyer who is Vance's close companion and records the events.
The victims are members of the family. Julia Greene, the eldest child, is dead from a gunshot. A younger sister, Ada, has been wounded but lives. The mansion is full of people, yet nobody seems to have seen anything, and the household reacts with fear and sharp tempers.
The police arrive under the lead of Sergeant Ernest Heath, a blunt and honest officer who prefers fingerprints and footprints to theories. He searches the rooms, questions the servants and watches the family. He is not a fool, and the book never makes him one. But he is a man who believes crime must leave plain marks that can be measured and counted.
Vance, meanwhile, looks at the house and the people in it. He is a polished man with a taste for art and a way of speaking that irritates the sergeant. Even in these first hours he is paying less attention to the bullets than to how each person behaves when a question is put to them. He notes who is afraid, who is angry, and who is too calm.
The opening matters because it fixes the book's central problem. A single killing might be a family quarrel. But a house where people are shot in the same place and in the same manner suggests a plan. The reader is asked, even this early, to wonder who in this family could want the others gone, and why now.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Il caso Greene
What is The Greene Murder Case about?
It is a detective novel about a wealthy New York family shot one by one in their old mansion. The amateur detective Philo Vance helps the District Attorney and the police find who is behind the killings.
Who is Philo Vance?
Philo Vance is the amateur detective who stars in S. S. Van Dine's novels. He is a refined man of leisure and art, who solves cases by studying the psychology of the people involved.
Who is S. S. Van Dine?
S. S. Van Dine is the pen name of Willard Huntington Wright, an American art critic. It is also the name of the narrator in the book, a lawyer who is Vance's friend and records his cases.
When was The Greene Murder Case written and is it a true story?
It was published in 1928 and is fiction. The family, the mansion and the crimes are invented, though the New York setting and the police and legal figures reflect the period's real institutions.
Is The Greene Murder Case hard to read?
No. The story is easy to start because the plot is clear: a shooting at one mansion, a small family of suspects, and a friend of the detective who tells it all plainly. Each person is drawn in a few clear strokes, so you can follow along.