Chandler’s more hardboiled, romantic approach— even if some of his strings of themed killings (the nursery rhyme crimes of THE BISHOP MURDER CASE) have an interesting proto-Italian thriller feel. In his heyday, Vance was often in films; this three-disc set assembles six different Vances, but represents less than a third of the detective’s screen career. The franchise was strong enough for the sup- porting cast—amiable District Attorney Markham, dimwit cop Sergeant Heath, irascible coroner Dr. Doremus—to become iconic figures; character ac- tors Eugene Pallette and Etienne Girardot became more associated with Heath and Doremus than any of the stars were with Vance. The films rely on sitcom-like formula shtick: Vance has arcane knowl- edge of a field (often an animal-related uppercrust pastime) useful for understanding the current crimes (dog-breeding, piscatology, horse-racing, etc.); Markham is as unbelievably willing as Commis- sioner Gordon to let an amateur take over inves- tigations (no one ever asks Vance what right he
has to interrogate suspects, tamper with crime scenes, etc.); Heath leaps to wrong conclusions, tries to take credit and doesn’t understand erudite put-downs; and Doremus complains about being dragged out of bed or away from a meal by another inconvenient corpse.
Many of the actors cast as Vance became bet- ter-known for other detective roles. The first screen Vance was William Powell, who made THE CANARY MURDER CASE and THE GREENE MURDER CASE in 1929; his dapper reading would be definitive if he weren’t more indelibly cast as Nick Charles in
the Thin Man series. Authors sold rights to series books individually then and MGM’s THE BISHOP MURDER CASE was mounted in competition with Paramount’s series, with future Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone as Vance and Clarence Geldart and James Donlon as Markham and Heath. When a man named “Cock” Robin is killed with an arrow, a note- sender who signs himself “The Bishop” predicts more nursery rhyme killings, and Vance gets involved
James Donlan as Inspector Heath and future Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone as Philo Vance, grilling a suspect.
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