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Gracie Allen breaks the Philo Phormula in a number of ways. First is its title: this is the only book in the series to modify ¿Murder Case¿ with more than one word, much less with the name of a character. And then there¿s that character: Gracie Allen was a very real, much-loved comedienne in the 1930s, famous for her double act with George Burns, and in fact the plot revolves around her. Gracie¿s centrality is no accident: Van Dine wrote the story as a vehicle for Allen, and actually created the novel only after the film had come out. So do all these departures pay off? We¿d be lying if we said that Gracie hits every single mark, but Van Dine does a surprisingly entertaining job of translating Ms. Allen¿s delicious Ditzy Blonde persona to the page, and she makes a charming foil for Philös evergreen erudition.

Like The Gracie Allen Murder Case before it, Winter was first written as a screenplay, in this case a vehicle for the figure skater Sonja Henie. However, while Allen¿s scatterbrained persona made a charming foil for Philös stuffed-shirt pretensions, Ms. Henie provided no such inspiration. Van Dine did not live long enough to see her outed as a Nazi supporter, but her ice-princess act offered less for Philo to play against. It should be noted that Winter was published posthumously to close out the series, and though it went to press without Van Dine¿s usual repeated revisions, it is true vintage Philo—utterly distinctive in style and its own very genuine kind of pleasure.