Willard Huntington Wright

Willard Huntington Wright

S. S. Van Dine is the pen name used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright when he wrote detective novels. Wright was active in avant-garde cultural circles in pre–World War I New York, and under the pen name he created the fictional detective Philo Vance, a sleuth and aesthete who first appeared in novels, starting with The Benson Murder Case (1926), then in films and on the radio.