fiction." In Chandler's novel The Lady in the Lake, Marlowe briefly uses Philo Vance as an ironical alias. A criticism of Vance's "phony English accent" also appears in Chandler's Farewell My Lovely. In Chandler's The Big Sleep, Marlowe says he's "not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance" and explains that his method owes more to judgement of character than finding clues the police have missed. Julian Symons in his history of detective fiction, Bloody Murder, says: "The decline in the last six Vance books is so steep that the critic who called the ninth of them one more stitch in his literary shroud was not overstating the case." In A Catalogue of Crime, Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor criticize "… the phony footnotes, the phony English accent of Philo Vance, and the general apathy of the detective system in all these books …", in all the Vance novels. They review only seven of the 12 novels, panning all but the first and the last: The Benson Murder Case, which they call "The first and best …" and The Winter Murder Case, of which they write, "In fact, this short book is pleasant reading …" In regard to Vance's supposedly phony accent, Van Dine addressed the issue early on. In The Greene Murder Case, one of the three original novels, he wrote that Vance's seemingly British manner of speaking was the result of his long education in Europe, not an affectation. He described Vance as indifferent to what people thought of him and not interested in impressing them. Adaptations Films Films about Vance were made from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, with some more faithful to the literary character than others. Fictional narrator S.S. Van Dine, who acts as a passive eyewitness to events in the novels, does not appear in the films. Among the several actors who played Philo Vance on the screen were William Powell, Warren William and Basil Rathbone, all of whom had great success playing other detectives in movies. The movie The Canary Murder Case is famous for a contract dispute that eventually helped sink the career of star Louise Brooks. William Powell did not enjoy playing Philo Vance, finding the role devoid of the complexity of a truly human character. After three Philo Vance films at Paramount, he flatly refused to play the role again. Later, at Warner Brothers, he was cajoled into making