A guest at Inwood Hill Park, an estate in northern Manhattan, dives into the swimming pool and disappears. Has a mythological dragon which is said to prey on the imprudent anythin g to do with the murder? Philo Vance uses his knowledge of both dragons and criminals to demonstrate and solve the case. American art critic Willard Huntington Wright, under the pseudonym of Dine when he wrote detective novels, was an important figure in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-WWI New York, and under the pseudonym (which he originally used to conceal his identity) he created the once immensely popular fictional detective Philo Vance, a sleuth and aesthete who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in movies and on the radio.
