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 …"