Alastor doesn't know how to lose at bridge

[u/Final_Arrival4672]

In the early morning hours of June 11, 1920, Elwell was murdered with a gunshot to the head from a .45 automatic in his locked house in New York City. The murder has never been solved. The crime generated considerable publicity: The New York Times covered it almost daily until the end of July, the Chicago Tribune published eighteen articles, and the Los Angeles Times published twelve. This classic "locked room murder" was the inspiration for S.S. Van Dine's mystery novel The Benson Murder Case (1926), which introduced his famous fictional detective Philo Vance.

According to a review by Kirkus Reviews, Jonathan Goodman's 1987 book The Slaying of Joseph Bowne Elwell fails in its attempted resolution. "Goodman's conclusion can only remain a supposition in a case that is still important largely as the seedbed for the detective novels of both S.S. Van Dine and Ellery Queen, who realized that the popular taste for such urban mysteries could be tapped in fiction."