A kick in the pance, indeed.

The Garden Murder Case was published in 1935. It's far from the best Philo Vance novel. Among its deficiencies is that the author (Willard Wright) has completely forgotten his premise, established so thoroughly and insistently in the earlier books: "Philo Vance" is a false name for a man now living in Italy, who helped his friend the DA solve murder cases but never took any credit for doing so. Instead, people know Vance as "the eminent sleuth" and Van Dine as "his patient and retiring chronicler", and someone even refers to the famous Ogden Nash couplet "Philo Vance / Needs a kick in the pance." (A sentiment I agree with, by the way.) This would be reasonable - the way Holmes chaffed Watson and others read about them in the Strand - except that "Van Dine" is supposed to be writing these books about things that happened much earlier, having changed his protagonist's name...

But what prompts this post is one of the most ludicrous "scientific" statements Philo Vance has ever made:

"Earlier today I saw Swift put the head-phone on for a minute, and he was careful toplace the receiver over his left ear -- the custom'ry way. The telephone receiver, d' ye see, Markham, has always been placed on the left side of the phone box, in order to leave the right hand free to make notations or for other emergencies. The result is, the left ear has adapted itself to hearing more distinctly over the wire than the right ear. And humanity, as a result, has accustomed itself to holding a telephone receiver to the left ear. Swift was merely conforming to custom and instinct when he placed the receiving end of the headphone on the left side of his head."

Let's assume that (back story be damned) the action of this novel happened the year the book was published, 1935. It had then been 58 years since the founding Bell Telephone. Evolution doesn't happen that fast. Cripes, Swift was meant to be 30; he'd have been born 28 years after the phone. Wright should have stuck with "he wore it on the left, like most people" and forgotten about "adaptation" and "instinct"...