Tag Archives: Erle Stanley Gardner

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Gilded Lily,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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I’ve been picking up Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner whenever a bargain deal shows up for an e-book. I didn’t expect much from them at first, frankly, but I’ve found them surprisingly enjoyable. These are artefacts of an earlier publishing era, when mystery writers did not aspire to literary brilliance (though Gardner delivers good, polished prose), nor psychological insight (though Gardner can surprise you), nor cinematic thrill rides. The goal was to play a game with the readers, providing all the clues and challenging them to solve the puzzles.

The Case of the Gilded Lily is characteristic. Stewart Bedford is a wealthy, socially prominent, and respectable businessman. He has recently married a much younger woman, what would now be called a trophy wife, and he is proud of and devoted to her.

One day a shady character shows up in his office and threatens to publicize certain embarrassing facts about the new wife’s past, unless Bedford “loans” him a large amount of money. This leads to Bedford spending an evening (chastely) in a pair of motel rooms with a beautiful young woman. Later he loses consciousness, apparently drugged, and awakens to discover his blackmailer shot to death (with what will prove to be his own gun). Not a fool, Bedford calls Perry Mason first.

I have to give author Gardner full credit for misdirection. My experience with the Perry Mason novels is that I’m always pretty sure I’ve guessed who the real culprit is, and I’m always wrong. That’s the nature of the game, and Gardner was a champion.

I recommend The Case of the Gilded Lily.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The D.A. Calls a Turn,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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You may recall that I’ve discovered, rather to my surprise, that I enjoy Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels. They’re nothing profound or inspirational, but they’re interesting reading entertainment, competently written.

But Perry Mason, defense lawyer, wasn’t the only continuing character Gardner created. Another character – on the other side of the legal fence – was Doug Selby, district attorney in a small town outside of Los Angeles. I found a deal on book 5, The D.A. Calls a Turn.

The story starts on Thanksgiving day. A successful local businessman is killed in an auto accident. Oddly, although his shoes and socks are expensive, he’s wearing an old suit that’s too small for him. The coroner says that he did not die in the crash, but was murdered beforehand.

D.A. Doug Selby, along with his friend the sheriff, and his girlfriend, a friendly newspaper reporter, conclude that the only explanation is that the victim must have been suffering from amnesia. He had suffered some kind of trauma in the past, they postulate, and started a new life as a businessman. Then, for some reason, he had regained his memory on Thanksgiving, gone to fetch his old clothes, and gone on the run. It is assumed he has a criminal past.

The whole plot is kind of complicated and (I thought) far-fetched, and frankly I had trouble tracking it. The writing was okay – Gardner was a pro. But the story didn’t compel me – maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention.

I might note that this e-book has a number of Optical Character Recognition errors, and it must have been published from the British edition, as it uses English orthography.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Turn On the Heat,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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I suppose the kids today don’t even know who Erle Stanley Gardner was (even though he was once the bestselling author in the world). But my generation, who did know about him, generally got him wrong, I think. This was due to the blockbuster popularity of the Perry Mason TV show, based on his books about that character. The show (though well done and still fun to watch) was slightly bowdlerized. The original Mason of the novels had rougher edges, especially in the early stages.

That goes equally – or more – for his Bertha Cool and Donald Lamm books, of which Turn On the Heat (published 1940) was my first experience. This is pure hardboiled stuff, but handled from a new angle – a hardboiled story without a hardboiled hero.

Bertha Cool is a stout, middle-aged woman, tight with a buck. She runs a private investigations agency in Los Angeles, and her chief operative is former lawyer Donald Lamm. Lamm is tough in his own way, but he’s only a little guy. When the muscle boys work him over (which happens more than once), he bides his time and finds clever ways to get his revenge.

They are hired by a man to find his ex-wife, who disappeared 21 years previously. Donald goes to the town where they once lived. She’s not there anymore, and nobody seems to know where she went. But as he pokes around, Donald discovers that pretty much everybody is lying to him – including their client. A perky female reporter seems to be a useful ally, but a big, brutal police detective invites him – forcefully – to get out of town. It will take a lot of brains and strategizing to finally close this case, but Bertha and Donald have what it takes.

Turn On the Heat was a lot of fun. Pure entertainment for hard-boiled fans. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Lonely Heiress,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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When all else fails, a Perry Mason novel is always reliable. Erle Stanley Gardner was an old pulp man who knew his craft and understood what the reader wanted. The Case of the Lonely Heiress delivers the goods, complete with a nude female corpse for cover art opportunities.

Perry Mason’s new client is the proprietor of a sleazy lonely hearts magazine, which thrives on ads (some of them even legitimate) from people looking for romance (that’s what they used to do before Tinder).

The man tells them that one of his recent ads has been getting a lot of response. The woman who bought the ad claims to be an heiress, and is looking for a young man who comes from the farm. He wants to find this woman, who is obviously a fraud. Perry agrees to put his detective Paul Drake on the case, and soon the woman is located.

Oddly enough, she turns out to be completely legitimate. And before long Perry’s working for her, and then things get complicated, and then somebody gets killed.

And it all comes down to a neat criminal plot, unraveled in the nick of time in the classic Perry Mason style.

Those of us who know Perry Mason mostly from TV don’t really know the early Mason. That Perry Mason was forever young, while actor Raymond Burr aged (and put on weight). He lacked the judge-like gravity of Burr’s interpretation. He was light-hearted, physically active, and not always strictly ethical. In this story (published in 1948) he sails pretty close to the wind in terms of his handling of evidence.

Good entertainment, The Case of the Lonely Heiress is an amusing book for occupying your time while waiting in a train station.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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For some reason, perhaps because of the old TV series (which I hated as a kid but quite like now), I never really considered reading a Perry Mason book until fairly recently. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much I’ve liked them. There’s no great writing here – the prose can be pretty shopworn – but Erle Stanley Gardner was a top-notch plotter. One reads these books for the surprises. Today’s review: The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom.

Attorney Perry Mason is putting in late hours in his office one night, when he spots a pair of lovely female legs on the fire escape. He confronts the possessor of those legs, persuading her to come inside. (Mason is certain that she tosses a gun into the alley in the process, but she insists that’s not true.) She tells him that she has been concerned about the oil exploration company that occupies offices directly above his. She thinks someone is up to something shady there, and as a relative is an investor, she wanted to see what was going on. The story’s a little thin, but she manages to escape Perry in the end.

The next day Perry meets the manager of the office upstairs, who wants to hire him on a divorce matter. He recently went to Mexico to get married, not realizing that his first wife, who had told him she had divorced him in Reno, did no such thing – and now she’s trying to use bigamy as a lever against him. Perry learns that she has gotten the police involved, and accompanies his client and the new wife to Mexico, where they can get a Mexican divorce and marry legally.

But when the police put out a warrant for murder against his client, things get complicated.

There are some very nice plot twists in The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom. I especially liked one where Perry tries to get a jump on the prosecution strategy and it comes back to bite him. Lots of lies, lots of twists, and a surprise ending in the Gardner style.

First class, undemanding entertainment. I enjoyed The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Careless Kitten’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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Picked up another Perry Mason mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner. I enjoyed the first one I read. The Case of the Careless Kitten didn’t please me quite as much, but it offered some interesting looks at some of the characters.

Helen Kendal wants to marry a soldier (the book is set in 1942), but her guardian, her aunt, is opposed to the match. If the aunt’s husband, Helen’s uncle, who disappeared ten years ago, were declared legally dead, Helen would have money coming from his will, and would be able to afford marriage. But the aunt insists her husband is still alive.

Then one day, Helen’s pet kitten shows signs of poisoning. She rushes the animal to a veterinarian. But that same evening, the aunt suffers poisoning too, and has to go to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Helen has gotten a call from a man who identifies himself as her missing uncle. He wants her to hire the lawyer Perry Mason, and go with him to meet a man at a seedy hotel. That man will lead them to a meeting with the uncle. Thus the mystery begins.

If it all seems a little convoluted, I thought so too. This was a complicated story, and I found it a little work to keep up.

On the other hand, I was intrigued to see the Perry Mason characters in a pre-Raymond Burr light. I’ve often read that author Gardner rarely described his characters, but this book was richer in character description than most. And it contradicts the later TV portrayals. I wonder if Gardner didn’t make it a point to eliminate descriptions after the show started, in order to promote it.

Perry Mason was, we are informed here, a tall man. I don’t think Raymond Burr was notably tall. (I remember reading, in one short story, that Mason was slender-waisted. Definitely not true of Burr.) Mason and his secretary Della Street also seemed much more romantically involved here than they would on TV.

We’re told here that Hamilton Burr was a big, bullish man. Not much like William Talman.

Lieutenant Tragg, the police detective, was the greatest surprise. He’s a young man, we’re told here, and well-dressed. The TV casting people definitely went another way with Ray Collins.

I found the final solution of the book pretty complicated, and Mason’s choice for explaining it all a little disappointing. Nevertheless, The Case of the Careless Kitten was professionally written and highly readable.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Terrified Typist,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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Like every child of the 50s, I know Perry Mason in the form of Raymond Burr on TV. (I hated the show when my mother watched it, but now I find it quite delightful in reruns.) And I’ve read a couple of PM short stories over the years. But I’d never read a Perry Mason novel before. Critics indicate that Erle Stanley Gardner, the author, was not big on characterization, which usually means a book won’t be my kind of thing.

But I got a deal on The Case of the Terrified Typist and I tried it anyway. And you know what? I now know why the Perry Mason series was so popular. Gardner knew how to spin a tale.

Trial attorney Perry Mason has a big document that needs retyping, and his secretary Della Street is having trouble finding a competent typist. She calls an agency, but they can’t promise much. Then a woman shows up in their office and, asked if she’s the typist, she says yes. She turns out to be a whiz at it, and gets a lot of work done very quickly, very accurately. Then she disappears as mysteriously as she appeared.

When Perry and Della learn that the police are in the building, looking for a woman who robbed a diamond import business, they do a search and find a clump of chewing gun attached to the bottom of the typist’s desk. Inside that clump are valuable diamonds.

That’s the neat hook that opens The Case of the Terrified Typist. As the story proceeds, Perry will be hired to represent one of the diamond company’s employees against charges of murdering a diamond smuggler. Surprisingly, Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, chooses to bring murder charges without a body being found.

The whole story was complex, but it was also lively and suspenseful. I had a good time reading it. It made few demands and entertained me thoroughly. I just might read more Perry Mason.