Erle Stanley Gardner’s Turn On the Heat

Turn On the Heat, published under the name A.A. Fair in 1940, was the second of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Cool and Lam private eye novels.

Gardner achieved enormous success in the 30s with Perry Mason but he started his career in the pulps so a series of hardboiled private eye novels was just the sort of thing he would be likely to be good at. And he was. The Cool and Lam PI novels were extremely successful.

It’s not absolutely essential but it helps a good deal if you start with the first of the Cool and Lam novels, The Bigger They Come (published in 1939). It gives you useful backstory information on this unusual PI partnership. Bertha Cool is middle-aged, overweight, penny-pinching and ruthless. Donald Lam is a young disbarred lawyer down on his luck but he proves to be the ideal operative for the Bertha Cool Detective Agency. Donald is a runt. He couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag. He’s an easy guy to push around. But pushing Donald Lam around is a seriously bad idea. He’s smart and devious and he knows nasty ways to get even.

Turn On the Heat starts with a fairly routine missing persons case. Dr Listig and his wife disappeared twenty years earlier. Now someone wants to find Mrs Listig. The obvious place for Donald to start looking is the small town in which the couple used to live, Oakview. They were part of the younger set in what was then a thriving town. Oakview isn’t thriving any longer.

Donald does pick up the trail and then the plot twists begin. Finding Mrs Listig is easy. Much too easy. Cool and Lam don’t have to find Dr Listig but they do find him and that complicates things. A murder complicates things even further. And that’s not the end of it. There’s blackmail and political chicanery.

Bertha and Donald don’t always see eye to eye. Mutual deception and manipulation are par for the course for these two. They also both tend to take the view that if they know something that doesn’t mean they should share that knowledge. Bertha doesn’t always know what Donald is up to and Donald often doesn’t know what game Bertha is playing. Despite this they make an effective team. They’re both very good detectives.

Erle Stanley Gardner had been a prominent trial lawyer and he knew the law from the inside. And the law didn’t impress him. He thought the system was rigged against accused persons. Which is why his lawyer hero Perry Mason feels justified in using every trick in the book to protect a client. Cool and Lam take the same view. The client’s interests come first and if that means lying to the police and the DA that’s no problem. In Gardner’s novels the police tend to be either over zealous and unethical or they’re lazy, inefficient and corrupt. District Attorneys are ambitious political hacks. The police and the DA’s office don’t care about justice, they just want somebody to get convicted. That’s even more true of the Cool and Lam books. The police and the DA’s office are obstacles that it’s best to avoid and it’s also best to tell them nothing unless you have to. If you have to tell them something a smart lie is usually a better policy than the truth.

This gives Gardner’s crime fiction of the 30s and 40s a decidedly cynical hardboiled edge, and even a touch of noir fiction sensibilities.

As usual with Gardner the plotting is intricate and effective.

The real drawcards here though are Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. They really are delightful characters. They have lots of character flaws but one can’t help liking them and being amused by them. There’s plenty of barbed hardboiled dialogue, and there’s humour as well.

And there are hints of romance. Bertha is constantly amazed by Donald’s ability to charm women. In this case he romances Marian Dunton, a reporter on the local Oakview paper and also, incidentally, a key witness to that murder. Is Donald merely using Marian or does he really care for her. It’s hard to be sure and it’s probably a bit of both. He’s cynical enough to manipulate women but decent enough to try not to hurt them.

Gardner used small California towns as settings to great effect in some of the Perry Mason stories. It works extremely well here. I think it’s fair to say that Gardner was not a big fan of small towns.

Turn On the Heat is a fine fast-paced hardboiled PI yarn with an excellent mystery plot as well. What more could one ask for? Highly recommended.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Stuttering Bishop

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Stuttering Bishop is a Perry Mason mystery published in 1936.

It opens with a Church of England bishop from Australia asking Perry Mason for some legal advice regarding manslaughter and the statute of limitations. Which is a slightly odd thing for a bishop to do. If he is a bishop. You see this bishop stutters, and as everyone knows bishops don’t stutter.

The case, as it develops, involves a rich man named Brownley whose son contracts a marriage the old boy doesn’t approve of. There is indeed a case of manslaughter involved, and there’s a grand-daughter. Or rather there are too many grand-daughters. And there’s an enormous inheritance, and of course there’s murder. Paul Drake of the Drake Detective Agency is as usual involved but there are other private detectives poking around as well and they may be up to no good.

There are alibis aplenty, there are all sorts of questions of identity, there are witnesses but there’s the matter of what they actually saw and more importantly what it meant. There are lots of ruthless people and lots of tangled motives.

It’s pretty unusual for Perry Mason to get mixed up in a fist-fight. It’s even more unusual for Della Street to be involved in a fist-fight or involved with guns. But both those things happen in this story (and Della gives a pretty good account of herself). There’s quite a bit of action in this story and it’s worth remembering that Gardner started his writing career as a member of the hardboiled Black Mask school. And this is quite a hardboiled story at times.

It is usual for Perry and Paul Drake to indulge in a few minor activities that are perhaps not strictly legal, such as breaking and entering and burglary, and of course they do so in this tale. And Della does a few mildly naughty things as well, just little things like grand larceny. This is a 1930s Perry Mason story after all.

This time Mason gets himself in really deep trouble by, as always, not worrying too much about legal ethics. He’s in so deep even he thinks he could end up being disbarred or prosecuted or both and although he has some nice theories they have holes in them and he has no idea how to plug those holes. The only way out involves doing something he really dislikes doing.

The courtroom scenes are, as is quite often the case in the Perry Mason novels, involve preliminary hearings rather than actual trials (perhaps because this gives Gardner the chance to allow Mason to play a bit more fast and loose with procedures than would vie the case in a trial). He doesn’t face District Attorney Hamilton Burger in court but he does face him behind the scenes.

The solution is complex, with a lot of plot strands that somehow have to be woven together. Fortunately Gardner does this pretty well.

The Case of the Stuttering Bishop is typical 1930s Erle Stanley Gardner with Perry Mason flying by the seat of his pants and it’s hugely enjoyable.

I’m continuing with my project of comparing Perry Mason novels with the television adaptations from the 1957-66 TV series. My review of the relevant episode can be found here at Cult TV Lounge.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s pulp fiction, part 2 - the Lester Leith stories

Erle Stanley Gardner is best remembered for the Perry Mason mysteries. Aficionados of golden age detective fiction also know him as the creator of other series characters such as private detectives Cool and Lam and DA Doug Selby. Before achieving immense success as a novelist Gardner had been an unbelievably prolific writer of short stories and novelettes for the pulps and had created several other series detectives who gained huge followings. One of the most popular was Lester Leith who appeared in around sixty short stories between 1929 and 1943.

Lester Leith is a gentleman thief. He’s also a hero rogue rather in the style of the Saint. Such heroes were immensely popular in the 1920s (Blackshirt being a prime example). He is a thief who preys on other thieves. He is a rich man and most of the money he steals goes to charity although, like the Saint, he keeps enough of his ill-gotten gains to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle for himself.

And as is the case with the Saint the police go to great lengths to bring Leith to justice but he’s always one step ahed of them. They have even planted a police spy on him, posing as his valet. This amuses Leith. He nicknames the spy Scuttle. While his charitable donations are sincere he seems to be motivated primarily by the sheer joy of irritating the police. Of course Leith has a nemesis, or at least a would-be nemesis, in the person of Sergeant Ackley. Ackley regards himself as a pretty clever fellow and he is convinced that sooner or later he is going to catch Leith. The trouble is that while Ackley is sneaky and devious the truth is that he’s not all that smart, and perhaps not all that honest.

Ackley’s invariable method is to get his spy to tempt Leith into attempting to solve a carefully selected case

False Alarm was published in the 5th November 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.
Leith has become interested in a crime involving a phoney fireman. While a fire raged in one house the foeman slipped next door and cracked the safe belonging to George Crampp, a retired businessman who claims to be penniless but who is suspected of having had a considerable amount of dishonestly acquired money in that safe. For this case Leith will need to buy up every single fireman’s costume in every single costumers’ in the city. He will also need a hundred dollar bill soaked in gasoline, crumpled up and then ironed flat. And last but by no means least, he will need to find an attractive red-headed woman with an evil temper and some training in boxing.

Sergeant Ackley thinks that this time he is finally going to nail Leith. Leith has spotted a clue that no-one in the police department has spotted and he has a fair idea of the solution to the mystery, and how to profit from it. It’s a typically clever little Gardner story.

The Seven Sinister Sombreros is another Lester Leith case, published in Detective Story in February 1939. This time Sergeant Ackley hopes to use the case of the drugged guard to trap Lester Leith.

A man named Bonneguard has formed a new political party, or perhaps it would be truer to say a new political cult. Whether Bonneguard has any actual interest in politics is uncertain but his new party is proving to be very profitable for him. Profitable enough that he has over $100,000 in the safe in his home. Or rather he had $100,000. The money has now been stolen. It was not just a guard who was drugged - two guards and a guard dog were immobilised but the source of the drug is a mystery.

Leith issues his instructions to Scuttle - to allow Leith to save the case Scuttle must procure for him a monkey wrench, half a dozen 1936 Fords, a ukulele, some cowpunchers, seven cowboy hats and a miniature replica surfboard. And of course, a hula dancer. In fact, several hula dancers.

There are really two plots here. There’s the search for the solution to the crime and then there’s Leith incredibly devious scheme to relieve the thief of the money without getting caught himself. Both plots are intricately constructed, especially the latter. A very entertaining novelette.

Gardner’s genius lay in coming up with a successful formula and sticking to it while at the same time making his plots ingenious enough to prevent the formula from going stale. He had a formula for the Perry Mason books. And based on these two books it appears that he had devised a perfect formula for Lester Leith stories. Sergeant Ackley tries to tempt Leith into investigating a particular crime, Ackley sets a trap, Leith orders Scuttle to obtain a collection of outrageous props, Leith stays one step ahead of everybody and there is always a colourful dame in the case.

These are light-hearted stories combining humour with skilled plotting. They’re great fun. There is a paperback collection of some of the Lester Leith stories. It’s long out of print but copies can be found if you hunt around for them. I know nothing about and I have no idea which stories are included but based on the two Lester Leith stories I’ve now read it might be worth looking into.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Curious Bride

The Case of the Curious Bride was the fifth of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries, appearing in 1934.

Perry Mason is of course famous for the flexibility of his legal ethics and in the early novels he pushes that flexility to extremes. He’s always careful not to cross the line into illegality but he sure does go very very close to that line. In this story he pulls some delightfully fancy tricks, persuading the Prosecution to torpedo its own case.

As usual Perry Mason gets involved before the murder takes place. A woman comes to his office to ask for legal advice of behalf of a friend. Obviously she is asking for the advice for herself and Mason makes it clear that he’s well aware of this and he’s not prepared to play such gamers. This hurts the woman’s pride and she storms out of the office. And then Mason, who despite being a lawyer does have a conscience, feels guilty. The woman needed help and he didn’t give it. So he decides he’s going to have to track her down before she gets herself into trouble.

Mason was certainly right to be worried that she’d get herself into trouble. Soon she’s facing a murder rap.

Rhoda Montaine’s problem is her marriage to Carl Montaine, a marriage that may or may not be invalid. This is because she presumed that her first husband Gregory Moxley was dead, but he’s far from dead and he’s going to be very troublesome. She has other problems as well. Carl’s father is a multi-millionaire, he dominates Carl completely and he does not approve of Rhoda. Carl himself is a big problem. Rhoda, a trained nurse, nursed him through a drug problem. He’s over the drug problem but it seems to have left his character even weaker than it already was. There’s also Dr Millsap, who is in love with Rhoda.

It’s no great surprise that Gregory Moxley winds up dead, permanently dead this time. Rhoda is the obvious suspect. The evidence seems overwhelming and Deputy D.A. Lucas can’t believe his luck - this time he can’t possibly lose, not even against Perry Mason.

Most lawyers faced with such clear-cut evidence against a client would despair but Perry Mason has some amazingly devious tricks up his sleeve this time. Seeing an unbreakable alibi destroyed is always fun but this novels offers a very clever variation on the theme. Of course it will only work if he can persuade the Deputy D.A. to walk into a trap, and there may be some minor ethical quibbles. In fact there may be some gigantic ethical quibbles.

And that marriage question will play a huge part in the trial as well.

District Attorney Hamilton Burger does not feature in this story. His first appearance will be in the sixth Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Counterfeit Eye. In The Case of the Curious Bride Perry’s adversary is Deputy D.A. John Lucas, a similar although perhaps slightly more abrasive character. While we’re used to seeing Perry play fast and lose with legal ethics it has to be said that Lucas comes up with some dirty tricks of his own. The question is whether he can play such games as well as Perry Mason plays them.

Neither Lieutenant Tragg nor Sergeant Holcomb appear in this story, in fact there is no significant part payed by any particular police officer. Della Street and Paul Drake on the other hand were regular characters in the novels right from the start.

Gardner really is in fine form in The Case of the Curious Bride. Courtroom scenes can be dull in the hands of lesser writers but they’re never a problem for Gardner - he knows how to build up to the inevitable display of legal pyrotechnics from Mason. We can see that Mason is about to pull a rabbit out of the hat but we have no more idea than the luckless Deputy D.A. as to how he’s going to do it. This is a lovely piece of plotting and a very very enjoyable tale. Highly recommended.

The Case of the Curious Bride was adapted for the second season of the Perry Mason TV series so I thought that having just read the book it would be fun to watch the episode immediately afterwards. You can read my thoughts on the TV adaptation at Cult TV Lounge.

Erle Stanley Gardner's The Case of the Buried Clock

The Case of the Buried Clock is a 1943 Perry Mason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner.

Harley Raymand, recovering from a war wound, is staying at the mountain cabin owned by banker Vincent Blane. Raymond has made a curious discovery. A buried clock. Why would anyone want to bury a clock? And the clock is still running. He also makes another discovery - a dead man in the cabin. The dead man is the husband of Blane’s daughter Millicent. He’s been helping himself to funds from Blane’s bank.

Since Millicent seems likely to strike the local sheriff as an obvious suspect Blane retains Perry Mason’s services. There’s actually a wide choice of suspects. There’s Millicent’s sister Adele, who hated the dead man. There’s a brother and sister, Burt and Lola Strague, and there’s wildlife photographer Rod Beaton. They were all on the scene. As was glamorous widow Myrna Payson.

Perry agreed to take the case because the clock angle intrigued him and he’s even more intrigued when he realises the clock is keeping sidereal time, not solar time. Setting a clock to do that is the kind of thing you’d do if you wanted to track the position of a star. Perry has no idea how that might tie in to the murder but he has a feeling that if he can find the connection he’ll crack the case. Also puzzling is the bullet. There isn’t one. There’s no exit wound so the bullet has to be in the body, but it isn’t. And then there are the tyre prints. And the family doctor who tells an amazing number of lies.

Deputy District Attorney McNair is young, ambitious and arrogant and he has a watertight case. He just can’t lose. If only Mason would stop carrying on about that damned clock.

There’s plenty of misdirection in this tale and Perry Mason (and Paul Drake) fall for quite a lot of it. The solution is more complicated, and more simple, than it appears to be.

Perry gets to express his feelings about police ethics, his view being that the police don’t have any. For their part Paul Drake and Della Street are a bit worried that Perry’s legal ethics seem to encompass everything from concealing witnesses to breaking and entering but when you work for Perry Mason you just have to get used to such things.

Perry likes to set traps for prosecutors to walk into but this time it seems like he may have met his match as he blunders into some very subtle traps laid by Deputy D.A. McNair. A lesser man might have been daunted but this sort of thing just gets Mason more motivated. He’s going to have to be very motivated indeed to win this case. Gardner always handles courtroom scenes with great skill and this book contains enough devious legal manoeuvrings to please fans.

Gardner’s method in the Perry Mason novels was to stick to the very successful formula he’d established but add enough twists to keep things fresh and interesting and in the 40s he was at the top of his game. It seems impossible that he can connect so many bizarre clues into a coherent plot but he does so.

The Case of the Buried Clock is not perhaps in the absolute top tier of Perry Mason stories but it’s still fine entertainment. Highly recommended.

My latest project is to pick the episodes of the 1957-66 TV series based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s novels and read the novel, then watch the TV episode and do parallel reviews of both. My review of The Case of the Buried Clock TV episode can be found here at Cult TV Lounge.

Erle Stanley Gardner's The Case of the Empty Tin

The Case of the Empty Tin is a 1941 Perry Mason mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner.

The tin referred to in the title is a tin of preserves, only there aren’t any preserves in the tin in question. The tin is empty but has been carefully sealed up. And nobody knows how it came to be on the shelf in the basement of the Gentrie home. It’s just a minor domestic mystery and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the murder that took place next door. But Perry Mason is interested in any and all mysteries.

The house next door to the Gentrie house comprises two flats. There seems to have been a shooting in the downstairs flat. Certainly a gunshot was heard. Perhaps two gunshots. Bloodstains were found. The occupant of the apartment and his housekeeper are both missing.

Perry Mason’s client is the man who lives in the upstairs apartment, a Mr Karr, a man who has reasons for not wanting to attract any publicity. In fact he’s so horrified by the prospect of publicity that he hires Mason to help Lieutenant Tragg solve the case as quickly as possible. Mason is happy enough to do so and he puts the Paul Drake Detective Agency to work digging up leads.

Mr Karr is crippled by arthritis and confined to a wheelchair so he can’t possibly be a suspect. On the other hand he does think it possible that he might have been the intended victim. He has been involved in some very legally ambiguous business dealings in China, the sorts of business dealings that can potentially lead to murder. Actually gunrunning is perhaps more than just legally ambiguous.

This is another case that sees Perry Mason sailing close to the wind as far as the law is concerned. Perry is never one to tell the police things that he doesn’t think they need to know but not reporting dead bodies is definitely taking a risk. He’s also risking his friendship with Paul Drake. Drake is used to Mason’s risk-taking but he does at least like to be told when Mason is leading him into a legal minefield. Mason in fact is much more reckless than usual in this story. There's a particularly memorable scene in which Perry and Della bluff their way out of a situation which seems certain to lead to their arrest for breaking and entering.

The tin itself is obviously going to turn out to be an important clue, and it’s a very clever (if slightly far-fetched) one.

There are other vital clues that are cunningly contrived to contain various layers of ambiguity, and even Perry Mason is led astray by one such clue.

In this story Perry Mason mostly acts as a de facto private detective with surprisingly few opportunities for pulling legal rabbits out of hats. It’s one of the rare Perry Mason novels that does not include a single courtroom scene.

Lieutenant Tragg and Perry Mason are not always on the most cordial terms but this time they more or less on the same team, even if Tragg still has his suspicions that Mason is trying to put one over on him.

Mason is definitely trying to set traps for the chief suspects. Tragg is trying to do the same thing. And the murderer is setting traps as well. Setting traps for various persons, including Perry Mason.

The plot is fiendishly complicated. Gardner does his best to play fair with his readers.
He was a master craftsman but at times in this book the plot does seem to be in danger of collapsing under its own weight. It does hold together, but only just.

The Case of the Empty Tin is not quite a typical Perry Mason mystery and it’s also not quite in the front rank of the Perry Mason stories. It’s still good entertainment and can still be recommended to fans.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Rolling Bones

Erle Stanley Gardner’s 1939 Perry Mason mystery The Case of the Rolling Bones adheres closely to the formula Gardner had well and truly established. And it works beautifully.

Mason is hired by a young woman named Phyllis Leeds to protect the interests of her Uncle Alden. 72-year-old Alden Leeds made a fortune in the Alaskan goldfields at the beginning of the century and now he seems to be planning to marry. Alden’s relatives are not pleased as the marriage could spell the end of their expectations for hefty inheritances. They are trying to get the old boy committed to an asylum.

As is fairly usual in the Perry Mason novels there’s no question of murder, or any serious crime, until we’re a very long way into the book. There is however a definite puzzle. Or rather there are a number of puzzles. There are several intriguing questions of identity. There’s more than one marriage that is being obstructed. There’s also more than one missing person. And finally there’s the question of the loaded dice.

Of course all this does eventually lead to murder. Which raises those questions of identity again.

The timing of the murder should be straightforward. The apartment house in which the murder took place was under surveillance by the Paul Drake Detective Agency so the times at which various people arrived and left are known with complete certainty. But the timing still turns out to be problematic.

There are two major courtroom scenes. The first, in which Mason is attempting to block the family’s attempts to have Alden locked up in an asylum, is an absolute joy. Mason sets an exceptionally clever and devious trap for the opposing counsel who proceeds to walk right into it in the most eminently satisfying way. The second courtroom scene is perhaps not as amusing but it’s more dramatic.

In a Perry Mason story you expect Perry Mason to cut a few corners as far as legal ethics are concerned. Which is exactly what he does. You also expect the District Attorney’s office to be even less ethical, which is exactly what happens. The only real differences are that when Mason plays fast and loose with either ethics or the law he does so in order to protect the interests of his clients, and he does so with more skill than the D.A.’s office. As usual in Gardner’s novels the message is that if you’re accused of a crime you can’t trust the police or the D.A. to play fair so you’d better hope your lawyer knows all the legal tricks in the book.

This concern over the way that the legal system is stacked against the little guy is present in all the early Perry Mason novels but it’s especially marked in this case. In this story Mason pushes his ethical flexibility to the limit, but he does so because the D.A.’s office utilises outrageously illegal methods in attempting to entrap both his client and Mason himself. And Mason is prepared this time for a showdown on the matter - he’s prepared to put his career on the line to make his point.

Alibis play a major part in this mystery and if you’re a connoisseur of the art of busting unbreakable alibis you’ll be in bliss. Never use lamb chops as part of an alibi in a murder case - they can be treacherous witnesses.

Doubts about identity are a staple of detective fiction but this novel just keeps on adding more twists to the saga. Even Perry Mason has to admit he’s hopelessly confused about the identity of one key player. And every time the matter seems to be about to be resolved Gardner finds that he can extract one more twist from his plot.

Of course any Perry Mason story is going to be neatly plotted but this one is exceptionally strong in that area. There are colourful characters and some fascinating glimpses into the brutal life on the Klondike goldfields. It all adds up to a very entertaining novel indeed. Highly recommended.

The long-running Perry Mason TV series included some remarkably successful adaptations of Perry Mason novels sadly the adaptation of The Case of the Rolling Bones manages to eliminate all the really interesting elements of the book.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Substitute Face

The Case of the Substitute Face was the twelfth of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries. It was written in 1938 and it’s a fine entry in the series. It’s a murder at sea story, something I’m personally extremely fond of.

This one starts in Honolulu. Perry and Della Street have been on holiday. A large part of the action takes place on the ship on their return voyage to San Francisco.

A female passenger, a Mrs Newberry, wants Perry’s help. She tells him a complicated story involving her suspicion that her husband had been guilty of embezzling from his employer, the Products Refining Company. Perry explains that it’s not the sort of case he deals with but then he decides that it could provide some interest after all. It will also provide an opportunity to do a good deed for a charming young lady. Mrs Newberry explains that her main concern is the effect that a scandal would have on her daughter Belle, Belle being the charming young lady. Even Della thinks Belle is delightful, and she’s a bit less inclined than Perry to be dazzled by a pretty smile.

Mason cooks up a rather clever plan. He will try to cut a deal with the Products Refining Company whereby Mr Newberry can stay out of prison by agreeing to return most of the money (the portion he hasn’t spent). It’s all going splendidly until the murder takes place.

As in practically every Perry Mason story the lawyer is already on the scene and well and truly involved before the actual crime takes place. The accused is almost always already Mason’s client.  This is an essential part of the Perry Mason formula. The Perry Mason mysteries can be seen as illustrating Gardner’s view of how a defence would always be conducted in an ideal world, with the defence attorney on the spot to prevent the police and the District Attorney from coercing or tricking the accused into making damaging admissions. Gardner felt very strongly that the system was stacked against the little guy and a large part of this came down to the fact that ordinary people simply do not know their rights under the law. In this case Mason is able to make quite sure that his client says nothing whatever to the police.

This case hinges to a large degree on identity. There are eyewitnesses, they saw the murderer and the victim, but the murder took place on an open deck and at the time the ship was in the middle of a severe storm. The eyewitnesses cannot actual identify either the murderer or the victim. The Deputy District Attorney’s satisfaction with what seems like an open-and-shut case turns to disillusionment as Perry reveals that the case rests on certain major assumptions and those assumptions rest on nothing whatsoever.

The witnesses are interesting. They all saw important things, but not the most important things, and what they didn’t see ends up counting for more than what they did see. And eyewitnesses have to be treated with suspicion. The more certain an eyewitness is, the more likely he is to be wrong. The Perry Mason books are full of nice little observations on the quirks of the legal system, which Gardner slips in without ever giving the impression of lecturing the reader.

As usual Mason doesn’t trouble himself too much with legal ethics, and even indulges in a spot of breaking and entering (much to the dismay of Paul Drake).

At the end of the story Perry Mason is annoyed with himself because he didn’t unravel the mystery earlier even though the clues were obvious and the conclusions to which they pointed were obvious. The reader may end up feeling the same way. It’s the mark of a true master of the puzzle-plot mystery to be able to leave the vital clues right out there in the open in plain sight whilst still being confident of being able to lead the reader up the garden path. And Gardner was certainly one of the masters.

Mason is far from infallible in this story. He is taken by surprise once or twice and he even develops doubts about the outcome of the trial.
The courtroom scenes are fairly brief. Gardner understood that lengthy courtroom scenes can become very tedious so he made sure that when he put Perry Mason in court something startling would happen, something absolutely crucial to the plot, and it would happen without wasting too much time.

The Case of the Substitute Face is wonderful entertainment. Highly recommended.

Erle Stanley Gardner's The Case of the Howling Dog

The Case of the Howling Dog is a fairly early Perry Mason mystery, dating from 1934. By this time Erle Stanley Gardner already had the Perry Mason formula humming along like a well-oiled machine.

As usual Perry Mason becomes involved in the case before any serious crime has been committed. It appears that his latest case is absurdly commonplace - a matter of a man being annoyed by the howling of a neighbour’s dog, and the drawing up of a will. These are matters so trivial that Mason would normally not take such a case. But Perry Mason has the instincts of a detective as well as those of a lawyer and his detective’s nose has detected the scent of something  bigger. Mason likes cases that will bring him lots of publicity, that being the road to fame and success as a trial lawyer. However he also can’t resist anything that promises to be a bit odd or (even better) exciting.

As it happens his client, one Arthur Cartright, has paid him an enormous retainer so money is no problem in this case. Mason decides to spend some money. He asks his old friend Paul Drake to do a bit of digging and pretty soon every man in the Paul Drake Detective Bureau is busily gathering a mountain of information. Perry Mason means to find out exactly why Clinton Foley’s  howling dog should cause so much drama, why a man would go to so much trouble to spy on a neighbour, why a man would draw up a will with such curious provisions, and perhaps most of all he intends to find out why Cartright has such a strange interest in Foley’s wife. There’s also the matter of the beautiful young housekeeper who goes to a good deal of trouble to make herself look old and plain, and the deportation of a Chinese cook.

Mason soon has plenty of data but no real answers but he’s not entirely surprised when the murder occurs.

The plotting adheres to a rigid formula but Gardner always manages to introduce enough twists to make the formula seem fresh each time.

As a successful trial lawyer himself Gardner obviously loved courtroom scenes but he understood the dangers. They can quickly become boring so it’s essential to keep throwing in spectacular surprises. Since Perry Mason is an attorney whose entire approach to his job rests on springing surprises this works well.

This book gives Mason the opportunity to expound his legal philosophy. It’s not a defence attorney’s job to decide if the defendant is guilty or innocent, that’s the jury’s job. The defence attorney’s only task is to give his client the best possible chance, even to the extent of using what might appear to be dirty tricks.  The prosecution will certainly use dirty tricks so a defence lawyer actually has a responsibility to do the same in order to give his client a chance.

Compared to the later novels the Perry Mason of the early books was even more inclined to sail very close to the wind in order to protect a client. He won’t cross the line into actual illegality but he’ll go within a hair’s breadth of doing so, an approach that exasperates policemen and district attorneys who dream of the day that Mason will actually cross that line and they can nail him.

Mason gives a spirited and eloquent defence justification of the the adversarial nature of the trial system. Mason’s philosophical approach to the law was of course Gardner’s and it adds a bit of substance to the Perry Mason novels.

The difficult part is for the lawyer to do all these things whilst still remaining himself within the law. He can stretch the law as much as he likes but he can’t break it. The extraordinary balancing acts in which Perry Mason engages in order to do this provide much of the suspense and interest of the stories. The Case of the Howling Dog has plenty of examples. Even Paul Drake and Mason’s faithful secretary Della Street are horrified by the risks he runs and they’re familiar with his methods.

Gardner adds a nice little sting in the tail this time around.

This is one of several early Perry Mason stories in which an animal provides, directly or indirectly, absolutely crucial evidence. It’s a trick that Gardner used remarkably effectively and without resorting to mere gimmickry.

The Case of the Howling Dog is splendid entertainment. Highly recommended.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Baited Hook

Erle Stanley Gardner’s sixteenth Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Baited Hook, was published in 1940. It’s a fine example of the qualities that made Gardner one of the bestselling authors of all time.

One of the curious things about the Perry Mason mysteries is that Gardner liked to bring Mason into his cases before the main crime was committed. In fact this was almost an essential ingredient since a large part of Mason’s success as a lawyer hinges on his ability to prevent his clients from doing anything foolish, like talking to the police. Mason understands very clearly that the prosecution’s best chance of winning any case comes from the ability of the police to persuade the accused to make damaging and quite unnecessary admissions. In order to avoid this it is obviously an enormous advantage if somehow or other Gardner can contrive things so that Mason is retained by a client before the client actually needs an attorney.

It has to be said that Gardner consistently managed to pull off this trick with remarkable success. The Case of the Baited Hook provides a particularly imaginative example. Perry Mason is approached (at midnight) by a man who is reluctant to revel his real name. The man is accompanied by a masked woman ho does not speak. The man offers Perry two thousand dollars as a retainer with the promise of an additional ten thousand dollars should his masked lady friend suddenly require the services of a top criminal lawyer. He refuses to tell Perry the name of the woman concerned.

It’s an impossibly awkward situation for a lawyer but on the other hand ten thousand dollars (remember this is 1940) is a colossal sum of money. It’s the proverbial offer that one can’t refuse although there will be times when Mason wishes he had refused it.

Mason has another case to deal with, a case involving an orphanage functioning as a baby farm, an illegal adoption, Russian refugees fleeing from the Bolsheviks, the possible misappropriation of trust funds and a very suspicious share deal. 

Perry Mason is used to having to play detective to discover the identity of the real killer in order to clear his clients but in this case he faces a more unusual challenge - he must first discover the identity of his client. 

It’s a typically ingenious Gardner plot with a plethora of suspects and possible motives. This is a detective story in which the solution depends on establishing the actual time that the victim was killed - as Mason remarks at one point the alibis (and everyone in this story has one) remain fixed but the time of the murder keeps jumping around.

As usual Mason gets plenty of help from Della Street and from the Paul Blake Detective Agency. And as usual he finds himself at odds with the police (in the person of Detective-Sergeant Holcomb) and the DA’s office (in the person of his perennial adversary DA Hamilton Berger). 

Also typical of Gardner is the fact that Mason’s issues with the police have nothing to do with dishonesty (whatever his faults Sergeant Holcomb is a scrupulously honest cop). The problem is the very nature of the police culture. Police officers are trained to use persuasion, trickery and coercion in order to get an accused person to say a lot more than he should say, and a lot more than he is legally required to say. It’s the way the police get results. It means that even when the police are honest the system is stacked in their favour. 

Most (but not all) of the Perry Mason novels end with a climactic courtroom scene. The Case of the Baited Hook has no courtroom scenes at all. It does have a quasi-legal disciplinary hearing at one stage and several vital plot points rely on very nice points of law. One of Gardner’s strengths is his ability to have Perry Mason make use of arcane legal points to baffle his adversaries while at the same time making those legal points clear and straightforward to the reader.

I’ve now read half a dozen of the Perry Mason books from the 1930s and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. The Case of the Baited Hook has just about everything you could ask for in a Perry Mason mystery. It has a complex tightly constructed plot and it has Mason, as always, displaying his highly individualistic and flexible (if risky) approach to legal ethics. Highly recommended.

The Case of the Careless Kitten

The Case of the Careless Kitten appeared in 1942 and was the twenty-first of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries. The famous lawyer finds that solving this particular crime will depend on his understanding of feline psychology.

Helen Kendal receives an unexpected message from her Uncle Franklin. The message is unexpected because Franklin Shore disappeared ten years earlier and is presumed dead. Even more surprising is that Uncle Franklin wants her to contact Perry Mason. Soon afterwards a man is found dead. It’s clear that his murder has something to do with Franklin’s disappearance but what the connection might actually be is obscure, even to Perry Mason.

Helen’s kitten has just survived a poisoning attempt. It’s just as well he survives since that kitten will later provide Perry Mason with a very crucial piece of evidence. Someone has also tried to poison Helen’s Aunt Matilda. The elderly and imperious Matilda has been insisting for ten years that her husband Franklin is not really dead and she has obstructed every attempt to probate his will.

This novel follows the standard Gardner formula pretty closely. Which is no bad thing - Gardner’s formula was a very effective one and he demonstrated great skill in varying it enough to keep things interesting. As usual Mason takes on a client who soon falls under police suspicion. As usual Mason is not content merely to defend his client but undertakes his own investigation with assistance from his faithful secretary Della Street and private eye Paul Drake (and in this case from a careless but very helpful kitten).

Gardner had been a very successful trial lawyer whose own methods were as unconventional (and as effective) as Perry Mason’s. A courtroom scene is an essential element in the Gardner formula. He was smart enough to realise that while such courtroom scenes could be dramatic it was important not to let them run on too long and, even more importantly, it was essential that they should actually advance the plot.

This novel further develops the tense adversarial relationship between Mason and District Attorney Hamilton Burger. Burger strongly disapproves of Mason’s unconventional and exceptionally flexible approach to the criminal law and in this book the conflict between the two men comes to a head. In fact Perry Mason actually goes close to losing his temper, and is moved to offer a vigorous moral defence of his methods. Mason’s argument is that constitutional protections have been slowly but inexorably undermined and that this raises a very serious danger that the law could be used as a tool of political oppression. Mason is so passionate about this that the reader can reasonably conclude that Gardner shared his fictional hero’s concerns about the vulnerability of political freedom. Mason’s conclusion is that the danger is so great that lawyers are justified in taking a very bold and courageous approach to defending their client’s rights.

It goes without saying that Burger’s hostility inspires Perry to push his unconventional methods to the limit. It also seems to inspire a real edge of bitterness. Making Perry Mason angry is not a very wise thing to do.

One intriguing feature of the Perry Mason novels is the number of times that animals provide vital clues - a kitten in this book, a parrot in The Case of The Perjured Parrot, a canary in The Case of the Lame Canary and there’s at least one Perry Mason novel involving a dog. It’s an interesting technique - after all an animal is a witness that cannot deliberately lie.

Gardner began his career as a hardboiled writer for the pulps. The influence of the hardboiled school is apparent in the very early Perry Mason mysteries but his overall approach in the Mason books places Gardner firmly in the puzzle-plot tradition of the golden age of detective fiction. And Gardner was very good indeed at puzzle plots. Towards the end Della expresses her frustration that Perry’s solution of the mystery seems so obvious once it’s explained, and it has to be said that the vital clues are all laid out in plain sight. Although it does help if you have a basic understanding of cat behaviour!

The Case of the Careless Kitten represents Gardner at the top of his form. Highly recommended.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s pulp fiction

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) was one of the most successful crime fiction writers of all time, selling well over 300 million books in his lifetime. In the ten years before the publication of his first Perry Mason novel in 1933 he was an incredibly prolific (and incredibly popular) writer of pulp fiction. He aimed to write 1,200,000 words a year and usually achieved his target. That’s impressive enough but becomes awe-inspiring when you consider he was still holding down a day job as a lawyer. In one year Gardner sold no less than ninety-seven stories. This was a man who could write a full-length novel in three-and-a-half days.

Gardner’s pulp stories have been overshadowed by the success of the Perry Mason books, and have been somewhat unjustly neglected. The early Perry Mason novels are interesting in that they are stylistically fairly hard-boiled but structurally they’re pure plot-driven golden age detective stories. His early pulp stories are, not surprisingly, somewhat more hard-boiled but Gardner always gave due attention to plotting. He has been accused of being a formulaic writer. There’s some truth to that, but then all genre fiction is (and has to be) formulaic to some degree. Gardner has never really been given enough credit for his ability to create consistently satisfying plots within those formula boundaries.

I’ve been exploring some of Gardner’s pulp stories, featuring three of his series characters,  and they’re quite impressive.

Come and Get It was one of the many stories Gardner wrote featuring Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook. It’s more correct to describe him as an ex-crook because he’s now an amateur crime-fighter. Former thieves turned crime-fighter were immensely popular in the 1920s and 1930s, with Blackshirt and Simon Templar (The Saint) being among the best-known. 

In this story Ed Jenkins has to foil a blackmail plot against society girl Helen Chadwick and in order to do so he has firstly to foil a very ingenious scheme for a jewel heist. The clever plot involves an armoured car. This is very definitely  hard-boiled story, and a good one. It appeared in Black Mask in 1927.

Honest Money, which appeared in Black Mask in late 1932, was the first of a number of stories featuring lawyer-detective Ken Corning. Gardner only spent one month at law school but taught himself enough about the law to pass the California Bar exam in 1911. Being a lawyer who wrote pulp crime stories it was a fairly obvious move to create a hero who would combine the functions of attorney and detective. Corning was a kind of dry run for Perry Mason, although there are some minor differences between the two characters. Corning is a struggling an idealistic young attorney while Mason is a famous and well-established trial lawyer. It has to be said that while both men pursue unconventional methods Ken Corning seems to have a rather higher regard for legal ethics - for Perry Mason legal ethics are whatever you can get away with without being disbarred. Mason is the more interesting character but the Ken Corning stories gave Gardner the opportunity to experiment with what was at the time the fairly novel idea of a lawyer-detective.

Honest Money sees Corning pitted against corrupt city officials. His first case seems like a fairly minor affair. A woman who runs a speakeasy has been arrested for offering a cop a bribe. There are a few puzzling details about the case that lead Corning to suspect that something much bigger is behind this. The Perry Mason novels usually involve a climactic court-room scene but there are no such scenes in this story. By this time Gardner knew what Black Mask readers wanted and he probably felt they’d be more interested in gunplay than in points of law. 

The Cat-Woman is another Ed Jenkins story. This time around Jenkins has had some financial disasters and he allows himself to be persuaded to resume his life of crime. Or at least he is persuaded to become involved in something that is at best legally dubious. He is to steal a necklace and kidnap a girl, but he’ll be provided with signed statements from the owner of the necklace, giving him permission to steal it, and from the girl, giving him permission to kidnap her. You might think this all sounds pretty suspicious, and that’s exactly what Ed Jenkins thinks. But $10,000 for not actually committing a crime is a tempting offer. Of course it all turns out to be very complicated indeed, and while Ed Jenkins is drawn into a criminal conspiracy he still manages to be a hero. The story was published in Black Mask in 1927 and for a short story it contains an amazing amount of plot complexity. A clever and very entertaining tale.

Ed Jenkins features again in a 1930 Black Mask story, Hell’s Kettle. This is a very hard-boiled story indeed, with a prodigious body count and a climax involving not just machine-guns but hand grenades as well. It’s as tough and violent a story as you’re ever likely to encounter. Again he makes effective use of Ed Jenkins as a character trapped between the police and the underworld. Jenkins is a fairly typical pulp hero but with a few intriguing features. There’s a hint of tragedy about him - no matter how hard he tries to escape the world of crime he knows he will never entirely succeed and will always remain an outsider. He deals with this philosophically. Gardner had no interest in self-pity and he wasn’t likely to create a hero who indulged in such emotions. There is however just a touch more complexity to Jenkins than you expect to find in a two-fisted pulp hero. Gardner was often criticised for his poor characterisation, a criticism that seems a little unfair. Both Jenkins and later Perry Mason have some interesting character ambiguities.

The Monkey Murder, published in Detective Story in 1939, features yet another Gardner series character, Lester Leith. Leith is another variation on the gentleman-thief and is in fact pretty much an American Simon Templar - he steals but he only steals from other criminals. Such characters usually have a police officer who is determined to hunt them down. The war of wits between the gentleman-thief and his would-be nemesis is an essential ingredient to such tales. Gardner adds a nice touch - Leith’s faithful butler is actually a police spy. And he adds yet another clever twist - Leith knows all about it but doesn’t care because it just adds spice to his adventures. 

It’s an intricately-plotted and very entertaining story. It’s not the least bit hard-boiled, the style is light-hearted and breezy, and it’s very very close in flavour to Leslie Charteris’s work (which had become enormously popular in the US in the late 30s).

Gardner developed a thorough understanding of the fiction market. He could produce exactly the sorts of tough blood-drenched stories that Black Mask readers liked, and when he started writing the Perry Mason books he took a much more sophisticated approach although the pulp influence was still very apparent in the early Mason novels. Gardner was ambitious for success and he had the persistence to achieve it, and the flexibility to vary his style to suit whichever market he aimed at. He seemed to be able to vary his approach at will. 

He was also hard-headed. When Perry Mason was adapted to television Gardner negotiated the kind of contract most writers can only dream about, a contract that gave him casting approval and final approval of all scripts, in fact virtually complete artistic control. He had the right to veto any suggestions from the network and he exercised that right with enthusiasm.

Despite the immense popularity he enjoyed during his lifetime Gardner’s Perry Mason novels are now somewhat under-appreciated. His pulp fiction is even more neglected and deserves to be rediscovered in a big way.

The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe

The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe was the thirteenth of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries, appearing in 1938, and it’s a particularly baroque example of the golden age detective story.

This is one of several Perry Mason books in which the famous lawyer becomes involved in a case before an actual murder has occurred. In this instance Mason initially becomes involved in what seems like a very minor if puzzling case of shoplifting. Perry and his secretary Della Street have taken shelter from a rainstorm in a department store restaurant. An elderly woman has been accused of shoplifting. Perry is exasperated by the store detective’s obvious ignorance of the law and intervenes successfully on her behalf, and then treats the woman and her niece to lunch. The woman’s name is Sarah Breel, but why was she shoplifting? She is a fairly prosperous  widow and has never done anything like this before. Her niece Virginia Trent is a firm believer in Freudian psychological theories and explains her aunt’s odd behaviour in term of these theories. This affords Perry considerable amusement - he regards such theories with extreme scepticism.

Shortly afterwards Virginia Trent asks Perry Mason for help in somewhat stranger circumstances, involving her uncle’s indulgence in periodical alcoholic benders and some missing diamonds. Mason is intrigued by this family’s propensity for becoming mixed up in odd dramas and asks private detective Paul Drake to do a little digging on the subject. At this stage there’s no reason to suppose that any crime has been committed but Mason has a hunch that his services are likely to be required, and he’s right. Sarah Breel finds herself facing a charge of first degree murder.

When he was on top of his form Gardner could construct some delightfully outrageous plots, and he’s in very good form in this novel. The plots twists and turns in the most delightfully byzantine manner. There are two murders, two guns and two fatal bullets but the relationships between the murders, the guns and the bullets soon take on breath-takingly complex dimensions. 

The climax comes in an extended courtroom sequence in which Perry Mason throws a series of curve balls that leave Detective-Sergeant Holcomb and Assistant DA Sampson reeling. It’s a bravura performance by Mason, and a bravura performance by Gardner as the plot twists get twistier and twistier. 

While it’s perhaps not quite fair play, with Mason (and Gardner) having cards hidden up their sleeves, it’s still immense fun and the reader cannot help admiring the sheer inventiveness of the plotting.

Perry Mason is an interesting and slightly unusual golden age detective hero. He’s brilliant, but he differs from other equally brilliant fictional detectives in being somewhat morally ambiguous. His methods stretch legal ethics to breaking point and beyond, and in the early novels at least he is often guilty of conduct that is not merely unethical but positively illegal. In this respect  he bears some resemblance to rogue heroes like Simon Templar who are happy to bend or even break the law in the interests of justice. Perry Mason is in some ways even more morally ambiguous - he puts the interests of his clients before the interests of justice. In fact his only real morality is that he won’t betray a client. 

The early Perry Mason novels (I haven’t read any of the later novels) are dazzling and hugely enjoyable pyrotechnic displays. The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe is highly recommended.

The Case of the Counterfeit Eye

The Case of the Counterfeit Eye is one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s earlier Perry Mason mysteries, published in 1935. And it’s a treat for Perry Mason fans.

Perry Mason is approached by a client named Brunold who has an unusual problem. One of his glass eyes has been stolen and replaced by an inferior quality eye. His fear is that the missing eye could be used to frame him for a crime.

There are two kinds of glass eye. There’s the kind you buy off the shelf, and then there’s the custom-made variety. Only a handful of people in the United States make the custom-made variety. It’s a very specialised art and an expert can easily identify the maker of a particular eye. Brunold’s fear is therefore quite plausible.

Perry also has another client, a young man who has been embezzling money from his employer, a notorious loan shark.

These two sub-plots will come together in an intricate manner which involves murder, divorce, inheritances and glass eyes.

Gardner’s plots were always clever but the real interest of the Perry Mason novels, at least the early ones, lies in the methods of the famous trial lawyer. Perry Mason is not exactly unethical but he certainly pushes legal ethics about as far as they can possibly be pushed, and there are times when he comes perilously close to unethical or even downright illegal practices. Mason is not a rogue lawyer but he believes in doing everything he can to protect the interests of his clients.

Mason’s methods naturally enough tend to outrage the police and in the past they have aroused the ire of the District Attorney. Now there’s a new DA, Hamilton Burger, who will of course feature in further Perry Mason stories. Burger isn’t exactly delighted by Perry’s methods but he is inclined to think that those methods, while they might involve sailing rather close to the legal wind, are essentially legitimate. The new DA’s tolerance will however be stretched to the limit in the course of this case.

Mason’s flexible approach to legal ethics makes him an interesting character. There is certainly a degree of moral ambiguity about him. The DA considers Mason to be a very good trial lawyer but an even better detective. The really interesting aspect of Mason’s character, and the chief appeal of Gardner’s novels, is the extraordinary way in which he manipulates the legal system to serve his clients’ ends. Mason knows every lawyer’s trick in the books plus a few he’s invented himself. Gardner had been a California trial lawyer himself and his specialised legal knowledge is put to exceptionally good use in his novels.

The Perry Mason stories, naturally enough, always involve at least one court-room scene. Court-room scenes can become rather tedious and Gardner was very much aware of that danger. He never allows the court-room scenes to dominate the action too much. He also has a knack for basing important plot elements on complex points of law without running the risk of confusing the reader or boring him with too much legal detail. He explains the legal points lucidly and succinctly.

Perry Mason is a man who enjoys his work. He likes to win his cases but the real pleasure for him lies in pitting his wits against criminals, against the police, and against the DA. The joy he takes in this is communicated to the reader and helps to make these novels so much fun. And The Case of the Counterfeit Eye is great fun indeed. Highly recommended.

The Case of the Lame Canary

The Case of the Lame Canary is a relatively early Perry Mason mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner, published originally in 1937.

It starts with a woman carrying a canary in a cage offering Mason the kind of case he never accepts - a divorce case. But there is one thing that bothers Perry about this case - why is the canary lame in his right foot? It’s the sort of trifling detail that really gets under the skin of a good detective. Perry just has to find out the answer to this question, so he takes the case.

The woman who brought the canary to his office is not actually his client - it’s her sister he will be acting for. At first it seems to be a depressingly sordid tale of domestic intrigue, but that’s before the murder is discovered. There may or may not be a witness to the murder - a man who may or may not be suffering from traumatic amnesia who may or may not even remember what he saw. Nobody knows exactly what it was that this man did see, but everyone is sure it was important. Perhaps even as important as the lame canary.

Gardner’s gives us the sort of fiendishly twisted plot that devotees of golden age crime fiction dote on, and those devotees will not be disappointed.

As usual Perry Mason sails very close to the wind legally speaking. Nothing he does is quite illegal (or at least could be proved to be illegal) but many of his methods would raise eyebrows at the Bar Association. But then Perry Mason is accustomed to raising eyebrows at the Bar Association.

The Perry Mason novels belong to that subclass of crime fiction in which the detective hero himself is as entertaining as the mysteries he unravels. Fans of the immensely popular 1950s Perry Mason television series will find that the Perry Mason of the books is a slightly more glamorous and distinctly less reputable figure than the television version. Not that Perry Mason would ever do anything that was actually crooked - he just enjoys upsetting the police and as he himself says his style in court is to throw legal monkey wrenches into the machinery of justice at every possible opportunity.

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) received virtually no formal legal training but taught himself law and passed the California bar examination in 1911. He divided his time between the practice of law and the writing of crime fiction for the pulp magazines until the early 1930s when the success of the early Perry Mason novels allowed him to devote himself full-time to writing.

The Case of the Lame Canary is classic golden age detective fiction and is highly recommended.

The Case of the Perjured Parrot, by Erle Stanley Gardner

The Case of the Perjured Parrot is my first sampling of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels. And it’s a pretty enjoyable read.

This one was originally published in 1939. It has the kind of outrageous and unlikely but highly ingenious plot you expect from a golden age crime mystery. There’s zero characterisation and atmosphere. Everything depends on the plot, but that’s the nature of this type of mystery and the plot is clever enough to keep things entertaining.

A millionaire businessman is found murdered in his mountain cabin, shot at close range with both barrels of a vintage derringer. There’s no shortage of suspects. There’s his wife, from whom he may or may not actually be divorced. There’s his feckless stepson. And there’s his girlfriend, who may actually be his wife.

And there really is a parrot, and the parrot really does commit perjury!

This is crime fiction with an emphasis on breezy fun. You’re not expected to take things overly seriously.

I enjoyed it enough that I’l be keeping a lookout for more of the Perry Mason books.