At
age 70, Gardner was still able to keep a good pace. In 1960 alone, he produced
three Perry Mason novels, all of which would rapidly become fodder for the
television show. These late novels show
certain common traits such as a concentration on secretaries as suspects,
marriages gone bad, a blurred line between Gardner’s own life and Perry’s along
with a number of recycled plotlines.
The Case
of the Waylaid Wolf is exactly what it sounds like. Arlene Ferris, a
secretary at Lamont Rolling, Casting and Engineering Company, experiences car
trouble after working late and agrees to accept a car ride home from Loring
Lamont, the son of the company’s founder.
After
a few excuses and detours, the pair ends up at a company-owned cabin, where
Lamont says that he is to wait for a man to pick up some papers. Following a
phone call, Lamont’s attentions turn brutal, and Ferris escapes in Lamont’s
car. She calls on Perry Mason the next morning to determine her options. While
she’s meeting with Mason, they learn that Lamont was killed out at the cabin.
The
timeline and forensics details play a large part in this case. The time of
death was determined in part by the contents of the victim’s stomach. Arlene
Ferris claimed that a meal including scrambled eggs was prepared, but never
eaten. The coroner puts the death at minutes after the meal was consumed.
The
Newsweek piece gave details on
Gardner’s creative processes for The Case
of the Duplicate Daughter. Gardner had indicated that he felt a creative
streak coming on. He’d avoided alcohol that evening, went to bed at 2 a.m. and
woke at 6 a.m. to begin work on the book, dictating with two recorders in front
of him. “All right, gal, hold onto your hat. Here it comes,” he had been
reported to say. Gardner dictated in the voice of each character, indicating
paragraph marks to the secretaries, but leaving all other punctuation to their
knowledge of the rules of grammar.
