Changing of the Guard

Early in the Perry Mason series, Gardner wrote of the LAPD as a corrupt organization who were not above wiretaps, coercion and torture. As the series progressed and he desired to make the books more palatable to his middle-class audience, Gardner changed Mason's police opponents. The buffoonish Sergeant Holcomb would be replaced by Lieutenant Tragg. It would be hard to think of the TV series having Holcomb, so the change was fortuitous. 

The Case of the Baited Hook would be Sergeant Holcomb’s last major appearance in the series. Mason leads him around by the nose. The lawyer takes the time to dictate to the switchboard operator, Gertie, while Holcomb waits. Holcomb nearly arrests Mason after the lawyer has already named the guilty man and had him detained by the police. In order to stop Holcomb from pursuing the arrest, Mason plants a damaging account of the sergeant’s incompetence in the local newspaper. Struggling to deal with the publicity, Holcomb drops his case against Mason.

 The next book, The Case of the Silent Partner, introduces Lieutenant Tragg to the series. Holcomb’s behavior had become repetitive in the last few cases, and Gardner took the opportunity to replace the policeman with a brighter and more vivid opponent. While never mentioned outright, Della alludes to an incident where Mason got Holcomb transferred. Gardner would later say that Tragg represented the improved, less corrupt LAPD.

Tragg follows Mason’s every step and gives the lawyer more chances to defend his actions than did Holcomb. For the first few chapters of the book, the policeman and the lawyer work side-by-side to investigate the poisoning of a hostess. Once Mason has a client, the two become adversaries, and the case quickly becomes a competition as to who can properly interpret clues and solve the crime. 

Proof is in the Photos

           A dozen years ago now, I wrote the following passage for my biography of Craig Rice:

Despite the lack of new work, Craig continued to promote herself and her work. She was her own best publicity machine when a fan from Colombia, South America, sent her a twelve-foot boa constrictor. Rice quickly named the snake Malone and posed with it for pictures and gave the reptile to a local animal shop. Shortly after that, the boa gave birth to 72 baby boas, setting a scientific record. Again Rice posed with the children of Malone as they slithered across her desk, typewriter, and books. After the photo shoot, the animal keepers had to dismantle the typewriter to return all of the young snakes back to the pet store.

 I was surprised at the time that a few fans questioned the story. Rice had often told wild tales about her exploits -- couldn't this have been another example of that? I was surprised by the questions. The story had been reported to me as fact, and I had taken it that way. 

Fast forward to 2013. Lo and behold, I find a photo that shows Craig, the typewriter and the boa with all of its wriggling progeny. It's not for the weak hearted, for sure. 

The Case of the Buried Clock

In The Case of the Buried Clock, Gardner makes his only reference to World War II where one of the main characters is recuperating from an arm injury received during combat. Unlike his other two series, Gardner made very few concessions to the war in the Mason books. He wanted to keep the stories as timeless as possible. In doing so, all references to historical events of significance were kept to a minimum. While both Donald Lam and Doug Selby would enlist for their country, Perry Mason remained behind with

no explanation of why he had not been drafted or enlisted to fight. This decision has probably lengthened the life of the series since there are no historical markers to tie the books to a particular era.

 He goes to a cabin in the woods in order to convalesce after his wartime service and hears the ticking of a clock outside. He finds the clock and noticed that the clock is not set to the current time. When his romantic interest’s brother-in-law is found dead in the cabin and the victim’s wife is seen throwing a gun off the side of the road leading to the cabin, Perry Mason agrees to help the victim’s wife. Gardner does a good job of showing how the police tend to stop investigating when they have found a viable suspect. In court, Mason makes the point that the police, having found a gun they suspected was the murder weapon, didn't search any further for the weapon thrown from the road. Gardner states through his character:

“They sincerely believe that everything they do has a tendency to uncover the truth, that anything they are stopped from doing is a monkey-wrench in the machinery. Therefore they look on all laws which are passed to protect the citizens as being obstacles thrown in front of the police.”[i]

The objectives of the police versus that of the citizenry is a theme that Gardner will repeat, especially when he begins work with the Court of Last Resort. In this book, too much is made of the clue of the clock and the use of sidereal time as an explanation for the clock’s timing.

---

[i] Gardner, Erle Stanley. The Case of the Buried Clock. New York: William Morrow & Co, 1943. page 55. 

The Next Big Thing

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

If writing a novel is like running a marathon, then writing a biography must be like a cross-country death race. I’ve just spent the last 4 years working on the biography of Erle Stanley Gardner, the very prolific author of the Perry Mason series. My trek has been even more daunting, given that Gardner could write an entire novel in 4 days. What would he think of me taking 4 years?

It did help that he was a man of perseverance. He wrote every day trying to meet a goal of 10,000 words a day. That’s about 40 pages to you and me. Before he learned to use a dictation machine, Gardner would type until his fingers bled. He took to wearing sticking plaster on the pads of his fingers to avoid getting blood on the keys. He wrote in the desert and in a hurricane while on a small boat. His dedication helped get me through 2 surgeries, thinking that if he could continue to write in those conditions, so could I.

The book is nearly complete. I’m working on the final edits for the book as we speak, and the entire thing should be bundled up to my agent by Christmas. 

Linda Hengerer's blog is at http://jerseygirlinthesunshinestate.blogspot.com/

What is your working title of your book (or story)? For the Defense

Where did the idea come from for the book? My Dad always used to bring home Perry Mason novels, and I always loved reading them. 

What genre does your book fall under?  Biography 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? The definitive biography of Erle Stanley Gardner

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Agency

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  3 years!

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest? Gardner was married for over 30 years to a woman he didn't live with.

Other blogs: 

http://murdermustadvertise.blogspot.com

http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/

http://www.sleuthsayers.org/

God Save the Mark

Well, I'm embarrassed to say that I must have been hiding under a rock. I'm not always up with slang, but for some reason, I've always equated "God Save the Mark" as a reference to the German currency! So imagine my surprise when I opened this 1968 Edgar winner and found the "mark" to be none other than Fred Fitch, a  man completely gullible, someone who is a mark for every easy con in the book.

After getting over the shock of that, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Fred Fitch inherits $317,000 from an uncle he's never met before. At first he's concerned because he's the softest of soft touches and he knows that in no time, he'll be parted from his money.

But it soon becomes obvious that he has bigger problems when bullets fly past him and cars follow him. Someone else wants that money and is willing to kill for it.

I first discovered Donald Westlake when he wrote The Ax. I found it and read it while GE was in the midst of one of its never-ending layoffs. For a guy who likes his mysteries funny, I fell in love instantly. I've read 1/2 dozen more over the years and they never fail to satisfy my funny bone.

Even though God Save the Mark is nearly as old as me, I found the book to be surprisingly undated in terms of New York City and the environs.

I got this book for my Kindle on a free day and I'm definitely going back for more.

Cleverness is our national curse. (Part 2)

The ideal of the combined author character and critic in the field was not lost on two young cousins from New York City. Most critics indicate that Ellery Queen, character, owes much to Philo Vance. The mannerisms, the use of esoteric knowledge, and the superior knowledge all harken back to Van Dine’s detective.

Just as Van Dine had followed the The 6-letter word Murder Case titling, Queen as author did the same. All of the first xx books in the series follow a similar pattern, The Nationality Object Mystery, calling notice yet again to the similarities between the characters.

Queen was nearly as insufferable in terms of not telling what he knew when he knew it. However, at least his reluctance to expound on a solution was explained in The Greek Coffin Mystery, where the character proposed not one or two solutions, but four solutions before the correct answer was uncovered. Even so, the early books contain chapter quotes from famous criminologists and philosophers about the nature of crime and the chapter titles spell out the book title and author. 

Ellery’s knowledge of the esoteric is well-known. In The Siamese Twin Mystery, Queen goes to great lengths to discuss a playing card as a dying clue held in the murdered man’s hand. He analyzes the card as a playing card, message and goes as far as to translate the suits into other languages. Queen, the author, even toys with the idea of one twin being a murderer, and the subsequent lack of justice that would result from this situation. Would they release the killer so that the innocent twin could be free or would they jail the innocent twin to punish the killer?

Queen even goes as far as to create his own nursery rhyme murder mystery in There was an Old Woman. In that book, Queen does his level best to use parts of the Mother Goose rhyme about the old woman in the shoe as part of his case about the Potts family. Chapter titles use parts of the nursery rhyme and clues are left that fit into the rhyme as well.

Even though Queen had written Calamity Town about Wrightsville, which typically marks the third period of Queen’s work, There was an Old Woman seems to be more first period, albeit a slightly cock-eyed version of the first period. Queen’s involvement comes through his father, the solution depends on rather arcane cluing and the murders themselves are interesting problems of jurisprudence.

That’s not to say that there aren’t many aspects to the book that aren’t solely Queen’s. The use of another set of twins is definitely a Queenian touch. The characters come from a genetically tainted family, much like the one in The Tragedy of Y. Major Gotch is a throwback to the silent male companion in The Dragon’s Teeth.

Queen did not meet the same fate as Vance, in no small part because Queen the character did change over the course of the series. Vance was so set in stone as a dilettante that he could not change. Queen as a character slowly evolved from pedantic to more realistic. This change allowed the character to survive into the 1970s. 

Something Borrowed, Something Brunette -- Erle Stanley Gardner's Birthday!

 The Case of the Borrowed Brunette borrows from Sherlock Holmes. The case begins with an advertisement for a brunette of a certain height, weight, age, and measurements to apply for a position. In using such a ploy, Gardner is recycling Doyle’s “The Red-Headed League,” which looked for a red-headed man to fill a position. While Gardner often claimed not to know much of the genre in which he wrote, works such as this, as well as comments made to editors and friends, reveal that he was well versed in mysteries both old and new. 

In this case, Helen Reedley is trying to deceive private investigators about her behavior. By hiring a woman who looks like her, Reedley is free to do as she pleases somewhere else. When the man who placed the ad for Reedley is murdered in Reedley’s apartment, the borrowed brunette and her chaperone are accused of murder. Mason agrees to represent them both, although he struggles more with the chaperone’s defense as the woman continues to change her story of what happened at the time of the murder. The book has an ending that is far more satisfying than other books of the period. The circumstantial evidence is read a different way by Mason, and the solution is fair to the reader.

Today would have been Gardner's 123rd birthday. The work on the biography continues, and I hope to have it completed by fall.