|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top-Notch Page-Turner in the Perry Mason series, Jun 28 2000
Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction. "The Case of the Perjured Parrot": A This is one of the strongest entries in the Perry Mason series. Written in 1939, when Gardner was at the height of his limited creative powers, this well-constructed mystery is full of baffling clues that set the reader to thinking and speculating. The story is fast-paced, founded in authentic human behavior, and - best of all - the characters remain true to themselves. The mystery is quite mystifying, and the solution quite satisfying - the sort that brings to your lips a smile combining approval and acknowledgement of being outwitted. Multimillionaire Fremont Sabin is murdered in his mountain retreat. His recent financial activities have made him the center of a storm of personal vendettas and backroom business dealings. Confused identities, an unacknowledged romantic liaison, a parrot that witnessed the crime - Gardner mixes these and other interesting bits in a tantalizing concoction guaranteed to keep the reader guessing - and eagerly turning pages to get to the next twist in the tale. The story also provides Gardner with an opportunity to use a favorite detective device: the forensic "expert" who provides a definitive interpretation of the clues at the murder scene, an interpretation which invariably leaves the authorities with no alternative but to push Perry's client into a cell and oil the old electric chair switch. Gardner can't suppress a genuine pleasure in deflating the experts with alternative interpretations. A pleasure that was no doubt rooted in his personal interest in justice and fairness that led him in the 1950s to found the "Court of Last Resort", whereby he continued to try to rectify "misinterpretations" of physical evidence on a grander social stage.
|
