Tue 16 Dec 2014
Archived Review: ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Lazy Lover.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[10] Comments
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Lazy Lover. Ballantine, paperback, 1981. First published in hardcover by William Morrow, 1947. Subsequently reprinted by Pocket Books many times in paperback.
Perry Mason it was, who introduced me to “adult” mystery fiction — assuming you can exclude the inevitable batch of Sherlock Holmes stories that everybody read as a kid, didn’t you? — and I’ve had a weakness for his cases ever since. It’s been a while since I actually read one, though, so I read this one with a little bit of a question mark in my mind. Have my tastes changed? Is Gardner’s sometimes bare-boned writing style now slipped beneath me?
Nope. Not really. I notice it, his writing style, more now, and I can see more clearly what he’s doing when he does it, but I can assure you that the formula still works. I enjoyed this book, and I’m going to start reading more of them.
Start with a mystery, grab the reader’s attention right away, and don’t let go until you’re done. That was Gardner’s motto, and here’s a fine example of the kind of results you can get from that sort of story-telling philosophy.
Mason gets two checks for $2500 from the same person, previously unknown, on the same day. One proves to be a forgery. Add a possible amnesia victim. Various corporate power struggles and legal shenanigans follow. Then a murder, complete with detailed map. Perry Mason once again shows that circumstantial evidence is shown to be worth what it is, about the same as any other pack of lies. And the beginning chapter’s events are not explained until the very end.
Except for minor details and occasional changes in the law and police procedures between then and now, the Mason stories are very nearly timeless, and I’m glad to see them back in print again. [This review was written right around the time that Ballantine started their program of reprinting most, if not all of the Perry Mason novels.]
Rating: B.
[UPDATE] 12-16-14. I no longer feel the same way, I’m sorry to say. The formula Gardner used to wrote the Mason books, which were extremely popular when he was still writing them, has worn thin, and now 33 years later, I don’t believe there that any publisher is going to start reprinting them soon.
It isn’t so much the lack of characterization that has bothered me the last few times I’ve read a Mason story — that’s a given — but I’ve begun to believe that the intricacies of the plots don’t really stand up to close examination all that well. Or perhaps I’ve been reading from the tail end of the series. Maybe I should try choosing from the earlier books, the ones from the 30s that made Gardner’s reputation what it was from the start, and see how those read today.
December 17th, 2014 at 7:35 am
Interesting, because for several years I’ve thought about going back and reading the later books in the series that I’d never read but have just never gotten around to it.
What I have done, and which I’ve enjoyed quite a lot, is read whatever collections of Gardner short stories I can find. (Of course, many of these stories were originally published in the 1930s or even 1920s.) Lester Leith, Sidney Zoom, The Patent Leather Kid, Ken Corning, Bob Zane, Ed Jenkins, even their names are evocative of another era. All are worth checking out.
December 17th, 2014 at 9:23 am
Many people I know, when the subject of Erle Stanley Gardner comes up, tell me that they like the Donald Lam & Bertha Cool stories a whole lot more, the ones he wrote as A. A. Fair.
I can understand that. He’s a lot less rigid or formulaic in those books, the ones he wrote as A. A. Fair, but I’ve grown a lot less tolerant of the comic elements and/or eccentricities provided by Bertha Cool. Without her, the books are usually quite good. Donald Lam has a lot more personality than Perry Mason, but he’s much more close-mouthed about what he’s thinking about as he works his way through the cases he’s on.
As for Gardner’s pulp fiction, not only do I have all of the recent collections you mention, Jeff, but I also have hundreds of his stories in the original magazines. I just haven’t read any of them in years. In small doses, spread out over a period of time, I think I’d enjoy reading those collections too.
December 17th, 2014 at 10:24 am
I’ve told this story before but I’ll repeat it. At Pulpfest a few years ago, a good friend of mine bought the 5 issues of BLACK MASK containing THE MALTESE FALCON. Price was $4,000 which I thought was a bargain at the time(I’ve recently heard of a set being offered for $15,000).
But he didn’t care about the Hammett serial. He bought the issues to get the Ed Jenkins stories by Erle Stanley Gardner.
This is a true story.
December 17th, 2014 at 7:14 pm
The late Mason’s often don’t read much better than teleplays they are so stripped down to the basic elements, but the early Mason’s up to the mid 50’s and all the Lam books are still worth reading.
I reread TCOT LUCKY LEGS and a couple of the other early books and enjoyed them almost as if I had never read a Mason novel.
Have to agree about the pulp stories. They had tremendous energy, and Chandler claimed to have rewritten a 10,000 word Gardner story to get the hang of pulp writing.
Of course there are many I have never read, but I don’t think I ever read a bad Gardner pulp story.
December 17th, 2014 at 9:02 pm
I see from my own blog that I wrote a review of THE CASE OF THE FAN-DANCER’S HORSE back in the year 2000.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=554
That book also came out in 1947, and while I liked it, I had the feeling that the plot just wasn’t as neatly tied up as it should have been. I have a feeling that 1947 may be the start of a tipping point for me, that Gardner started to coast a little bit, then more and more toward the end. Which kind of makes sense. The first Mason book was in 1933 and the last two posthumously in 1972-73, a run that probably went on longer than was good for a series well on the way down for a while. I’ll start with a working hypothesis that 1953 was when the skid really started to show.
December 18th, 2014 at 7:35 pm
Some authors remain popular after their death and some don’t. There was a time when you saw ESG books on the newsstands in great quantities. I suspect that the syndicated episodes of Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason series may be the only thing remaining of that franchise. On the other hand, Agatha Christie has becomes something of a cottage industry with new biographies and other material being produced frequently. Most recently I bought a copy of a book called THE GRAND TOUR, her letters to her mother in 1922 when she and Archibald Christie traveled around the world for 10 months.
December 18th, 2014 at 9:27 pm
The continuing success of the Agatha Christie never ceases to amaze me, but in her case, the stories ARE virtually timeless — and much better written. She has almost always managed to fool me as well, no matter how many times I think that next time I’ll catch on before either Poirot or Miss Marple does. I seldom have.
December 18th, 2014 at 11:14 pm
I remember spotting the culprit in one story because of something he/she said that didn’t match what he/she had done. I can’t remember which one it was.
December 18th, 2014 at 11:27 pm
My memory is starting to get that way, too, Randy.
July 28th, 2015 at 2:59 pm
Gardner had the limitations, but I still read Mason and Lam & Cool stories for the nostalgia and mental work-out. Gardner’s vocabulary cries for expansion. His two adverbs are “abruptly†and “evidently.†Eyes always “twinkle†and a face is inevitably “like a mask.†His readable prose sparks zilch aesthetic thrill. Instead of developing the usual ingredients to a classic mystery – characterization and atmosphere – Gardner focuses on the puzzle, piling up clues, red herrings, and incidents in a perplexing fashion. He creates one-dimensional stock characters that have more mannerisms than personality. Perry Mason is forever pushing his thumbs into the armholes of his vest when pacing and thinking. Paul Drake is always sitting in a chair in his customary way. As for settings, LA is the main location but the city never genuinely comes alive to influence the plot one way or the other, as place does in Simenon’s Paris, Earl Derr Biggers’ Hawaii or Ross Macdonald’s Southern California.
But like I said, I still read ESG, usually when I’m not up to reading something else.