ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Lazy Lover. William Morrow & Co, hardcover, October 1947. Pocket #909, paperback, 1952. Reprinted by Pocket many times. Later reprinted by Ballantine, paperback, 1981.

   My reaction to this mid-career entry in the Perry Mason series was, I have to say, decidedly mixed. As usual Gardner starts the tale with a huge mysterious come-on for the reader, with Mason receiving two checks in the mail from the same person in the same amounts ($2500) but from two different banks.

   Presumably it’s from a prospective client, female and unknown to either Perry or Della, but there’s no letter with either check, and further investigation comes up with an even bigger surprise: one of the checks has been forged.

   The mystery deepens. The husband of the woman who sent the checks comes into the office to tell Perry that she, his wife, has run off with his assistant. That’s not his big concern, however. Since the assistant is going to be an important witness in an upcoming lawsuit, the husband needs to get in touch with him, and fast.

   This all happens in the first 16 pages. When the husband turns up dead, it is all but certain that either the wife or the assistant is responsible. Getting all of the ensuing relevant information into the story is a tough job, and even though Gardner specialized in plots as tangled as they could be, there was a point in this particular story, about halfway through, that the going was getting awfully slow. That’s when I almost gave up, thinking that not even he could pull all of the threads of the story together again.

   If you were ever to read this book and you find yourself in the same situation, my advice to you would be to persevere. I did, and I’m glad I did. I do not remember ever seeing a map in one of Perry Mason’s adventures before, but this one does, and you’d better look at it extremely carefully, as the solution depends 100% on it.

   The problem with the solution, though, while more than satisfactory, is that there is no way whatsoever that any scenario such as this one would ever take place in the real world. None at all. Stories in which one of the main characters claims to have amnesia tend to be that way.

   And the business with the two checks? Easily explained, in a couple of lines at the end. The real story is the question of who was in the the car the dead man was in, and when.