Wed 31 Oct 2018
Mystery Review: ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Haunted Husband.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Haunted Husband. William Morrow, hardcover, 1941. Pocket #590, paperback, 1949. Reprinted by Pocket several times. Ballantine, paperback; 1st printing, August 1981. (A later printing from 1985 is shown to the right.)
Gardner was at his prime when he wrote this one, there’s no doubt about it. His client is a young woman who rather foolishly decided to make her way from San Francisco to Hollywood by means of hitch-hiking, which admittedly was a lot more common as a way of transportation than it is now, but when the man who picks her up in Bakersfield starts making a pass at her, she struggles and an accident happens.
Someone in another car dies, and when she’s found as the only one in her car, no one believes her story and she’s charged with manslaughter. No one but Perry Mason, that is, and when he learns that the car she was in really belonged to wealthy Hollywood producer, his dislike of unequal justice kicks in immediately.
Mason also liked his cases to be both challenging and complicated, and believe me, this one is both. It also has some juicy courtroom scenes, which I’m always looking forward to whenever I pick up a Perry Mason novel, and I don’t believe I’m the only one, then or now.
We also get some time spent with Perry, Della, Paul and even Lt. Tragg at dinner time, the latter still on the other side of the case, but still to able to overcome that and joke around a little. I may be wrong, but I don’t believe this happened in the Mason books all that often. Of course it doesn’t take very long for Tragg to stumble over evidence that implicates Perry, who’s already been skating on thin ice in the case for far too long. More than any other defense attorney ever would.
I mentioned up above that this is a complicated case. You can double or triple that statement with no trouble at all. I’m not sure I unraveled it entirely, even after reading through Mason’s explanation. It seems to make sense, but I’m not sure. There simply were too many people doing too many unusual things, both before and after the fatal accident.
The end result is a lot of fun to read, but I thought I’d better warn you about the ending.
October 31st, 2018 at 9:30 pm
I love the Mason books from this era. Perry plays fast and loose with the law to protect his client, sails dangerously close to disbarment, and to take a nod from Baroness Orczy survives by the skin of his teeth.
Almost all the Mason’s from this era are still fun to read.
However I will disagree a little that no real defense attorney would behave like Mason, too many did, including Gardner himself who pulled some notable stunts in court Percy Forman once took his boots and socks off and trimmed his toenails under the defense table to distract a jury during the prosecutor’s summation (the judge couldn’t see what he was doing, nor could the prosecutor, but the jury could). Perry was actually more ethical and careful than many a famous real life defense attorney.
There are court transcripts from the earlier half of that century that make Perry look conservative.
October 31st, 2018 at 10:28 pm
I stand semi-corrected, David, as far as courtroom trickery is concerned, and that’s always a lot of fun when Mason pulls up his sleeves and really gets to work.
But what I was really thinking of was Mason’s personal involvement in the case itself, interviewing witnesses before the police do, messing up fingerprints and in general, juggling evidence around so well that nobody knows who did what, when, and why.
Except Perry, of course.
November 1st, 2018 at 12:07 am
Steve, have you forgotten John J. Malone? During the 30s lawyers like Mason were popular in entertainment such as radio and books. People rooted for Jesse James and all sorts of anti-heroes as the cops did much the same as Mason but for the other side. Lot of the dislike for the justice system at the time grew from the laws side on prohibition, growth of unions and support of banks taking people’s homes and land. Someone like Mason standing up to that would be a hero to the oppressed,
November 1st, 2018 at 2:03 pm
This particular book is a great example of Perry Mason fighting for the underdog. His client is an unemployed hatcheck girl, and the owner of the car that she was in when the accident occurred is a wealthy Hollywood producer. When Mason learned about this, he took the case immediately.
And you’re right. Fighting for equality and justice under the law like this is what readers in the 30s and 40s wanted to read about.
November 1st, 2018 at 3:16 pm
The popularity of the canny lawyer in fiction dates at least back to stories told about Abe Lincoln and were popularized by characters like Post’s Randolph Mason, Baroness Orczy’s Skin ‘O My Tooth, and Train’s Mr. Tutt. Post and Orczy both featured lawyers very much in the Mason tradition — Randolph Mason much closer to the edge than Perry ever thought of being.
But there is no question the Prohibition and then the Depression era saw a sharp rise in outlaw heroes and slick legal types who fought for the little guy by any means possible. The whole spirit of the New Deal era was the idea of the little guy taking on the powers that be whether it be the rich or the state with gentleman adventurers, adventuresses, masked heroes, outlaws and some gangsters, clever defense attorneys, independent minded private eyes, and wise cracking reporters dominating the popular imagination.
What Gardner did in the Perry Mason novels that was unique was to marry the hard-boiled voice and attitude to the classic detective story and the court-room drama. It may seem formulaic today, but fictional lawyers outside of plays didn’t solve their cases with brilliant courtroom tactics in much of the pre Mason mystery fiction. It isn’t just Perry Mason who is a brilliant creation, but the entire milieu he operates in.
Prior to Perry you might get the rare courtroom mystery, but most would amount to perhaps Dr. Thorndyke giving evidence, or Lord Peter speaking before a trial in the House of Lords, Uncle Abner in a short story, or perhaps Mr. Tutt, but there was no one quite like Perry Mason and nothing like those dramatic courtroom solutions Gardner provided. If he didn’t invent the genre, he honed it and perfected it, and gave it a new a vital life on the printed page.
I always liked Gardner’s Doug Selby DA books, but I have to admit Selby is pretty colorless compared to his nemesis A.B. Carr or Perry. Gardner wisely made Perry part rogue, part detective, part gun fighter, and part crusading knight to the point we never really needed to know much about Perry as a human being, just that he was there to protect the innocent and risk everything doing it.
November 1st, 2018 at 7:27 pm
Every so often a comment is left on this blog that deserves a post of its own. This is one of those times.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=57555
November 1st, 2018 at 7:22 pm
David, I reviewed the Doug Selby TV Movie pilot here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=15065
and youtube has a copy available for viewing for now here:
November 2nd, 2018 at 8:02 am
David is right about the early Perry Masons. Mason is more of an action figure in these books. The later Perry Masons center around courtroom scenes and the Big Reveal.