Wed 14 Nov 2018
Pulp PI Stories I’m Reading: ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Where Angels Fear to Tread.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” Lee Sparler #1. Novelet. Published in Detective Fiction Weekly, 30 December 1939.
Even though he got a huge cover blurb, most assuredly on the name value of the story’s author, Erle Stanley Gardner, as a private eye, Lee Sparler turned out to only be a one-and-done. By this time in 1939 Gardner was winding down his pulp-writing career. Perry Mason and the Donald Lam and Bertha Cool books were a lot more profitable, I’m sure.
As a character, Sparler is worth talking about, though, and I could do no better than to use the words of Theo. W. Garr, president of The Planet Investigations, Inc. Here he is describing the qualities of the operative he plans to assign to a prospective client’s case:
I don’t know how often a sales pitch like this would really be effective, but of course the client says yes, maybe a little doubtfully, but yes. His daughter, he believes, is being blackmailed. She’s always broke, and he thinks she’s been pawning her jewelry. Without letting her know she’s being watched, Sparler’s job is find out what’s going on. Which he does, and as it turns out, everything his boss said about him is true.
I think Gardner had a lot of fun writing this story, and it shows. The twists in the tale that you expect in a Gardner story are only minor ones, however, and in fact, to my way of thinking, the story ends far too soon. I enjoyed it, though. It’s too bad that Lee Sparler had only the one adventure, but we can always hope that he got the girl.
November 14th, 2018 at 12:57 pm
You make a good point there, Steve. There is nothing quite like reading a writer enjoying his work.
November 14th, 2018 at 6:45 pm
I think all writers must enjoy what they’re doing, but while reading this one, it was easy to imagine an extra glint in Mr. Gardner’s eye as he was sitting and working away at his typewriter.
November 14th, 2018 at 10:12 pm
The description of Sparler reads exactly how Bertha Cool describes her partner, Donald Lam. I wonder to what extent this is a failed Lam and Cool plot? Maybe it was a recasting of the failed Lam and Cool plot, The Knife Slipped. That was rejected by Gardmer’s publisher and only published last year or so, roughly 80 years after the fact.
I don’t think in 1939 ESG felt solidly established as a book writer that he could afford to stop writing for the pulps.
November 14th, 2018 at 10:34 pm
You may be onto something there. 1939 was the publication date of the first Lam and Cool book. Gardner could very well have decided to jettison any additional Sparler stories and incorporate his character into that of Donald Lam. I haven’t read THE KNIFE SLIPPED yet, but “Where Angels Fear to Tread” seems too slight a story to be expanded into a full novel. But it’s far from impossible.
November 15th, 2018 at 7:02 pm
Gardner had a talent for creating interesting series characters with a gimmick that never seemed gimmicky. This one does sound like a first pass at Lam and Cool though.