Tue 17 Oct 2023
Mystery Review: ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Queenly Contestant.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Queenly Contestant. Perry Mason #78. William Morrow, hardcover, 1967. Pocket, paperback, 1968. Several later reprint editions, both hardcover and paperback.
Not all of Perry Mason’s cases start the way this one does, but it’s the most common one, the most traditional way: with a client stopping by his office with an interesting story to tell. Perry is the kind of guy who thrives on interesting cases. Mundane legal work? You can forget it, whenever he’s given the opportunity.
In this case the client is female, in her 30s perhaps, and what she would like Perry to do is to squash a newspaper story about her. She lives and works in L.A. now, but she came there from a small town in the Midwest with stars in her eyes, having won a beauty contest in which one of the prizes was a Hollywood screen test. Which was totally perfunctory, at best, but she never went back home again.
Now the local back home newspaper is about to do one of those “where is she now†stories on her, and she wants no part of it. Perry takes the job, calls the editor and gets the story killed. End of story? By no means – but you knew that. There’s a lot more, as Perry soon learns.
And what he has on his hands is the kind of client he likes least: one who consistently lies to him. And one who fires him, and one who comes crawling back when she realizes she can’t handle things on her own.
There is a murder, one that happens in due course. The dead woman, as it turns out, has made blackmail her career of choice, but in spite of her many victims, it is Perry’s client who is arrested. The case against her involves tire tracks from her car found in a muddy driveway; two guns, one of which fired the fatal shot; and a two million dollar estate at stake, complicated by Perry not trusting anything his client has told him.
The courtroom scenes that follow take up a good chunk of the book, which is always a good sign, but it’s not Hamilton Burger who presents the case to the judge, but one of his assistants. No matter. The man doesn’t fare any better than his boss ever does, and why else did so many people read all those Perry Mason cases over the years?
This one was great fun.
October 18th, 2023 at 6:54 am
Read this one a few months ago. As with all the Masons it was very entertaining. However, I still prefer the earlier books in the series, before Perry Mason lost his pulpish edge.
October 18th, 2023 at 12:07 pm
One way (among others) you can tell the edge is off with this one how Lt. Tragg is portrayed in it. He’s become a friendly adversary, one willing to admit in court that he messed up on finding the missing bullet. In turn, Mason lets Tragg take all the credit in solving the case. Some might call all this a little too buddy=buddy, but it worked for me.
October 18th, 2023 at 3:46 pm
Noting here that this novel came about after the end of the Perry Mason TV series – and after the passing of TV’s Tragg, Ray Collins.
I’ve read that Erle Stanley Gardner felt close to the Mason TV cast, and in particular to Collins, who was reportedly the first one to be cast.
Could it be, perhaps, that Uncle Erle’s lightening up of Tragg was his way of saluting his friend/colleague for years of service?
That seems like a nice thought …
October 18th, 2023 at 4:20 pm
Makes sense to me, Mike.
October 18th, 2023 at 5:30 pm
I agree as well. There were times in fact while reading Tragg’s words on the printed page, I could hear Ray Collins’ voice (and see his face) right along with them.
October 18th, 2023 at 8:02 pm
Tragg had been softening for years starting with Ray Collins portrayal. Before Collins died he was often sitting next to Burger sighing while waiting for Perry to nail the real culprit.
This one is pretty obviously Gardner’s beloved Cinderella Plot.
Late and lesser Mason and Gardner, and still damn good, compulsively readable, and better than half the modern mysteries I read.