Tue 31 Oct 2023
A Perry Mason Mystery Review by Tony Baer: ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the One-Eyed Witness.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the One-Eyed Witness. Perry Mason #36. William Morrow, hardcover, 1950. Pocket #1041, paperback, 1954/5?. Other later reprint editions, both hardcover and paperback.
The Rap Sheet blog recently posted the following:
“• Speaking of Mason, a video games and sports Web site called JStationX has posted a piece about the 1960 Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Violent Village.†It’s pretty bland, overall, but mentions that Mason “made appearances in other novels written [by] Erle Stanley Gardner, such as the Cool and Lam series.†What? Thanks to an extraordinary bit of luck, I own all 30 of the Bertha Cool/Donald Lam detective novels. And though I haven’t worked my way through every single one of those yet, nowhere have I come across a cameo appearance by Los Angeles’ best-known fictional defense attorney. Can anyone tell me in which book Mason figures, if he does?”
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2023/10/bullet-points-info-dump-edition.html/a>
Intrepid googler that I am, I found more specificity regarding the alleged Cool/Lam/Mason crossover in the same site. Mainly:
“There have been crossover novels featuring Perry Mason and other prominent detective characters, such as The Case of the One-Eyed Witness with Donald Lam and Bertha Cool.â€
https://jstationx.com/perry-mason-the-case-of-the-renegade-refugee/
Thus spurred, I immediately galloped and gulped the cited book, eagerly awaiting the appearance of Cool & Lam in this Perry Mason book.
Spoiler Alert: They aren’t in it.
But, since I read it, I might as well put down my thoughts on it.
It starts out with Perry and Della having a swanky meal at a night club. They are interrupted by a frantic call on the club phone begging for help, referencing an envelope, followed by a shriek and a hangup. On cue, the envelope is delivered. The envelope contains $500 and asks Perry to contact a man living at a specified address and to show him a newspaper cutting referencing a blackmail.
Mason, struck by the authenticity of the shriek, and decides to take the case — even though he has no idea who his client is.
He and Della show up at the man’s house, the man acts kind of shady, denies any knowledge, and they leave. A couple of hours later, his house burns to the ground, the crusty smoking remains of his burnt corpse found within.
Mason continues his sleuthing, clams to the cops, and gets in deep when his trail leads to another murder. It’s a bit surprising how far out on a limb Mason puts himself for a client he doesn’t know, who has signed no retainer, and who (when he finally finds her) denies that she retained him.
The sleuthing part is fairly hard-boiled and very little courtroom stuff shows up til the end. The action is swift and violent, and ESG could write the trunk off an elephant, he’s so smooth. He could sell a set of luggage to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Anywho, unfortunately the thing completely falls apart at the end. Like the man says, if you can’t convince ’em, confuse ’em. And Perry & ESG certainly do their damndest to confuse you into thinking there’s a there there. But there ain’t. It doesn’t come together, and the whole thing falls apart in an apocalypse of word salad.
October 31st, 2023 at 7:32 pm
Fun Facts:
TCOT One-Eyed Witness was one of the earliest Mason novels to be adapted for the TV series: Season One, Episode 23, filmed November 1957, aired January 1958.
Dwell on that for a while …
It’s still being rerun as part of the regular rotation, showcasing the then-26-year-old Angie Dickinson as the damsel-in-distress (dwell on that, if you dare …)
The old black-&-white film stock doesn’t clean up quite as well as it came to in later years,but it does have that “noir” look (sort of), so there’s that …
Still and all, it’s fun to watch even 66
years after the fact – and the Reveal of the Bad Guy does pack a small wallop (I can imagine how it came across in 1958).
Of course, the Modern-Day Watcher (who likely wasn’t even born when the show was made) will look down with disdain at the whole thing …
… the hell with that; this was a fun show to watch – period.
October 31st, 2023 at 10:02 pm
There was a big demand for the PERRY MASON TV shows when they first came out on DVD, but since then they’ve come way down in price, up to 90% off. The market for them now is small, and I suspect, getting smaller by the day.
October 31st, 2023 at 8:21 pm
I can’t recall any crossovers of ESG’s characters, though I always hoped Ed Jenkins would show up needing Perry Mason’s help.
I enjoyed this one. It’s a bit of a throwback to Perry’s early days.
October 31st, 2023 at 9:26 pm
I read this one when it first came out in paperback, which was either 1954 or 1955 (sources so far differ on that).
So obviously I don’t remember the ending. Being a Googler myself, I went online to see what others have been saying about it. A quick consensus (without sources) is that it’s “overly convoluted.”
So Tony, you’re right about that.
I’ll have to read it myself, again, to see what I think.
And, no, if any of Gardner’s major characters ever made crossover appearances, it would have been well documented by now.
Why do people just make up stuff like this?
November 1st, 2023 at 8:34 am
SPOILER ALERT:
The plot relies on the idea that couples were unknowingly adopting half-japanese orphans after WWII. The fact that their children were part japanese was apparently such a horrifying thing, so detrimental to the child’s prospects in life, that folks would pay blackmailers to keep this information secret.
This plot line must have made more sense in 1950’s America than it does today.
November 2nd, 2023 at 10:06 pm
For better or worse, vintage mysteries can often by read as miniature pockets of history as it really was. You’ll find things in them skipped right over in school books.
This sure sounds like one of them.