Perry Mason 128: The DA Calls It Murder

Note: For nine novels, Doug Selby is the DA Gardner threw into Madison County, California to slug it out with the sleaze, the hacks, the lawyers who think ethics means coercion should be used only when necessary. He’s human, yeah, but relentless, like justice on too much coffee from South Sulawesi.

The DA Calls It Murder – Erle Stanley Gardner

Doug Selby’s first outing as Madison County’s new district attorney starts with a bang - literally, a corpse in a hotel room. He and Sheriff Max Brandon, his election-day partner-in-crime-fighting, are still riding the high of victory when the call comes in. Madison City sits a hundred miles north of Hollywood, but the trouble Selby’s about to wade into has Tinseltown fingerprints all over it.

Max is the kind of straight-shooting lawman you’d expect to see in a pulp Western, loyal to the bone. Sylvia Martin, Selby’s girlfriend, is no shrinking violet either - smart, quick, and ready to dive into the mess. She’s the kind of woman who knows when to hold your hand and when to frog-march you toward the truth.

The dead man isn’t the only mystery. There’s an envelope fat with five grand, a lawsuit snarled around an estate, and a movie script so overwrought it’s Gardner doing parody - Lest Ye Be Judged. Toss in a poisoned German Shepherd (don’t worry, the dog pulls through) and a camera that’s cutting-edge for 1937, and you’ve got Gardner’s signature: a plot that twists and cool technology.

Hollywood glamour slinks into the picture in the form of Shirley Arden, a star with more brains than her studio gives her credit for. Like John O'Hara did with his shabby glamorous characters, Gardner lets her speak with a candor that slices through the hype. Heaven knows, Gardner liked his short digression but this monologue on fame and privacy is unique in the canon.

[Fans]'re like telegraph poles whizzing by when you're traveling on a Pullman train, if you know what I mean. They tell me things about themselves and I smile at them sympathetically and work my eyes; but all the time I'm thinking about my last income tax return, how long I'm apt to be working on this present picture, whether the director is going to listen to what I have to say about the way I should say "Farewell" to my lover or whether he's going to insist on doing it according to some standards which don't register with me. I give my fan my autograph and turn loose my best smile on him. I know I'm never going to see him again and he's in sort of a daze anyway which he's conjured up to wrap around me as an aura.

Selby nearly gets hypnotized by her - literally - and their verbal sparring has the smoky tension of an Ida Lupino - Ronald Colman scene.

The novel’s heartbeat, though, comes in a quiet room where Selby and Sylvia break the news to Mrs. Larrabie, the widow of the murdered man. Gardner drops the hard-boiled mask for a moment and shows us something rare: women carrying each other through grief. Sylvia steps up, comforting a stranger until her own composure cracks and in a twist of human grace, the widow consoles her. It’s a scene where Gardner tries to do something out of his lane. It works, I think, but I'm as easy-goingly uncritical a reader as you'll find anywhere.

The D.A. Calls It Murder is a puzzle box of subplots and clues. It is also Gardner doing something different, perhaps to test himself, peeling back the gloss of Hollywood and the grit of small-town realities to show us what ambition and compassion look like when the stakes are high.

Perry Mason 127: Clear & Present Risks

Abstract: This analysis examines the social, political, psychological, and emotional risks associated with excessive exposure to Perry Mason novels. While Erle Stanley Gardner’s legal fiction is widely regarded as harmless entertainment, prolonged immersion may generate subtle but cumulatively significant distortions in readers’ expectations about society, institutions, and the self.

Social Risks
From communication and sociological perspectives, habitual reading of Perry Mason novels may foster unrealistic expectations about interpersonal competence. Mason’s near-superhuman capacity to outwit authorities and evil-doers, detect deception and prevarication, and conduct incisive cross-examinations can encourage readers to overestimate the efficacy of fluent cleverness in everyday social interaction.

Naïve or impressionable Mason fans may also fail to apprehend the inescapable fact that over a prolonged period few enjoy the company of a garrulous know-all that asks too many questions. This may result in conversational grandiosity, inordinate suspicion of others’ motives, or an inflated belief that every disagreement can be “won” through rhetorical maneuvering rather than compromise. Over time, such tendencies risk social alienation, particularly in contexts - like the world of work - that reward collaboration over courtroom-style confrontation.

Political Risks
Politically, excessive Mason consumption may subtly reshape attitudes toward legal and civic institutions. The novels’ persistent depiction of weak-brained police, narrow-minded prosecutors, and unreliable eye-witness testimony can promote a skewed belief that our systems of criminal justice are obstacles made effective for justice and safe for the innocent only by heroic individual intervention. While healthy skepticism of authority is a democratic virtue, its exaggerated form may harden into bitter cynicism and avoidance of any civic engagement. Readers may come to believe that justice is best achieved not through collective norms or gradual institutional reform, but through the intervention of singularly brilliant agents – i.e. superheroes - operating in opposition to established legitimate authority.

Psychological Risks
Psychologically, prolonged exposure to Mason’s sense of empathy for his clients may contribute to cognitive distortions. Readers may develop what could be termed the “latent exculpatory fantasy,” the unhelpful belief that any personal error or ethical lapse could, under sympathetic scrutiny, be revealed as justified or misunderstood only by ill-willed observers such as police officers. This mindset risks weakening accountability and encouraging rationalization.

In extreme cases, habitual immersion in Perry Mason’s airtight resolutions can condition readers to expect definitive answers. When real life presents murky motives, conflicting alternatives, insoluble problems, or ethical gray zones, such readers may feel unease or impatience, having internalized the promise of the Perryverse that truth always emerges cleanly and conclusively, without uncertainty.

Emotional Risks
The Perry Mason novels quietly train readers - especially those prone to stress, discomfort, and anxiety, which is to say nearly everyone - to regard the police not as neutral civil servants but as fundamentally menacing forces. Cops are depicted as biased gatherers of circumstantial trivia, cavalier about constitutional rights, quick to presume guilt, eager to prime witnesses, and chronically inclined to read ordinary nervousness as evidence of deception. For readers burdened with secret shames - which, again, is most readers - this portrayal encourages a grim inference: because everyone is guilty of something, even the most cursory investigation can unearth a chargeable offense.

For such unhappy people, the mere sound of sirens signals impending exposure and humiliation; a routine traffic stop feels like the first move in a frame‑up. Perry Mason’s brilliance only intensifies this capiophobia. His virtuoso rescues imply that justice is not a normal outcome of the system but an extraordinary exception - possible only through luck or the dazzling intervention of a singular hero. In a world of overcharging, racial disparities, and the cognitive shortcuts humans apply unthinkingly, fairness, sense, and mercy appear absent by default. The novels thus whisper a chilling lesson: if you have a plausible motive, lack an airtight alibi, and fit the circumstantial evidence, cops and prosecutors do not particularly care whether you are innocent.

Conclusion
In moderation, the Perry Mason novels function as an efficient vehicle for consolation and reading pleasure. When consumed in excess, however, they risk cultivating distorted expectations about both law and life - encouraging readers to assume that reality ought to unfold with the coherence, moral certainty, and inevitability of a legal thriller, and to experience frustration or indignation when it does not.

More troublingly, the novels may foster a bleak fatalism: the conviction that, absent the intervention of an action figure like Perry Mason, no safeguard exists against a criminal justice system whose agents are routinely capricious and malevolent. In this view, justice is not an institutional norm but a contingent miracle, and the ordinary individual stands largely defenseless once the machinery of prosecution has been set in motion.

Perry Mason 126: TCOT Moth-Eaten Mink

Note: We true fans of the Perry Mason novels have always known Lt. Tragg as the honest cop who plays fair with Mason, while Sgt. Holcomb and D.A. Hamilton Burger are charter members of the “Burn Mason’s Briefs” club. In the case of this 1952 novel Tragg is never more likable and we even feel a pang of sympathy for him. He’s working overtime in a finale where he shows grit and attitude.

The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink – Erle Stanley Gardner

More than a few Perry Mason mysteries kick off in restaurants. Mason and his confidential assistant, Della Street, are relaxing after a long day when trouble breaks up a quiet dinner.

Waitress Dixie Dayton vanishes mid-shift, leaving behind a paycheck and a shabby mink coat. Soon, someone tries to run her down, then another villain takes a shot at her. She lands in the hospital, only to disappear again.

Her jittery boss, Morris Alburg, hires Mason to find out why Dixie bolted. Mason inspects the mink and discovers a pawn ticket from a Seattle shop. The police learn Dixie pawned a diamond ring and, more ominously for her, a gun. Ballistics tie the weapon to the killing of a police officer. Dixie’s boyfriend, Thomas E. Sedgwick, becomes suspect number one. Unusually for a Mason novel, the body count rises: Dixie and Moe are linked to the murder of George Fayette, a hardcase with plenty of enemies. Mason, of course, takes Tom and Dixie on as clients.

This case brims with oddities. Two lipstick messages scrawled in a seedy hotel room. Mason serving as both defense counsel and prosecution witness. A Paul Drake operative with a shady streak. Two witnesses boasting exceptional memory skills. The solution withheld until the last page. Dixie Dayton revealed as an alias - her real name never disclosed, a mystery forever. 

Gardner’s formula is unmistakable: rapid tempo, dialogue-driven scenes, and faith that forensic science will overcome police blunders born of corner-cutting and mental shortcuts. Readers craving lush descriptions or deep character studies should look elsewhere. Gardner’s style was narrow, but within those limits, he was inventive at plotting and superb at setting a pace.

Perry Mason 125: Top of the Heap

Note: Published in 1952, this is the thirteenth of 29 novels starring the PI partnership of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam that were written by Erle Stanley Gardner under the pen name of A.A. Fair. Though not a fan of comparisons, I think that Fair’s Cool and Lam novels are smarter, sexier, wittier and just more entertaining than Gardner’s Perry Mason novels.

Top of the Heap – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair

John Carver Billings II strode into Cool and Lam’s office doing his damnedest to seem confident.

He told a story as shaky as his hands. His date Maurine vanished after a party where Billings played escort. Slipped away with someone else. For most men, a bruised ego. For Billings, a big problem.

Because hours later, Gabby Garvanza - Maurine's dangerous boyfriend - was shot. Gabby is lying in a hospital bed, riddled with bullets, and the police are circling. Billings needs an alibi but fast.

Billings claims he spent the night with two other women. By morning, they were gone too. Three women missing. Coincidence - or is Fate teeing up John the Second?

What follows is classic Gardner in a case that starts simple and twists into a maze of lies and greed. Lam's PI partner Bertha Cool smells money. Three hundred dollars already paid in retainer, five hundred more promised. Simple job: find the girls, clear Billings. Lam sees the cracks, the details that don’t fit. And with his every step, the ground shifts. Mining assets, they call them. Lam knows better and follows his usual inclination not to tell anybody - not the reader; certainly not Bertha - what he suspects is afoot.

Top of the Heap exemplifies Gardner’s signature formula: murder as a side effect of scams and schemes gone sideways. Bertha Cool, a comic miser in the Mr. Krabs mold, clashes hilariously with Lam’s understated brilliance. His quiet finesse and patient listening make him irresistible to women - despite his short stature and Bertha’s stingy pay.

Hard Case Crime’s 2004 reissue was a masterstroke, rescuing a gem that proves Gardner’s Cool and Lam novels deserve a place beside the best of hardboiled fiction.

Lilias Folan

Note: March is Women’s History month. So I think it is appropriate to mark the passing of a wonderful soul whose spark went back to the big fire March 9, 2026, at the age of 90. Though I started yoga in the summer of 1992 with a Richard Hittleman videotape, it was Lilias on WNED-TV in the late 1990s that really kept me on the mat.

America's Best-known Yoga Teacher

In the middle Sixties, Lilias Folan seemingly had it all: a loving husband, two healthy little boys, two labbies, the big house in the chi-chi suburbs of the Big Apple. But she felt lousy, logy, and bored, smoked too much, and was overweight. Her PCP ordered her to take up an exercise program. Because golf and tennis didn’t excite her, she took a yoga class at the local YMCA.

Her decision was influenced by Jess Stearn’s 1965 book Yoga, Youth, and Reincarnation. This is still worth reading if you like memoirs by seekers. He’s skeptical, funny and not afraid of telling stories on himself. It’s also a tribute to his teacher Marcia Moore* whose equanimity his teasing never ruffled. Stearn testified that though he started as a skeptic, after practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation, his mental health improved and he was able to deal with demons from his past. For Lilias, this rang a bell, because like many seekers, she was an unloved child, a casualty of upper crust parents that were uninvolved in the lives of their children.

She loved yoga from the get-go. It made her feel wonderful. She quit smoking. She slept better. She also became more mindful, making friends with the observer self within that judges not. Her love of the spiritual side of life deepened. 

Lilias learned about watching the mind and getting a grip on the inner chatter. Focus on the body and breath. Quiet the mind down and deepen attention with breathing and asanas and observation. Become spacious. Be present, here, right now. This breath. And another. Who you are becomes deeper and deeper, more serene, more fair, kind, compassionate (if a bit detached).

Due to the dad's job transfer, the Folans moved to Cincinnati's Indian Hill in 1968. Lilias taught a local YWCA class. A yogine enjoyed her teaching and recommended Lilias to her producer-husband, who worked for Cincinnati's PBS station, WCET. Good-looking but not too, with her bright eyes and luminous smile, and that long braid, she was a natural for TV, making up for the spartan set and microphone in the floor that didn't always pick up what she said. 

Lilias, Yoga and You ran on PBS from 1972 until 1999 with 500 episodes in all. She introduced yoga to millions of viewers by meeting them where they already were: in their living rooms. At the time, yoga was often seen as weird or fringe, associated with bodybuilding, vegan diets, and nudist communes. Folan challenged those narrow assumptions.

She never saw it as a show starring Lilias Folan, but a class in which she was a teacher doing what she was put on earth to do:  share with people how they can get on the yoga bus. She was encouraged by the cards and letters grateful viewers sent her in thanks. The show covered its costs and made a little money for WCET so it got renewed for years until the crazes of "hot yoga" and "power yoga" made her hatha yoga seem outdated.

Her teaching style was warm, welcoming, practical, and relatable. She showed viewers that yoga was neither hippie-ish nor a religion, did not require special clothes or gear, and was not restricted to the young or flexible. Anyone could integrate it into their physical fitness routine. Her message was simple and radical for its time: yoga was for ordinary people, at any age, with any body shape, size or appearance.

Lilias offered more than postures. She included breathing, relaxation, reflection, and mindfulness, helping viewers understand yoga as something that could support their existing beliefs and daily lives, not replace them. Deeply influenced by her studies with Indian teachers and traditions such as Vedanta philosophy, Lilias translated complex ideas into plain language. She offered the benefits of yoga without asking anyone to retreat to an ashram or radically change their lifestyle.

Despite her national recognition, Lilias showed little interest in celebrity. She continued teaching classes and workshops well into later life, even when doctors advised her to slow down and not travel so much. Some modern yoga teachers have dismissed her work as outdated,** and her passing in March 2026 received little public acknowledgment.*** Yet through decades on public television, along with books and instructional videos, Lilias helped normalize yoga as a gentle, life-enhancing practice rooted in kindness and love. 

At the heart of Lilias’ philosophy was the idea that yoga is a personal, lifelong path toward emotional balance and self-understanding. She spoke of yoga as something that helped her “grow up,” not stay young, an important distinction in a culture that often equates all things healthy with youth. She modeled an approach to aging grounded in focus, observation, and presence.

For Lilias, yoga was inseparable from daily life. She saw it as a way to work honestly with emotions, develop patience, and cultivate compassion when life threw its inevitable curve balls. When she underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2013, she shared how breathing and relaxation techniques helped her cope with chemo.

Teaching yoga, for Lilias, was both a service and a continuation of her own learning. She believed yoga helped people face stress, dissatisfaction, and temptation with greater steadiness. Her lasting legacy is not just that she popularized yoga, but that she made it accessible and deeply humane on and off the mat.

* Moore was an early ketamine enthusiast. Her end was terrible and sad.

** Twenty years ago, when a yoga teacher asked where I had got that, I answered "Lilias" and she rolled her eyes.

*** Even the TV station CET had de nada in the way of an obit on their blog, reminding us why decent people despise mass media.

The Ides of Charle Chan: In the Chinese Cat

Note: Hollywood script writers got wrong Charlie Chan referring to his own wife as “honorable wife.” You must never be so arrogant as to refer to your own family or your things with honorifics like “honorable.” Should your time machine whisk you back to traditional Japan, when talking to superiors, you say “my wife” with a humble word like “gusai” 愚妻 which means “my silly wife.” I don’t know but I would predict with confidence Chinese polite language would not be so different on this score.

Charlie Chan in the Chinese Cat
1944 / 1:06
Tagline: “"MUST CONFESS. HONORABLE SON...This Is My Most Baffling Case!"”
[WGN Christmas 1985]

The film opens with a striking premise: a wealthy San Francisco magnate is shot dead while pondering a chess problem. His body is discovered by his wife and stepdaughter. Neither are heartbroken, since his marriage was a financial transaction. Enter a publicity-hungry criminologist who publishes a sensational book all but accusing the widow of murder. Mortified, the daughter turns to Charlie Chan to clear her mother’s name. Chan hesitates to reopen the cold case but relents under pressure from his #3 son, Tommy, and a wager with the criminologist that will benefit Chinese war relief.

What’s a Charlie Chan film without comic relief that is now awkward in 2026? Fortunately, Benson Fong’s Tommy plays it straight. He’s brave and resilient, enduring a beating without betraying his father: “You can’t make a Chan talk.” His rapport with Mantan Moreland, as taxi driver Birmingham Brown, feels warm and genuine. Moreland, often cast as the easily frightened sidekick, adds nuance when he voices sharp complaints about being dragged into danger. Moreland's comic timing remains impeccable, as always.

Sidney Toler’s portrayal of Chan demands a caveat: the yellowface convention is dismaying. Yet, beyond that, Toler’s Chan is neither servile nor caricatured. He’s calm, courteous, and implacably logical. A professional with dry wit. His English is fluent, idiomatic, and laced with aphorisms. When Tommy boasts, “I’ve got a case that will knock your hat off,” Chan deadpans, “I need no assistance in taking off my hat.” To his son’s overeager help: “Your assistance is as welcome as water in a sinking ship.” He even dispenses fortune-cookie wisdom with sly ambiguity: “You should get married and have a large family. Once you have a large family all other troubles mean nothing.” These lines, delivered with understated authority, give Chan a distinctive voice.

The screenplay by George Callahan avoids formulaic shortcuts. Clues don’t fall from heaven; the mystery unfolds with genuine unpredictability. Director Phil Rosen bathes the story in early noir atmosphere - foggy streets, looming shadows - suggesting a debt to Robert Florey’s visual style. The climax in a funhouse of mirrors, skeletons, and wax figures is an eerie set piece coming off suspenseful and darkly comic, heightened by an effective score.

Viewed today, the film is a cultural artifact - baffling in its racial casting yet fascinating in its craft. It offers a layered experience: a solid whodunit, a glimpse of wartime Hollywood, and a study in how humor and heroism were portrayed on screen. For those willing to deal with what are now missteps, this Chan entry remains an atmospheric, engaging mystery with moments of genuine cinematic flair.

Perry Mason 124: Mara Maru

Note: Raymond Burr appeared in a couple dozen feature films between 1946 and 1957. He was typecast as the villain because his stoutness gave him a menacing presence. One wonders if he was parodying his own typecasting when he appeared in the 1955 comedy musical You're Never Too Young. Jerry Lewis plays a barber who is involved in Burr's theft of a diamond. So to get the diamond back grown-man Jerry masquerades as a 12-year-old child - totally something I'm going to piss away 1:42 I would never get back.

Mara Maru
1952 / 1:38
Tagline: “Tropical Treasure! Typhoon! and Temptation!”
[internet archive]

Gregory Mason (Errol Flynn), an American adrift in Manila, ekes out a living salvaging wrecks with his hard-drinking partner Andy Callahan (Richard Webb). Callahan’s drunken threats – “Someday I’m gonna kill you” - sound less like bar talk and more like prophecy. Stella Callahan (Ruth Roman, who is great) is unhappy in the horror of abroad, failing to adjust smoothly to expatriate life. Her beef with time zones - “It’s last night in New York!” - captures her dislocation perfectly.

When Callahan turns up dead, suspicion falls on Mason - until a greasy PI provides an alibi. Enter Brock Benedict (Raymond Burr), a suave treasure hunter dangling a fortune in sunken diamonds. Mason resists - until someone torches his boat.

This is a noir adventure movie made by Warner Brothers, which always cared about keeping it real, at least as to how things look. Though a movie-goer doesn’t feel the humidity of Manila, enjoyable are the camera angles of noir. Robert Burks - Hitchcock’s go-to cameraman - bathes Manila in noir shadows: gritty bars, peeling apartments, solemn churches. As for adventure, we get fires, foot chases and typhoons at sea. As the aftermath of Mason’s torched boat, we even get a death of a child scene, made more pathetic since as life ebbs out of the kid, his elder brother, breaking up, promises him a ride in the jeepney they would buy after they got rich.

The actors seem unconnected as if they are under-rehearsed. Flynn moves like a man whose charm has soured - sometimes vibrant, often just going through the motions. Raymond Burr, lethal in a white suit, radiates menace with mogul polish - murder as a business option. Roman steals scenes with a mix of allure and pragmatism, nailing the film’s thesis: ‘All you men are crazy about the same thing – money.”

As for the connection to the classic Perry Mason TV series, the heavy-handed detective is stout Dan Seymour, who played pushy guys in seven episodes. Richard Webb was in two shows, in one of which, my favorite TCOT Impetuous Imp, before he gets knocked off, he lays a film noir truism on Our Girl Bonnie Jones, “You're a very pretty girl, Diana, and pretty girls like pretty things. And pretty things cost money.” Webb played the well-deserving victim again as the obnoxious husband of Patricia Barry in TCOT Velvet Claws.