I read this book for the Mount
TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.
The Case of the
One-Eyed Witness – Erle Stanley Gardner
A skeptic might argue if you’ve read one Perry Mason
mystery, you’ve read them all, and so re-reading them is the greatest waste of
time since social media.
In any Mason story, the inevitable killing comes out of
an intricate scam. Though Perry Mason hires Paul Drake’s detectives, Perry and
his savvy secretary Della Street do much of their own legwork in interviewing
witnesses and persons of interest. The cops misconstrue evidence not because
they want to frame Perry’s client but because they are filtering evidence
through the wrong assumption that Perry’s client is guilty. The DA has the same
confirmation bias
and thus thinks all is fair – like priming witnesses or depriving the suspect
of sleep and food for easier interrogation - in ushering Perry’s guilty as hell
client into the gas chamber.
Despite Perry’s warning not to talk to the cops, his
clients always do, assuming “just telling the truth” to the cops and DA will
help despite the fact that it never helps because the cops assume the suspect
is lying. We long-time Perry fans also expect in every novel that his clients
will act irrationally by not telling Perry all the facts, becoming listless and
apathetic, or pursuing a selfish agenda. However, Perry assumes they are innocent
of first-degree murder and have a right to a defense. Perry can be counted on
to fight for a fair trial, especially when the breaks are going against his
clients. Perry feels such commitment to the truth that he will not suppress,
conceal, or distort any of the actual evidence.
We fans therefore return to Perry Mason novels because he
represents an ideal lawyer that will fight for us when crooks steal our property
and the criminal justice system disregards our rights. Mason knows that human
beings, being fallible and unknowing and careless and malicious, will make
mistakes. Crooks blunder because they are ignorant, cops and prosecutors
because of bad assumptions, evidence suppression, cognitive inertia, and
corner-cutting. Knowing that courts will uphold palpably unreasonable conduct
on the part of the police, Perry fights with legwork, logic and argument based
on the law. He feeds our fantasy wish for somebody that will protect us when
life plays a dirty trick on us and we get in a world of shit with the authorities.
Fans re-read Mason novels simply because we like Perry, Della, and Paul, give Lt. Tragg
the benefit of the doubt that he in fact has a soul, and detest preening DA
Hamilton Burger. We like the period Americana of soda fountains, phone booths, gladstone
bags, and retro expressions like “Are you trying to make a monkey out of me.”
Like writers such as Dickens, Trollope, Collins and Wharton, Gardner has fun
with naming characters: Pierre LaRue, Celinda Gilson, Percy R. Danvers, Dr.
Carlton D. Radcliffe and Medford D. Carlin.
By the way, in this one Myrtle Fargo is accused of
stabbing her husband Arthman D. Fargo to death. Appearing for the state on the
stand is Mrs. Newton Maynard, with one eye bandaged, thus the title.
Admittedly, this one has an edge involving racism, an issue still hot in post-Japanese-American
internment in California in 1950 when this book was published. Gardner was
against unfairness and injustice in all its forms so I don’t see the racism as
casual in this book, as it is taken for granted in much genre fiction of the
time. Gardner invariably has a sympathetic portrait of a female character who
is pushing hard to make it in a world where men dominate. Also, the racket in
this outing is particularly slimy, as Gardner approaches gritty noir.
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