Mount TBR #21

I read this book for Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2019.

The Case of the Drowning Duck – Erle Stanley Gardner

In early 1942 a wealthy landowner near Palm Springs, John L. Witherspoon, consults crack lawyer Perry Mason on a family matter. Mason warns him that he takes on only cases that appeal to him as the routine does not interest him. He tells Mason that his only daughter Lois is about to marry Marvin Adams, a young man who is finishing up his studies at college in physics and chemistry. But Marvin does not know who he is in the sense that his mother gave him a cock and bull story about him being kidnapped at the age of three. The reality is that his father was executed for murder of a business associate in 1924. Proud of his family name, Witherspoon detests the idea of killer genes polluting his family. He hires Mason to investigate the old case see if Marvin’s father was in fact guilty.

Mason goes over the trial transcript and deplores the fact the defense attorney assumed his client was guility. But as Mason sics his PI Paul Drake on the trial of the witnesses who may or may still be among the quick, a blackmailer appears and threatens the happiness of the Witherspoons and the future of Marvin Adams. The blackmailer is done to death with a homemade blend of gasses. Of course this points the finger at chem major Marvin – whose duck in found at the scene, according to a police officer, drowning in a fish bowl. Another murder carried out in the same way occurs in Witherspoon’s house. Mason does much of the PI legwork on his own; he is shamelessly manipulative when interviewing people to get them to talk. The courtroom scene is comparatively short, with a down-home judge unlike any other judges in a Mason mystery.

The writer's treatment of desert scenery and the scene-setting of the discovery of the first corpse are vivid, for Gardner. The story is intricate with a strong subplot involving a Hollywood scandal sheet that engages in extortion and blackmail by using corrupt PI’s to collect dirt and threatening to release damaging information on victims shy of publicity. It’s arbitrary to cut up Gardner’s long writing career into periods but the ones written during WWII are classic puzzles well-worth reading: The Case of the Empty Tin, The Case of the Buried Clock, The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito, The Case of the Crooked Candle, and The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde.