Mount TBR #42

I read this book for Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2019.

The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories  – Erle Stanley Gardner

The Big C took mystery titan Erle Stanley Gardner in early 1970. Always looking for methods to stay in the black, by late 1970 the Morrow publishers were scouring the warehouses of the Gardner Fiction Factory (his own words) and assembling forgotten novellas in little batches. They then released six collections of them in the 1970s and 1980s in order to feed the boomlet of interest in pulp fiction at that time.

In this particular bundle, Perry Mason appears only in Crimson Kiss. Unusually for a Mason story, it is an inverted mystery. The frame-up opens the story so we readers know who did the dastardly deed, but lawyer Perry Mason does not.  

This opener is a solid story, but the quality of the other tales goes down, which of course did not stop me from reading them on a Saturday afternoon whose weather was too terrible for yard work. Mercifully.

The second story Fingers of Fong is narrated by a PI retained by a Chinese gang boss. As a young lawyer, Gardner worked with Chinese clients (a gutsy thing to do in California in the early 20th century) so the characterization is not silly about the Yellow Peril as we would expect a story from 1933 to be. Not, however, that the characterization is more sparkling than Gardner’s usually is.

The Valley of Little Fears (1930) narrated by a small-town old pard who’s disgusted at the cringing ways of the Nervous Norvus Newcomer and his sad-sack dog. The heavy lady of the diner brings to mind, though, Bertha Cool and plenty of other Gardnerian hard-charging, no-nonsense females who suffer no fools. 

Crooked Lighting (1928) is a standard heist story with a tidy twist and a must for people who like mysteries set on trains. At Arm’s Length, from 1939, features a hard-boiled PI that blackmails a prospective client into hiring him. Because the story feels like Gardner dashed it off in about three hours, the only thing going for it is the gritty Dirty Thirties tone and stance.

The indisputable strength is that all the stories have a fast-pace. Gardner was writing for pulp magazines like Detective Fiction Weekly and All Detective. Their audiences wanted crackling action, full of snap and crunch and salt that compel us to read as if we were working our way to the bottom of a bag of Chex Mix. They didn’t care that the writing often smelled a little off or felt slap-dash. They nodded sagely when Gardner philosophized, “You act like a cur that expects to be kicked and you'll get kicked.” Even better: “I don't want to waste time sleeping. While I'm unconscious I can't revel in my happiness.” Gotta admire a tetchy people that weren’t going to be brought down even by the Great Depression.

Gardner fans of 2020, like their ancestors in that distant time almost a century ago, won’t mind either.