On the 15th of every month, we run something related to Our Favorite Lawyer. This novel was made into an episode in late 1957 and features a beautiful 1957 Ford Thunderbird.
The Case of the One-Eyed Witness – Erle Stanley Gardner
This 1950 Perry Mason mystery opens with so much antique Americana that we cynics wonder if a young author is mining notes of all the noir movies they’ve seen. Movie theaters full on week-nights, pharmacy soda fountains, nickels for a pay-phone, and an LA night club with a live orchestra, a floor show, a hat-check girl, a photograph girl, and a cigarette girl. People sport retro names like Clark, Carlton, Medford, Myrtle, and Arthman. They use retro expressions: “in a blue funk,” “thimblerig,” “look all over hell’s half acre,” and “You’ve got a lot of crust to….” Everybody smokes; in fact, Mason smokes Raleighs.
It’s not all cheesy nostalgia. Lawyer Mason and PI Paul Drake’s investigation uncovers a racket in human trafficking, a problem that has hardly gone away. They also expose a con that depends on the mark’s racism and fear of discrimination, two sides of injustice still among us. The criminal justice problems Gardner underlines plague us yet, particularly confirmation bias on the part of cops, improper police procedures, eyewitness misidentification and misinterpretation of circumstantial evidence by prosecutors.
A Perry Mason story constitutes comfort reading because though the DA appears to hold all the trumps, the reader has no doubt about the outcome. We long-time Perry fans know three things as sure as eggs.
Perry’s clients act foolishly by sitting on facts even with their lawyer and talking to the cops without a lawyer present. However, Perry assumes they are innocent of first-degree murder so he 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.
Gardner had his plot wheels and formulas, heaven knows, but in this one, to keep things interesting for himself and hardcore fans like us who've read them all, he prevents Mason from knowing who his client is for more than half the book. More dubious, he lets the readers keep in the dark as to who certain people are until late in the novel. Still, I have no reservations recommending this classic.
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