The Ides of Perry Mason 58

On the 15^th of every month, we examine a topic related to Our Favorite Lawyer. I’m thinking what subject can I possibly unearth after nearly five years of doing this column. Perhaps a deep dive into the pecky cypress paneling in TV Perry Mason's office?

The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret – Erle Stanley Gardner

It is the summer of 1963 in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to each other, three members of the Bancroft family have consulted lawyer Perry Mason about blackmail. Millionaire and philanthropist Harlow Bissinger Bancroft has found a blackmail note on the bedroom dresser of his stepdaughter Rosena Andrews. She’s vulnerable because of her upcoming marriage to not affluent but socially prominent Jetson Blair. In his younger days, Harlow was wild, spent a little more than a year in the pen, and is sure his past – and his fingerprints - are catching up to him.

Now, the astute reader is wondering why a young stepdaughter was sent the blackmail note, since it’s doubtful that she even knows the jailbird past of her stepfather. Smarter than us, however, Perry Mason goes over with Harlow the four ways of dealing with a blackmailer: pay him off (and keep paying forever), go to the police, put the blackmailer on the defensive, or kill him. While Thirties hard-boiled Mason may have gone with killing, Sixties calm Mason does not recommend murder. Bancroft puts the affair in Mason's hands. Mason and Drake pull off a fun maneuver to put the blackmailers on the defensive. Lucky that Harlow is a millionaire because he’s paying for legions of Drake’s speedboats, helicopters and bikini-clad operatives.

Then, the stepdaughter Rosena visits Mason. Rosena, independent boomer through and through, tells Mason to keep his nose out of her affairs.

Then, her mother Phyllis visits Mason. Phyllis tells Mason that Rosena's intended, Jetson Blair, had a brother, Carleton Rasmus Blair, who was reportedly killed in a plane crash while in the Army. One Irwin Victor Fordyce was recently released from the big house, and his fingerprints show he was Carleton. The blackmailer has touched Phyllis already for a thousand dollars, small price to pay for a maiden’s dream of future happiness. Phyllis also reports that the blackmailers have contacted Rosena, because she overheard the phone conversation.

Poor Rosena – does she have any privacy at all with a stepfather going through her papers and a mother listening in on an extension? And this family never talks to each other. They wouldn’t be so vulnerable to blackmail if they just came clean with each other and the world. All I’m saying, a dab of shamelessness goes a long way. Harlow, Phyllis, and Rosena need to loosen up and not fret so much about what other people think. It’s not their business what other people think. 

Anyway, in an unfortunate chain of circumstances, society matron Phyllis ends up thinking she snuffed a blackmailer with a round to the pump. And the cops entirely agree, based on circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony.

I admit that more than a couple Mason novels published in the 1960s are not up to the high standards of his novels of the Thirties and Forties. At about 250 pages, this is longer than usual for Gardner, with very long chapters and very short chapters. The exposition on character and setting, is, as usual, bare bones. People looking for backstory about Perry, Della and Paul will be disappointed, since Gardner probably thought background would date the books and hurt sales (he was right).

Still, this novel is pretty good. Mason’s blunt conversation with a blackmailer calls to mind his hard-boiled exchanges in the early novels. Gardner organizes the time shift solution effortlessly and persuasively. The reveal is logical, with no deductions that provoke head-scratching. So even late career Gardner could still nail it.