The Ides of Perry Mason 58

Note: 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 summer in Los Angeles, 1963. The heat is dry, the light is indifferent. Three members of the Bancroft family, each isolated in their own concerns, approach Perry Mason. They do not speak to one another, but they all speak to him. They are united only by fear and silence.

Harlow Bissinger Bancroft, a man of wealth and public virtue, discovers a blackmail note on his stepdaughter’s dresser. He suspects it is about him. In his youth, he was reckless. He served time. He believes the past is not dead. He believes it has fingerprints. His.

Rosena Andrews, the stepdaughter, is young and engaged to Jetson Blair, a man of social standing but little money. She is vulnerable, though she does not know why. She is being watched, judged, and handled. Her privacy is a fiction to a father who rifles her papers and a mother who listens on extensions.

Perry Mason listens. He outlines four responses to blackmail: pay, report, counterattack, kill. The choices are stark, but they are not equal. Mason, no longer the man of the 1930s, does not recommend murder. He is calm now, methodical. He is a technician of justice, not a philosopher of it.

Harlow chooses to act through Mason. Mason and Paul Drake respond with absurd extravagance - boats, helicopters, operatives in bikinis. The machinery of counterattack is grotesque, almost comic. But it works.

Rosena arrives. She tells Mason to stay out of her affairs. She is modern, independent, but still caught in the web. Her mother, Phyllis, arrives next. She speaks of Jetson’s brother, Carleton, presumed dead but now possibly alive under another name. The blackmailer has already touched her for money. She pays, not for silence, but for the illusion of control.

The family does not speak to each other. They live in proximity but not in communion. Their secrets are not shared, only distributed. They are vulnerable because they are alone.

Phyllis believes she has killed a man. The police agree. The evidence is circumstantial, but it is enough. Truth is not what matters - only what can be proven.

The novel is longer than Gardner’s usual. The chapters stretch and shrink. The prose is skeletal. There is no backstory, no warmth. Perry, Della, and Paul remain surfaces. Gardner feared that depth would date the work. He was right. Probably.

And yet, the novel succeeds. The logic is clean. The reveal is satisfying. Mason’s confrontation with the blackmailer recalls his earlier, harder self. Gardner, even late in his career, still understands the machinery of guilt and innocence.

In the end, the mystery is solved. But the family remain estranged. Their secrets are exposed, but their isolation endures. The absurdity is not in the crime - it is in the silence between them.