The Ides of Perry Mason 59

Note: On the 15^th of every month we take a trip to the Perryverse. Reviewed below, however, is a stand-alone novel by Gardner from the Thirties. Because we need the variety, as we stand on the verge of the 60th installment of this seemingly never-ending series. Every month for five years now - it beggars belief.

This is Murder – Erle Stanley Gardner

This stand-alone crime novel from 1936 opens with our hero Sam Moraine moping about his job. Not a private detective, not a go-to fixer, not a crook, regular guy Sam works as the owner-operator of an advertising and printing company in a smallish city in California - San Luis Obispo? Encinitas? Big enough, anyway, to support two machines vying for power in the rackets of vice and politics.

But nothing like major crime to snap one out of job woes. The wife of a prominent dentist is kidnapped and Sam is asked by the woman’s friends to deliver the ransom. The D.A. Phil Duncan does not like it that the feds are not notified but unofficially agrees to his poker buddy Sam delivering the $10,000. Sam hands over the ransom and gets the victim back. But local and federal authorities smell something fishy about the kidnapping and grill Sam and the victim harshly.

Days later the boss of a political machine is found shot dead in his study. The dentist’s wife is found battered to death outside the boss’ house on the same night. A suitcase stuffed with politically explosive documents has gone missing. And bad people want to get it located but quick.

Sam dabbles in detective work because he wants to clean up his sense of being used as a patsy by a femme fatale in the kidnapping fiasco. His other goal is to clear his secretary Natalie Rice of suspicion of killing the kingpin and clearing her father who has the revenge motive since he was framed for a white-collar crime by the boss and sent to the pen.

The plot unfolds with non-stop action, realistic dialogue, and Gardner’s no-frills prose. Sam is a not a tough-guy pulp hero like Ed Jenkins, Phantom Crook, but more like a protagonist in an Alan Furst novel. In other words, a regular joe who has to use his native smarts and resourcefulness in extraordinary situations.

Gardner stretches out a little when he describes the scene of Sam being taken in for questioning by a homicide detective. He builds foreboding in the reader by describing the cold police headquarters and impersonal manner of the cops. Readers who’ve been unlucky enough to have experienced first-hand that institutional décor, those bland detached looks, and that casual manner based on the fact that they control utterly the situation, will recognize that Gardner, who was an attorney, spent time in such places, dealing with such people.

Gardner knew first-hand about bossism and the influence of crime syndicates on poorly paid municipal guardians of law and order. Gardner was to return to civic corruption as a plot device in the nine-novel series starring DA Doug Selby (The DA Holds a Candle, 1938) and numerous Cool & Lam novels such as the outstanding Turn on the Heat (1940).