Perry Mason 103: TCOT Haunted Husband

Note: I think Erle Stanley Gardner’s best period with his series character Perry Mason was the Thirties and Forties. The book reviewed this month is from 1936 and features Our Favorite Lawyer skating on thin ethical ice. Closer to his pulp roots, Mason is more hard-boiled than he was to be after WWII when he became dapper and unflappable in the prosperous Fifties.

The Case of the Haunted Husband – Erle Stanley Gardner

The world is on fire in the run up to WWII, but in California, the war against The Little Guy plays out - quiet, insidious, and dangerous. Stephanie Claire, young and determined, has learned early that dreams shatter easily. Fired from her hat-check job for refusing her boss’s wandering hands, she sets out for Los Angeles, hitchhiking toward the promise of Hollywood. It’s a brave move, full of risk both predictable and not.

On a dusty Bakersfield road, a sleek sedan pulls up. Behind the wheel is a man with charm to burn and liquor on his breath. He offers her a drink, and Stephanie, wary but pragmatic, takes a sip. Better to keep him amiable. But the car becomes a trap. His hands reach for her, the wheel jerks, and in an instant, metal screams against metal. When the wreckage settles, another driver lies dead. Stephanie is found at the wheel, the car stinking of whiskey. The handsy driver has vanished like smoke. And now, Stephanie faces a charge of negligent homicide.

One of life’s dirty tricks, I’d call it. And I’d be right.

The car belongs to Jules Homan, a Hollywood power player - writer, producer, untouchable. He claims it was stolen. Stephanie’s story sounds thin against his polished denials. Hollywood looms over the case like the meanest company town ever, its influence stretching into every corner. Even the police tread carefully, careers dangling on invisible strings that are pulled with impunity.

Enter Perry Mason. Drawn by the scent of injustice, Mason takes the case - not for glory, but because he cannot resist a fight where the odds are stacked and the stakes are mortal. Gardner paints Mason as more than a lawyer; he’s a sage in a gray suit, a man who understands that truth is rarely clear and never simple. His exchanges with Lt. Tragg crackle with tension - Tragg, fair but rigid, Mason, a Stoic with a taste for rule-breaking. Della Street and Paul Drake shoulder heavy loads here: Paul grumbling at the imponderable risks, Della steady and luminous, the heartbeat of Mason’s world. Ham Burger is absent, and the courtroom scenes, though brief, carry weight.

The plot coils and twists. Gardner’s writing loosens at times - threads left dangling, conversations that wander - but those digressions reveal character, motive, point of view. They remind us why Gardner ruled the mystery world of the 1940s, why the public couldn't get enough Perry Mason. Gardner understood ambition, corruption, and the hope that keeps us doing the work of human beings.

For fans and newcomers alike, this is Perry Mason at his most human - and Gardner at his most incisive. It was the Thirties, the pulps, both tough as taxes.