Perry Mason 148: TCOT Screaming Woman

Note: Maybe AAA got to Gardner about traffic safety but in this 1957 novel Mason - usually a menace behind the wheel, a busy man who treats speed limits as quaint suggestions - suffers a sudden conversion. To Paul Drake’s astonishment, Perry begins operating the vehicle like a Sunday-school teacher driving a car held together by paper clips. No screeching tires, no hairpin theatrics. Just calm, law-abiding motoring. Drake, who has spent years bracing for impact every time Mason shifted gears, is delighted he can finally uncoil his white knuckles.

The Case of the Screaming Woman - Erle Stanley Gardner

Perry Mason, usually allergic to domestic melodrama, wades ankle-deep when a wife - hard-eyed and harder-bitten - decides hubby’s midnight Samaritan yarn is bunk. He claims he was just helping a stranded damsel, dropping her at the Beauty Rest Motel. Registering as man and wife? Pure convenience, says he. She’s unconvinced and hires Mason to dismantle the tale like a crooked sales pitch.

Then a respected doctor turns up beaten and barely breathing, and the case blossoms into a thicket of nastiness: illegal adoptions, stolen narcotics, and blackmail simmering like yesterday’s stew. The victim ran an abortion mill, and Mason’s client pops up in the appointment book alongside Kirby and Logan - names that clang ominously in DA Burger’s ear. Toss in Norma, who prefers a lawyer with ethics as elastic as his wallet, and you’ve got trouble brewing.

A subplot about stolen medical records promises fireworks but fizzles into a MacGuffin. Had Mason been defending Norma - or the doctor alive - the stakes might have felt sharper. As it stands, the narrative sprawls like an untidy brief.

Courtroom theatrics offer consolation. Burger sweats like a man in a sauna, trying to sneak in evidence via Della Street. Mason’s mantra - “incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial” - rings like a church bell. Sustained, sustained, sustained. Burger’s notebook gambit collapses, and Mason pirouettes on the edge of disbarment, prompting even loyal Della to wonder if the maestro might miss a beat.

Credulity takes a few knocks. The victim’s office becomes Grand Central Station, with visitors popping in and out like commuters on a tight schedule. Mystery fans may shrug; coincidence is the genre’s bread and butter. Still, the butter’s spread a trifle thick.

Clues? A haptic learner’s paradise: mother-of-pearl buttons, a cat with a taste for goldfish. The pièce de resistance - a dying message - lands with a thud. Dr. Babb’s hospital-bed whisper is replayed thrice, each interpretation more desperate than the last. Mason’s preferred reading, the one that frees his client, is the least convincing.

Through it all, John swaggers like a man who could sell sand in the Sahara - until Mason reveals a chap mired in circumstances stickier than molasses. Police tentacles tighten, black-market adoptions slither into view, and Mason must conjure one last gambit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.