The
Case of the Sun Bather’s Dairy – Erle Stanley Gardner, 1955
A girl’s father has been wrongfully convicted of a bank
heist and penned in San Quentin. The loot was never recovered. Assuming the
girl knows where it’s stashed and is tapping the haul, the insurance company
PI’s and LA cops take turns keeping the girl under surveillance. She knows she
is being watched but that does not stop her from nude sun bathing in remote SoCal
spots where she has parked her fancy trailer.
We hard-core Perry Mason fans simply sigh. We are used to
opening chapters that feature “opaque raincoats” (TCO Glamorous Ghost) and
“swimming nymphs” (TCO Negligent Nymph) and hitchhiking girls who "looked
childish in her innocence, a platinum blonde with a poker face, wide blue eyes,
thin, flawless skin and a good figure (TCO Vagabond Virgin).”
But this odd Perry Mason story provides plenty of departures
from the scantily-clad norm. For one, at 230 pages, it is unusually long, with
all the chapters a bit over 10 pages. Gardner stretches things out with longish
passages about the routine steps in tracking down a perp, the minutiae of
transporting cash in armored cars, and puzzling activity that leads to Nowheresville,
contributing to neither the plot nor character development (not that Gardner
was an adept in that department). Finally, in an odd preliminary hearing scene,
Mason himself has to take the stand and get grilled by DA Hamilton Burger, who
very kindly reminds him of his right not to incriminate himself.
If you are a hard-core Perry, Della, and Paul fan like I know I am, you will like this one despite the rather inane plot. If you are new, you should read, say, The Case of the Counterfeit Eye.
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