Mount TBR #42

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2015. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

The Case of the Lame Canary – Erle Stanley Gardner

This late-1930s Perry Mason novel is a tangle - too many characters, too little clarity. Gardner, usually so deft, lets them blur like faces in a crowd. Yes, he’s comfortable with his recurring cast by book eleven, but comfort isn’t the same as brilliance.

One bright spark: Mason proposes to Della Street. She declines, and sensibly. Marriage would exile her from the quicksilver world she loves - no more midnight conferences, no more conspiratorial glances over evidence. Her argument is crisp and convincing, and Gardner gives her the dignity of logic rather than sentiment.

The story begins with a flourish of oddity: a beautiful young woman arrives at Mason’s office carrying a canary in a cage. She wants him to handle her sister’s divorce. The husband is a scoundrel - embezzler, bully, and would-be killer. The canary? A precaution. She fears he might harm it. Mason, who disdains divorce work, refuses - until he notices the bird’s sore foot. That tiny detail hooks him, and us.

From there, Gardner scatters his charms. The minor characters gleam - Emil Scanlon, the coroner, is sketched in a paragraph so perfect it could hang in a gallery. Rita’s speech on choices and regrets, delivered while murder charges loom, strikes like a tuning fork. And Mason coaching Rosalind on what to say about divorce? Pure Gardner - taut, sly, and irresistible.

For all its clutter, the book reminds us why Gardner never abandoned Mason. The plots brim with possibilities, the clues with cunning. When Gardner is good, he is very good indeed - and here, amid the fog of too many names, flashes of that brilliance break through like sunlight on a gray day.