The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll – Erle Stanley Gardner
Usually mysteries starring super-lawyer Perry Mason open
in Mason’s office. However, Gardner departs from custom with one of the longest
first chapters that he ever wrote in his 75- Mason-book output. In the initial
chapter, about ten percent of the book, he tells the odd story of Mildred Crest
and the mess she landed in.
A working woman, Mildred receives a double blow. Her
fiancée breaks their engagement and vanishes with funds he purloined from his
accounting firm. She then does what lots
of Americans do when they are agitated: she jumps into her car and drives
around aimlessly.
Distraught and thus distracted from noticing another
person is as desperate as she is, she gives a girl hitchhiker named Fern Driscoll a lift. Fern explains that she is escaping from a young man who first picked her up and got fresh, like a wolf. Fern grabs the wheel and the car plunges down into a Southern California
abyss. Mildred then does what anybody would when presented with the chance to
start a new life. She assumes the identity of the dead hitchhiker.
The problem, of course, is that we should be really picky
about just whose identity we filch. The hitchhiker has a past. It catches up
with Mildred in the guise of blackmailing PI Carl Harrod. The dodgy PI gets an icepick in
his chest. Poor Mildred, who has just
made a couple unfortunate choices anybody could’ve chosen, finds herself up
against charges that she snuffed both the hitchhiker and the blackmailer.
Like Dame Agatha, Gardner was not a producer of pretty
prose. For instance, in this one his subtle wit names a hotel Vista del Camino
- A View of the Road. What distinguishes his writing is the sheer narrative
power – once started, must finish! Also, he plays lots of enjoyable tricks with
two bullets or multiple guns so in this one it is six – count ‘em, six –
icepicks.
To me, the lasting attraction of Gardner’s fiction is
that the deadly issues of improper police procedures, eyewitness misidentification and incorrect understanding
of circumstantial evidence are still dangerous issues for people today who
wittingly or not fall afoul of our criminal justice system. Recall, it is a
system that is staffed by human beings, entities not known for perfection.
Persuaded in their own minds that Mildred is the perp,
the police manipulate and prime an impressionable eyewitness to misidentify Mildred as the one
who bought the icepicks. And witnesses
may testify falsely, though they will swear up and down they are telling the
truth (the research on witness unreliability turned my hair white). Because
juries and judges are unduly receptive to eyewitness evidence, wrongful
convictions are frequently caused by witness misidentifications. Usually circumstantial evidence - when it is correctly construed - is
the best evidence. But in this story, the DA’s office misinterprets such evidence.
It’s an existential issue: cops, witnesses, juries, and
judges may be convinced they are doing the right thing, but the reality is that
they may be doing some poor joker – or Cousin Scooter, or you, or me - a monstrous injustice. Hoo-boy. Who needs
to read about ordinary people that make the usual unfortunate decisions and end
up dealing with a hostile universe in Simenon, Camus or Sartre when you can
read Erle Stanley Gardner?
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