Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 #23

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021.

Classic with an Animal in the Title. The creator of Perry Mason was a conservationist and outdoorsman who loved the rugged landscape of the American West and the variety of countryside in Southern California. He also liked animals. A reader gets the feeling that Gardner felt a normal and natural part of the family was a dog and that he had a special affinity for cats. The Mason mysteries with an animal in the title are TCof the Howling Dog, TCof the Caretaker's Cat, TCof the Lame Canary, TCof the Perjured Parrot, TCof the Careless Kitten, TCof the Fan Dancer's Horse, and TCof the Grinning Gorilla. The Cool and Lam mysteries with a nod to beasts are Owls Don't Blink, Bats Fly at Dusk, Cats Prowl at Night and Crows Can't Count.

The Case of the Mythical Monkeys - Erle Stanley Gardner

This 1959 mystery opens with a profile of a cynical writer. Mauvis Niles Meade has produced a best-seller of which one reviewer says “while fueled by a juvenile imagination also reeks of reality.” She hires pretty 22-year-old Gladys Doyle as a PA. Like all Gardnerian heroines from Della Street down, Gladys is smart, confident, and resourceful. But she can’t figure out her mysterious employer, who sends her on weird errands at all hours of the day and night. Gladys figures, it’s still better than working nine-to-five in a humdrum office. Young and innocent Gladys never dreams that anybody would use her for nefarious ends.

One dark stormy night, on a particularly odd errand, Gladys gets her station wagon bogged down in a mud hole on a lonely mountain road. She tries to get help from a cute but curt guy in remote log cabin. Smugly superior and maddeningly ignoring her charms, John refuses to help her extricate her car and only grudgingly allows her to spend the night in the cabin. She informs him that if tries any funny stuff in the unwelcome advances line, he’ll get the surprise of his life. Gladys respects herself and it is 1959, after all.

Looking for John the next morning, she discovers in another bedroom a corpus delicti next to a small caliber rifle, which, of course, she picks up, thinking the intruder-killer might be still lurking about. She flees the scene, to her employer’s office cum apartment which she finds a ransacked mess. Remembering her employer’s advice, she runs to see Perry Mason about a matter of the gravest importance – not ending up in the gas chamber.

Having read around 60 of the 70 Perry Mason mysteries, I’m at the point of looking beyond the formula to see what Gardner does to keep things interesting for himself as a writer and loyal readers whose patience he knows better not to tax. In this one, he makes a major departure from custom when he eschews the usual courtroom fireworks scene. Instead the climax occurs in the judge’s chambers. Judge Arvis Bagby, in fact, has a much larger role and gets many more lines than judges usually do. The judge lambastes DA Hamilton Burger for not wanting to cooperate with another branch of government and having excessive animus for Perry Mason. Finally, the plucky heroine talks in a racy way that will call to mind the semi-risque Cool and Lam novels.

PS: For more information than a less than hardcore reader needs see this link. For an audio version of this mystery see this Youtube link.