Note: On the 15th of every month for about the last three years or so, I have posted a review of a Perry Mason mystery. For the hell of it. But I find the ones written in the Sixties just aren’t up the usual standard and, getting older myself, I don’t feel I have the time for mediocre mysteries.
The Case of the Troubled Trustee – Erle Stanley Gardner
There’s a certain melancholy in observing the twilight of a once-brilliant storyteller. Some of Gardner’s later works from the mid-Sixties, sadly, show signs of fatigue - routine in construction, occasionally bordering on the incoherent. This 1965 entry, while not difficult to follow, lacks the crisp, methodical narration that once defined the series.
In a departure from the usual formula, Mason’s client is not a game working woman but a young male investment counselor, Kerry Dutton. His misguided attempt to shield the lovely Desiree Ellis - a woman he loves unrequitedly - from a manipulative beatnik and his domineering mother leads him to breach his fiduciary duties. A proxy fight over an oil stock he never should have touched sets the stage for the inevitable murder.
The courtroom scenes, though not without their moments - particularly during Hamilton Burger’s spirited cross-examinations - drag on a touch too long. Mason’s final maneuver to unmask the killer feels more eccentric than inspired.
Still, for the devoted fan, abandoning a Perry Mason mystery mid-trial simply isn’t done. One reads on, not out of suspense, but out of loyalty - to the character, to the form, and to the memory of Gardner at his best.
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