Perry Mason 108: TCOT Empty Tin

Note: Serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, this novel carries the echo of weekly installments, with bits of recap tucked into the dialogue like breadcrumbs for new readers. We post-modern types can skim those, but they’re part of the charm, like cigarette ads in old paperbacks.

The Case of the Empty Tin – Erle Stanley Gardner

Ah yes, that Perry Mason mystery from 1941 - now there’s a tale that takes you back. Not to the courtroom, not to the bustling lawyer’s office with its clacking typewriters and Della Street’s crisp efficiency and canny instincts, but to the Gentrie household, where the scent of canned peaches and linoleum wax hangs in the air like a “female Rockwell” Frances Tipton Hunter illustration come to life.

The Gentries - salt-of-the-earth folks - run a modest hardware store, the kind with creaky floorboards and bins of nails that smell faintly of sawdust. Every penny counts, so they take in a roomer, a quiet soul who pays his rent on time and doesn’t make demands. They preserve fruits in Mason jars, not for the foreshadowing, mind you, but because it’s cheaper. There’s a spinster sister who knows her way around a pressure cooker, and a hired woman who can whip up a meatloaf that could win prizes at the county fair. Three kids tumble through the house like marbles on a hardwood floor, and though the seams of the family fabric are stretched, they hold.

Now, some Mason fans - those who like their mysteries served hot with a side of courtroom drama and a dash of the old ultra-violence - might find this beginning a tad slow. But for those of us who’ve read a couple dozen of Gardner’s works and know the rhythm of his prose like the back of a well-worn paperback, this domestic start is a breath of fresh air. It’s Hitchcockian, really - the suspense nestled in the folds of the everyday, the mystery blooming in the garden of the mundane.

And Perry? He’s in rare form. He double-talks the cops with the ease of a man ordering coffee. He breaks into houses like he’s checking the mail. He speeds through traffic with Della riding shotgun, her hair tousled and her wits sharp. She’s no mere secretary here - she’s a co-conspirator, a thinker, a woman who knows things men don’t, and isn’t afraid to say so.

And no courtroom scene? Some hardcore readers might pout, others might cheer. But me? I say this one’s a gem. If you’re a Mason fan, make it your next read.