Perry Mason 115: TCOT Cautious Coquette

Note: Break out the thinking caps, kids - Gardner cranks complexity up to DefCon 5. You’ll either love the brain-bending or throw the book across the room.

The Case of the Cautious Coquette – Erle Stanley Gardner

Mike Grost, tireless cataloger of detective fiction, observes that Gardner possessed “seemingly inexhaustible ability to generate complex plots.” TCOT Cautious Coquette, Mason’s thirty-fourth outing from 1949, is a case in point. Gardner’s ingenuity here is not merely technical; it reflects a worldview in which contingency rules so your practical wisdom - your mother-wit - had better be sharp.

Perry Mason, personal injury lawyer. Sounds not only wrong but like you got a hair in your mouth, doesn’t it? Eee-yew. Like Celine Dion singing Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer.  But here he is, chasing a hit-and-run for a college kid with a busted hip and a mother who’s got nothing but grief and a mortgage. Mason’s usual gig is saving the innocent from the criminal justice meat grinder, so why not take on Big Insurance?

The plan is simple: find the driver, squeeze the insurer, collect the check. Mason runs an ad, and simplicity is trumped by contingency. Two drivers show up, two cars, two settlements. Then a chauffeur named Hartwell L. Pitkin turns up dead in a garage, and the garage belongs to Lucille Barton - a woman who wants Mason for an alimony case. He said no. He doesn’t do family law - too much bad behavior bad actors can help. He does criminal defense.

Lucille didn’t call the cops like Mason told her. A neighbor saw her, maybe saw Mason, and now the cops want answers. Mason gives them attorney-client privilege instead. It’s legal, it’s clever, and it’s the reason he’s stuck with a client he doesn’t trust. Lucille’s beautiful, cunning, and about as reliable as sarcasm.

Enter Lt. Tragg, homicide detective, smart enough to know Sgt. Holcomb - his rival - is a bull in a china shop. Holcomb wants headlines, Mason wants daylight, and Tragg wants to keep his job. So Mason and Tragg team up, sort of. Mason feeds Tragg a tip, then makes Holcomb look like a fool in court. There’s even a car chase. Yes, a car chase in a Perry Mason story. Gardner must’ve been feeling frolics were in order.

The plot’s a pretzel. Gardner builds it with his usual tricks - false leads, courtroom fireworks, and names that sound like they came from a Dickens fan club. Willard Allison Barton? Roscoe R. Hansom? Really?

Language? Well, let’s just say “well-upholstered woman” isn’t aging like fine wine. But the bones of the thing hold up. For the faithful, it’s Gardner in full convoluted mode. For newcomers, it’s a crash course in a world where motives collide, ethics bend and gaaaw-lee those clients sure are economical with the truth.