4/6/22

A more mature ESG work. ( )

Saturday morning, Perry Mason and his secretary, Della Street, are in the office catching up on work. They are interrupted by Norda Allison, who is seeking Perry’s assistance. She has a story and a problem which Perry thinks may be simple. It turns out to be simply complicated.

Norda has been receiving envelopes containing news articles about couples who had split up. In each case, the man couldn’t stand it and wound up killing the woman with a gun. Norda feels they are coming from the man she has just broken off her engagement from. He turned out not to be what she thought. Not only is he controlling, his father is very prominent in Los Angeles and also has connections in San Francisco, where Norda is from.

Finding the mailer becomes a minor problem when Norda’s ex is found murdered in his car and she is arrested for the crime.

Once again Perry is just a step ahead of Lieutenant Tragg and D.A. Hamilton Burger. But Perry has a few tricks up his sleeve too.

I’ve read quite a few Perry Masons over the years, and I still enjoy them. ( )

Not bad. What I thought happened, Perry explored, but turned out to be a false trail, so ESG managed to surprise me somewhat. Still, I had the murderer pegged fairly early in the novel, which is unusual for one of these for me. ( )

Erle Stanley Gardner's "The Case of the Deadly Toy" is a typical Perry Mason mystery, and that's a very good thing. The story is solidly written, and filled with interesting characters. It's also crafted with enough wry humor and clever plotting to hold a reader's interest, and keep her guessing about the plot's final twist till the story's end. Quite a story it is, too -- liberally spiced with gritty "noir" elements as well as Gardner's trademark courtroom theatrics, the mystery tale features a swirl of conniving spouses and clueless girlfriends, anonymous poison pen letters, a custody battle over a pistol-wielding boy all of seven years old, and a midnight murder whose best witness might be Rover, the Great Dane. There's a reason the old "Perry Mason" television series still flickers daily on televisions the world over. Fans of the show who haven't read at least a few of the books that launched the wily attorney's omnipresent TV episodes do themselves a disservice. "The Case of the Deadly Toy" is a great book to start exploring the Perry Mason adventures as Gardner wrote them, which is even more entertaining than the way Raymond Burr et als. portrayed them on the small screen. ( )