4/6/22

A tightly constructed mystery that is cleared up without Perry Mason. ( )

Despite the author and even the form of the title, this is not a Perry Mason case, but an example of a fairly common genre of the period in which a swell-meaning young man gets unintentionally involved in a complex stirig of crimes; in this case, he finds himself with a carful of smuggled drugs and a dead man shot with his own pistol. In the absence of Perry Mason, the case is solved by the aid some honest and competent state police, whom Gardner apparently created by way of apology for the ways the forces of the law often appear in the Mason stories. ( )

Another side of E.S. Gardner for those of us most used to Perry Mason. Man who is being framed is helped out of the tangle of circumstantial evidence by a competent and likeable pathologist. Romance and period (1950's) details. ( )