Summerbook #1: The Case of the Perjured Parrot

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 The Case of the Perjured Parrot, by Erle Stanley Gardner

 A millionaire real estate mogul is found in a remote hunting cabin, shot dead, with a screaming parrot next to him.  Was it his estranged wife?  The gambling mafia?  His stepson?  His...new wife?  (Wait, what?)  

 I needed to read this particular Perry Mason story for one reason: the back cover matter.  Read that and tell me whether any librarian could resist the hilarity of a collection of guns at a public library, like a 1950s Library of Things.  The actual story does clarify that the gun collection is part of a small museum at the library; it's not the kind of collection where you can check items out.  It's still funny!

This story features a remarkable amount of parrot-switching.  There are THREE parrots in total, all alike except for one tell-tale detail, and the victim, the murderer, and Mason play musical parrots with them.  In fact I'm not at all sure that the parrot plot even works, logically, but I don't care enough to work it out.

I've never read a Perry Mason before and while I can see why they were popular -- action!  short!  not too complex! -- Mason is not my favorite dude ever.  His deal is, he's a criminal defense lawyer who (get this) only defends people accused of crimes that they absolutely did not commit.  Mason would never stoop to defending actual criminals, as expected by a legal system that values due process and the rule of law.  So he runs around being a detective while also denying that he is being a detective and insisting that he only ever finds out anything by cross-examining witnesses in court.  Plus he appears to be dating his secretary in his down time.  This guy is just full of good ideas.

Another reason to read a Perry Mason just once in my life is that Erle Stanley Gardner is, slightly, a local celebrity.  That is, his family lived in Oroville (the county seat) during his youth, and he was expelled from Oroville High School for ”hooliganism” and “shenanigans.”  The Oroville library has a mural of a young, belligerent-looking Erle on an outside wall.  Gardner went on to become a lawyer in Modesto and often represented Chinese defendants (owing to his fluency in Chinese, quite possibly picked up in Oroville) and write tons of pulp novels, both under his own name and several pseudonyms.  He was far too prolific to stick to one name. 

I'm glad I read a Gardner book once. I don't think you need to unless you really want to.  Do keep an eye out for the pulp paperbacks though, which often have fabulous covers.

Comments

  1. Hal JohnsonJune 8, 2025 at 5:38 PM

    Walker Percy once said that not Kafka but Erle Stanley Gardner was the true author of a literature of alienation. "A man who finishes his twentieth Perry Mason is that much nearer total despair than when he started."

    ReplyDelete

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