The Case of the Negligent Nymph by Erle Stanley Gardner
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
This 1959 mystery starts with the usual working girl – pretty, naturally; full of moxie, certainly – needing super-lawyer Perry Mason when she finds herself in a jam. Perry is in a canoe scoping out a millionaire’s island on behalf of a client in a real estate case. The naked nymph, pursued by a savage dobie, swims up to the canoe so Perry saves her and takes her to her own battered yacht.
The next day Perry finds out that the game and canny beauty he rescued is wanted by the cops on suspicion of stealing $50K worth of gems from the millionaire’s island mansion. She is apprehended and bound over for trial for grand theft. In an exciting courtroom scene, Perry fires off legal fireworks during a cross-examination and gets her bail whittled down to a manageable $2,500.
Things start looking up for the accused, but, self-reliant to a fault, she makes errors in judgment, the worst of which are not following Perry’s legal advice and then lying to him. Perry ends up defending her on the inevitable murder charge.
He finds his back up against the proverbial wall yet again since he faces as many legal woes as his client does if he doesn’t find out the truth. Perry kicks himself for letting impulse rule him and helping the fibbing brat in the first place, but he defends her with all he’s got. Perry acknowledges his own fallibility and is thus compassionate about the short-comings of others.
Usual. Of course. Inevitable. Why return again and again to the Perry Mason stories that invariably feature damsels in distress, the powerful exploiting the vulnerable, and the cunning and resourceful hero who combines wise tactics and swift action to exonerate the innocent? Because these irresistible elements, the essentials of heroic myth and folktales, possess magical appeal to our sense of fairness and courage that is hard-wired in us because we are human beings wired with the same nature.
Sure, everybody wants an honest, loyal and efficient lawyer that will fight when the going gets rough. But even more, everybody wants a supporter, an advocate who knows their weaknesses and understands messed-up choices but pleads their case eloquently and shrewdly anyway.
