The Case of the Baited Hook by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This exciting murder story stars the redoubtable Perry Mason, aided and abetted by his efficient PA Della Street and canny PI Paul Drake. Indeed, this is a familiar plot to hardcore readers of Perry Mason stories. A rich architect brings a masked woman to Mason’s office for a midnight meeting. He warns Mason to keep an eye on the newspapers because the architect may find himself and the woman in a vulnerable position. He also cautions against trying to find out who the masked woman is, not even allowing her to speak. Mason accepts half a $10,000 bill that has been cut as part of his retainer.

A parallel plot involves the financial future of an adult who was illegally adopted as a toddler. Her advocate is middle-aged Mrs. Tump, the kind forthright astute woman that Gardner must have admired since he used the archetype so often in his novels.

The action is mainly Mason interviewing evasive sneaks in offices, but Gardner makes talking, mere interviews, fascinating. Gardner makes strong efforts to describe a complex stock swindle and explain a technical legal concept (law of agency) to challenge readers to keep thinking. Focusing on ideas is key in this outing. Easily bored and confused readers should stay away from this one, probably in the top five Most Intricate Mason Novels.

And there are numerous surprises. For one, Mason alludes to the aphorism ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’ which appears in the Sermon on the Mount. Highly unusual in a Mason novel to see a Biblical reference. Even moreso, in his last appearance in a Mason novel, Homicide Sgt. Holcomb, consistently portrayed as a brute and booby, expresses admiration and shakes Mason’s hand:

All right Mason … I don’t like your methods. Someday I’m going to throw you in the can, but I do appreciate good detective work when I see it and I’m enough of a cop to pull for a guy who solves crimes, even if I don’t like the way he goes about it.

This novel also places Della Street right in the thick of the action so fans of Della will be pleased.

Crows Can’t Count by Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Partnerships in detective fiction usually are usually studies in contrasting characters. The head of B. Cool Confidential Investigations is Bertha Cool, a comic miser in the Mr. Krab manner. Her partner is Donald Lam, a shrimpy lawyer who got disbarred because he informed a gangster of a legal trick to get away with a murder. Cool is a hard driver while Lam is more subtle, never telling cops, clients, or Bertha all he knows or suspects. To prospective clients, Cool describes Lam as “a little runt, but he’s brainy.”

Crows Can’t Count (1946) involves trusts, emeralds, a pet crow and savvy city women. The running gag – that every female that crosses Lam’s path falls for him – is honored. The unique point is that Cool and Lam travel to Columbia (as in Bogota, not South Carolina) to investigate the precious stones aspect of the case. Lam adjusts inter-culturally but Cool, of course, is her irritable self, stomping on cultural corns left and right. It’s hilarious.

The dialogue-driven stories have believable and vivid characters. The stories demand thinking. “Among his many other virtues,” wrote Anthony Boucher, long-time reviewer for the NYT, “Erle Stanley Gardner is surely the finest constructor of hyper-intricate puzzles in evidence. Besides the Perry Mason mysteries, Gardner wrote a couple dozen Cool and Lam mysteries under the pen name of A.A. Fair. The titles are often generalizations about animals as in Owls Don’t Blink or Cats Prowl at Night.”

Maigret on the Riviera by Georges Simenon

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1932 mystery is also known as Liberty Bar. M.’s superiors assign him to investigate a murder on the French Riviera, so the novel is set in Antibes, Cap d’Antibes, Juan-les-Pins and Cannes.

Stabbed to death in his car is Australian William Brown, once a spy during WWI, so M. is told to tread with discretion. M. finds that Brown has come down in the world, owing to poor choices as to hard drinking and unsavory companions. M. finds out that Brown’s lifestyle frightens and disgusts his family, which deprives him of resources and pays him only a monthly minimal allowance. M. also discovers that Brown shared his life among his “four women:” first Gina, his “official” mistress and the mother of the second one, with whom he lived in his villa in Antibes, then Jaja, the owner of a bar in Cannes, where the young Sylvie, the fourth and a prostitute, also lives.

Despite this sordid backdrop, M. feels a connection with the victim because they resemble each other in looks, an uncompromising attitude, and a love for a quiet drink. Also, among the lush tropical flora, garish colors, and tanned beach bunnies, for a brief moment while wearing his usual heavy coat, M. himself better understands why a man on the Riviera for the first time might turn to extreme slacking.

He takes himself in hand, however, and explores two different settings, high and low, to find the culprit. The sadness and the squalor are balanced in the last when M. and his wife have a wonderful conversation in the last couple of pages. In this 17th Maigret novel, written in 1932, Simenon starts to use the existential themes that we meet in his “hard novels.”