Erle Stanley Gardner, seven complete novels Book

The seven novels in this omnibus, all published in the 1950s, were made into episodes of the classic Perry Mason television series, and reading them gives a fascinating glimpse both into the different needs of books versus television and what was important to Erle Stanley Gardner. ESG stayed true to his original characterizations, so instead of Raymond Burr's taciturn tactician and William Talman's lean and excitable public avenger, we have a sophisticated rider of the fine line between the spirit and letter of the law (I saw and heard Warren William from the movies made in the 1930s) locked in battle with the bearlike, vengeance-driven district attorney who lives for the day when he can throw his nemesis in prison.

Because I'm familiar with the television episodes, I wasn't surprised by the perps in most of the stories. One exception was a novel rewritten to the point of being barely recognizable. (I did figure out the killer a few pages before the reveal.) What did surprise me was how deep the stories were in the legal technicalities. Much of each story is dedicated to the courtroom wrangling and subtleties of the law. ESG was a lawyer, and he proved it on nearly every page.

In addition to knowing the law inside and out, ESG knew his audience, so he didn't test his faithful readers' patience with exposition about the regulars they had been reading about for years. Stripped of any physical descriptions or background information about the recurring characters, each story begins with Della bringing an intriguing potential case to her boss's attention, and then it's off to the races.

In terms of the writing style, these fast-paced stories are lean and plot-driven. An occasional elegant turn of phrase pops up, but for the most part the writing is utilitarian and even sometimes rather clunky. For instance, the narrator can refer to Della as "Della Street" a dozen or more times within one story, as if somehow we're going to forget her last name. The same is true for the other recurring characters. Perhaps this is a stylistic element of hard-boiled mysteries; I noticed but rarely found it annoying.

However, I did have difficulties with a strange (at least to me) tendency for ESG to write without attributions (e.g., "Perry said," "Paul asked," etc.). In conjunction with often breaking up one character's speech into multiple paragraphs, this sometimes forced me to stop and reread conversations to make sure I knew who was speaking. Even the typesetter occasionally got mixed up and inserted end quotes where they didn't belong. That led to the wrong character speaking in my head, which I would discover after a while when I encountered a long-overdue attribution. Only Perry has a few distinctive speech patterns ("The deuce!"), so those attributions were sometimes sorely missed.

The annoyances were minor compared with the skillful creation of the mysteries. I'm going to search out more Perry Mason mysteries so I can spend more time with Perry, Della, Paul, and the rest of the gang.