Erle Stanley Gardner’s 28th Perry Mason novel from 1946 features one of the more bizarre beginnings in the series. An ad in a paper offers money to attractive brunettes (age 23 to 25, height five-feet-four-and-one-half inches, weight 111 pounds, waist measurement 24 inches, bust measurement 32, wearing a dark suit and a fluffy collar). …but they must stand on an assigned corner of the city at a certain time. After Perry Mason and Della Street see six of these women waiting on street corners, Mason’s curiosity is aroused.
This begins a convoluted case of impersonation, treachery, lies, and murder. Perry Mason, with the help of Paul Drake, manages to unravel the tangled web of deceit.
“The Case of the Borrowed Brunette” showed up on the Perry Mason TV series (Season 2, Episode 13) in 1959. The episode follows the novel’s plot closely (except for the ending) and produces a startling “Reveal” at its conclusion. I enjoyed The Case of the Borrowed Brunette, both the novel and the TV episode. Are you a Perry Mason fan? GRADE: B+
I watch Mason reruns on METV every night, M-F, and enjoy them as much as I can with the disgusting cuts made to slam in extra commercials! I need to read more of the books, though!
Bob, I used to find Perry Mason paperbacks everywhere. Now, they’re getting rather scarce. And, the public libraries don’t have many Erle Stanley Gardner books, either.
The cover artist is Charles Binger, who signed his work “Charles” and is thus credited on the back of the book. What I don’t get is that the painting depicts what is obviously a redhead, and that Mala Mastroberte, whoever she may be, is a redhead also (though I suspect the beauty shop variety, not The Real Thing). Google searches can turn up strange things, I know; was there any context explaining this odd artifact?
Art, I’m as clueless about this cover as you are. I just thought the Charles Binger cover and Mala’s masterful imitation deserved to be featured on today’s FFB. If you come up with any more information, please share it with us!
The Perry Mason tv series was very popular in Germany then – but I don’t remember this.
Most episodes were somehow similar so I lost interest.
Just realised that from November 1959 until January 1963 only 23 episodes were shown – I was still at school most of the time and then as a student had to take the train home in the evening.
I also must have read some of the novels – in German translation but don’t remember any, too formulaistic …
Wolf, you’re right about Erle Stanley Gardner using a template for his Perry Mason novels. The early Mason novels were more hard-boiled. I consider the Perry Mason novels of the 1940s and 1950s to be the best of the series.
I was a big fan of the Raymond Burr series. When many kids were reading science fiction, I was reading my mother’s Perry Mason books. I know I read this one and saw the television version, but it’s a long time ago and I have no memory of it.
And she is NOT a brunette!
Jeff, like you I watched the Perry Mason TV series. I started reading the Perry Mason paperbacks around 1964 and binged on a couple dozen of them. In the 1970s I managed to buy the entire series.
Yes, you’re right that this cover of THE CASE OF THE BORROWED BRUNETTE doesn’t feature a brunette, but that’s why I thought I’d feature it. Very odd. And, I’m curious about the imitation like Art Scott is.
I was a big fan of th Perry Mason TV show, which lead me to the books, which became my gateway drug to mysteries post-Hardy Boys. From Mason I graduated to Richard S. Prather’s Shel Scott books and Craig Rice’s madcap novels — a strange transition but, at least with Rice, John J. Malone was a lawyer. Christie, Carr, Stout, Hammett, Chandler and all the others came later.
Jerry, while you were reading post-Mason paperbacks by Prather and Rice, I graduated to Carter Brown and The Saint paperbacks. But we pretty much ended up in the same place!
A quick search turned up this:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/Mala%20Mastroberte/
Mala is a model who’s having fun mimicking the women on vintage paperbacks, girlie magazines, classic cheesecake calendars and the like. The photoshop work in these samples is impressive, as is the photography, makeup, wardrobe, and certainly Mala herself. I’m an instant fan!
Art, thanks! I’m an instant fan, too! Great detective work on your part!
Thanks, Art! Nice one.
Like Jerry, I read Prather. Also, someone had several of what seemed like the Prather imitator, Earl Norman and his Burns Bannion books (KILL ME IN YOKOHAMA, etc.) and I read those too. Then it was Agatha Christie.
Jeff, sometime around 1966 I started reading Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie in my High School Study Halls. I remember getting yelled at by one of the Study Hall proctors because the cover on THE EGYPTIAN CROSS MYSTERY was too risqué for their taste. And it had a redhead on the cover, too!
Egyptian Cross is slated for my B’Con slide show. Harry Bennett was the artist. I was too strait-laced to bring anything suspect to study halls, but I vividly remember when a guy got caught passing around a copy of Swap Babe in Jr. High.
Art, that prissy Study Hall proctor objected to Harry Bennett’s wonderful cover on THE EGYPTIAN CROSS MYSTERY. I also got yelled at by a meddling cashier when I bought THE HONG KONG CAPER by Carter Brown in 1962. She thought I was “too young” to read such material. I was 13 at the time.
We had one small bookcase in our house and this is the writer who filled it. ESG and a bit of romance novels. But I never read one. Did watch the show as a child but not since.
Patti, when I rewatched THE CASE OF THE BORROWED BRUNETTE on AMAZON PRIME (for free!) I was struck by the grace and beauty of Della Street (Barbara Hale), Perry Mason’s secretary.
Watched the show as a kid but find most tv dramas from that period hard to watch now.
My mother read Erle Stanley Gardner but for some reason I never did. My early reading in crime started with Ross MacDonald, John D. MacDonald and Raymond Chandler. I read some Prather. Read all of Rex Stout. Disliked Christie.
Steve, I love Raymond Chandler’s remark that Dashiell Hammett took murder out of the drawing room and put it back in the gutter where it belonged. I’m assuming that the “drawing room” reference was to Agatha Christie’s mysteries.
Although I certainly don’t remember individual episodes, I watched the tv show regularly when I was a teenager, but haven’t seen any since. I’ve noticed that the first five seasons are available on Amazon Prime. It’s one of many, many things I’d like to find the time for, but so far I haven’t. Never read any of the books when they were really popular–it was Mickey Spillane and Ross Macdonald who lured me into reading crime novels. Otto Penzler recently reprinted “The Case of the Careless Kitten” in his interesting American Mystery Classics series of books and I gave it a try. I found it to be horribly complicated without being very interesting, and probably won’t read any more of them.
Michael, I found that the PERRY MASON TV series “simplified” many of the Erle Stanley Gardner novels its episodes. If you start watching PERRY MASON on AMAZON PRIME, be prepared to be addicted!
Like others, I don’t understand the redhead on the cover of a book with “brunette” in the title. Still, nice pick. I loved the TV show when watching it as a kid, and have the first couple of seasons on DVD (wish I had them all!).
Rick, welcome back! Many TV series from the 1950s and early 1960s don’t hold up to rewatching, but I’ve enjoyed the PERRY MASON TV episodes I’ve seen.
Re: study hall censors. I always had a paperback during study hall but only once was I was told to put it away: an issue of FANTASTIC featuring Murray Leinster’s Planet of Dread with a great giant spider on the cover. Otherwise, Good Girl cover art never seemed to bother the teachers monitoring the study hall. I did have one book confiscated — CANDY by “Maxwell Kenton” (Terry Southern & Mason Hoffenberg), the one with the innocuous cover. The book was returned to me a week later — after being handed around in the teacher’s lounge and being read by at least three teachers!
Jerry, I read CANDY in a Study Hall, too. But that innocuous cover didn’t trigger any teacher response.