Erles Stanley Gardner is best known for his courtroom dramas featuring lawyer Perry Mason (82 novels in the series).. Gardner’s also known for his Donald Lam/Bertha Cool series (30 books) of unconventional private eye novels.
The Clue of the Runaway Blonde (1947) introduces Sheriff Bill Edon, a lawman pushing 70 with politicians poised to attack him if he doesn’t solve a murder and untangle the mystery of a wealthy businessman’s estate. GRADE: B
The Clue of the Hungry Horse (1947) begins with a death of a young woman in a stable, seemingly killed by a kick from a horse. But Sheriff Bill Edon, still dogged by politicians who think he is “out of touch” with contemporary investigative procedures, finds the evidence to prove the woman was murdered. But why? GRADE: B+
The Clue of the Screaming Woman (1949) was “lost” for 30 years. The story was originally serialized in Country Gentleman magazine, issues January through April 1949, and never reprinted until Ellery Queen’s Secrets of Mystery volume published it in 1979. A man is shot during a hunting excursion by a group of wealth people. Sheriff Bill Eldon doubts that Frank Ames, a World War II veteran, is the culprit even though the dead man was shot with Ames’s gun.
Once again, Sheriff Bill Eldon finds himself mocked and underestimated as he investigates the murder. Erle Stanley Gardner includes a love story along with a fascinating mystery.
If you’re looking for solid detection and puzzle solving, I recommend the Sheriff Bill Eldon series to you. While not as popular as Perry Mason and Lam/Cool, the Eldon series delivers plenty of entertaining fun! I rate The Clue of the Screaming Woman a B+. Some small press should collect all three of these stories in one volume. Are you an Erle Stanley Gardner fan?
My mother read all the ESG books in paperback when I was a kid, but I don’t actually remember ever reading one. I did read a Hardcase reprint of a Lam/Cool novel which didn’t impress me very much.
Steve, Perry Mason was very popular on TV (and still is) and that fueled the sales of ESG’s books. Some people like Lam/Cool mysteries, some don’t.
I love the Perry Mason tv series: I got John the entire set on DVD a couple of years back and we’ve been working our way through them chronologically based on original airing date. Some of the shows were directly adapted from ESG’s books, others were “based on characters created by ESG.” Whoever did the set design and costuming for the show for an amazing job: so much about a character is communicated by decor and wardrobe choices. On the other hand, I find the actual Perry Mason books somewhat dense and hard to get into. I’ve read a few, but I’d rather watch Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, William Hopper, etc., re-enact the stories any day.
Deb, you’re right about the accuracy of some of the Perry Mason TV adaptations from the novels. And Erle Stanley Gardner showed up as a judge in one of the episodes. The best part of the Perry Mason novels are the court room scenes.
I was a big Perry Mason fan when I was a kid. I have read most of ESG’s novels, with the exception of a few in the D.A. Doug Selby series and a couple of the final Perry Masons (I have even slogged through Thomas B. Chastain’s novels continuing the Mason saga), all but one of his non-fiction books, and a number of ESG’s collections. He was not the greatest writer but could be a fantastic plotter. Gardner was at his best when channeled his pulp writing past. There are hundreds of uncollected stories that deserve book publication and I am surprised that this has not happened on a large scale.
Time was you could swing a stick at any newsstand and be assured of hitting an Erle Stanley Gardner book. Those days, alas, are long gone.
Jerry, there used to be whole shelves of Perry Mason hardcovers and paperbacks in used bookstores and thrift stories. As you correctly pointed out, those days are long gone. I have some ESG collections of his pulp writings, but I’d be a buyer of all those uncollected stories if some small press reprinted them.
When I was discovering mystery novels in the 60s, each series I really loved became an obsession. With series like Nero Wolfe or Christie’s series, or John Dickson Carr I’d make the initial discovery, then blow through the series as quickly as I could find them. Gardner’s books never hit me that way. I did try a few Masons and the Cool/Lam books but never felt that I needed to blow through the whole series, and I’d never heard of the Bill Eldon series until today. Deb’s description of the Mason books as “dense and hard to get into” pretty much describes my feeling about them, although I was a big fan of the tv series.
Michael, I think Erle Stanley Gardner’s formula for the Perry Mason series might be part of the problem of “dense and hard to get into.” A lot of the exposition set up the climatic court room drama. I think you would enjoy these Sheriff Bill Eldon stories…if you can find them.
Like Jerry, I started reading them when I was a kid. My mother had paperbacks but also hardbacks with two or three Mason books in them. I loved the show and read whatever books she had, randomly. In the early ’70s, when I was working in Greenwich Village, I found a cache of old Gardners (some were Morrow first editions, many were cheap reprints by Triangle and others) in one of the few remaining used bookstores on lower Fourth Avenue. I picked up as many of the obscure and non-series books as they had – Gramps Wiggins, Terry Clane, Sheriff Bill Eldon, etc. I read those and some of the D.A. Doug Selby books. (There was a Doug Selby TV movie adaptation with Jim Hutton as Selby and Lloyd Bochner perfectly cast as the slimy defense lawyer A. B. Carr, Selby’s nemesis.) After reading those, I decided to read the Mason’s in order of publication, from the earliest, pulpish days. (Before that, the ones I’d read had been mostly from the TV show era.) I probably got through about half of them at the time. At one point in the summer of 1975, I was reading two or three Gardners in a day.
More recently, I’ve been trying to get my hands on as many of the collections of pulp stories as possible. Crippen & Landru has done several collections, including Sidney Zoom, Lester Leith and The Patent Leather Kid. I’ve read the two Whispering Sands collections, some other western stories, even the science fiction stories!
His best stuff is definitely the early pulp work. He was a master of propulsive action that kept you turning the pages rapidly.
Jeff, I have some of the Crippen & Landru ESG collections. They’re scheduled for some FFBs later this year. I hope C&L reprint more of the early Gardner pulp fiction. You’re right about those early stories having the power to get the reader to turn the pages rapidly!
I’ve read and enjoyed these, though I prefer the Mason novels. I never found them dense or hard to get into, but I couldn’t read them one after the other. I love the TV show too, and have the first few seasons on disc. Good FFB choice.
Rick, I’ve had THE CLUE OF THE RUNAWAY BLONDE and THE CLUE OF THE SCREAMING WOMAN on my shelves for decades. I finally found time to read and enjoy them! Hopefully, I can get caught up on some of these books I’ve owned for years in 2022.
Whenever I wander through the used book stores I still find shelf after shelf of Gardner books, sometimes as their own separate subsection of mystery. I’ve yet to pick one up but one of these days…
I absorbed a good chunk of the PERRY MASON series through osmosis as it seemed to run weekdays throughout my entire childhood and I still catch the series on a regular basis whenever my insomnia rears its ugly head. On the whole it was a solid show and sometimes quite good which is no surprise given the fantastic cast and production talent, particularly Gail Patrick who, along with Joan Harrison on the Hitchcock shows, was one of the great women pioneers in television. I’ve always been particularly intrigued by the more noirish seasons that stand out by their expressionistic lighting and brassy, jazzy scores.
The show also had one of THE great theme tunes of all time and was notable for how it continually and quite effectively evolved its opening title sequence throughout the seasons. It is a pity the series didn’t last longer. The one color episode made a good case for how the show could have stayed viable through the sixties and into the seventies.
Byron, my family loved to watch PERRY MASON from 1957 to 1966. And, occasionally, I’ll watch an episode on DVD or on the Oldies TV staton that continues to show PERRY MASON. They hold up pretty well even though they’re over 60 years old! And, as you point out, the PERRY MASON theme is classic!
They did do a bunch of TV movies with Burr through 85-93. The main problem with watching the old Perry Masons (and a lot of other shows during this time period) is the obvious use of soundstages for outdoor scenes.
Steve, budgets were tight back then. The soundstages had to be upgraded when PERRY MASON when to color from Black & White.
I watch the reruns on MeTV almost every night, M-F, and I love them! Excellent cast, good stories, catchy courtroom action; it has it all! Lasr night they had Miss Landers from Leave It to Beaver as the accused! Who could believe Miss Landers could kill anyone? As for the books, I have a bunch of them and have read one! I don’t know why I haven’t tackled the others but maybe I will if the moon is right and the crik don’t rise!
I just got back from Barnes & Nobel where I used up 80% of a gift card I got for Xmas! Talk about sticker shock! A paperback from Hardcore Crine was over $12, and it wasn’t even a thick one! I passed!
Today is Frank Denton’s birthday! I wish he was here to celebrate it!
Bob, I miss Frank, too. Prices will continue to rise with the supply chain problems and the war in Ukraine.
MeTV broadcasts the PERRY MASON series, and cable channels Sundance (!) and FETV run it regularly as well. (Sundance only gets exclamation point as an example of a station set up to run independent films, branded from Robert Redford’s film festival series, has become just another cable channel, one that never doesn’t censor its films and even some of the language and imagery on LAW AND ORDER repeats from the ’90s on NBC broadcast.)
The original arrangement and recording of the PM theme is impressive…the later re-recordings for the revivals far less so. I, too, was unfamiliar with the Eldon series…though James Reasoner also reviewed two of these some years back:
https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2017/04/forgotten-small-town-sheriffs-clue-of.html
Todd, thanks for jogging my memory with that link to James Reason’s fine review! I even commented on that post! Back in 2017, I suspect I realized I had a copy of THE CASE OF THE RUNAWAY BLONDE (that includes THE CASE OF THE HUNGRY HORSE) but I didn’t have THE CASE OF THE SCREAMING WOMAN. It took awhile, but I managed to track down a copy of ELLERY QUEEN’S SECRETS OF MYSTERY that reprinted the missing THE CASE OF THE SCREAMING WOMAN.
My mom was a big ES Gardner fan. One of her friends had been one of his secretaries prior to WWII and loaned her some of the books (many were inscribed).
I’ve never read him, but have wanted to try a Bertha Cool (?) book
Maggie, you might want to give THE KNIFE SLIPPED a try. Here’s the link to my review: http://georgekelley.org/forgotten-books-406-the-knife-slipped-by-erle-stanley-gardner/
I can vouch for the entertainment value of the two Sheriff Bill novellas I’ve read — the first two listed here, collected as “Two Clues”. Some day I’ll have to read the third. Very fun character, and the type of stories where you can match wits against the detective if you want to, or just ride along for the events of his interesting life as he fends off family, political rivals, the press, etc. and sometimes has to administer informally other types of “justice” and comfort. Seems like the type Gardner wished the world had more of (or maybe ANY of), who’d think not to turn on the siren in a quiet neighborhood, that sort of thing.
Robert, I agree with you. Gardner’s stories featured small town life…with plenty of skullduggery!