“I sometimes do things that will expose the weakness of the police theory. I sometimes cross-examine a witness to bring them face to face with physical conditions which demonstrate the fallacy of his testimony, but I don’t go around planting evidence in order to compound murders!”
But that is exactly what Hamilton Berger believes that Perry Mason has done in the case of Nadine Farr, a girl who confessed under a truth serum to the murder of Mosher Higley. Higley was poisoned and a bottle of cyanide pills was conveniently found where it is claimed Mason had planted them.
Faced with a client’s confession and his alleged culpability in the crime, surely this is one situation that even Perry Mason can’t get out of…
It’s Perry’s golden anniversary – this was the fiftieth novel in the series – and I grabbed it off the shelf because I needed a quick read. What I had sort-of forgotten was that I was also going to get a quality read. It’s easy to forget how sharp a writer Gardner was.
I was chatting with my good blogging buddy Kate the other day about how I could do with a “wow” book. Last month, I read a bunch of books that were perfectly enjoyable (and a couple that weren’t) but only one book that was something special, but that was a book that I’d read before.
This isn’t a “wow” book, there’s nothing ground-breaking about it, it’s “just” a good Perry Mason book. But it’s got an energy about it that I think people could learn from. It’s a mere 185 pages but the plot keeps moving without neglecting character. From Perry making sure that things are best for his client before the trial and then the shenanigans during the trial, ending with the reveal as to what actually happened.
I’ve come to Gardner quite late in my reading life and thankfully a) I’ve still got a lot left to read and b) they’ve been reprinted a lot over the years so they’re not hard to get hold of – as the pile of second hand titles in my study attests to…
My Perry Mason Reviews
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 