The Case of the Smoking Chimney (Perry Mason Mysteries (House of Stratus))

Rating:
Summary: Last of a (thankfully) short-lived series
Review: "The Case of the Smoking Chimney", first published in 1943, was the second - and, thankfully, final - entry in Erle Stanley Gardner's short-lived attempt at putting together a series of detective stories about grandfatherly free spirit, Gramps Wiggins. Neither this book nor its predecessor, "The Case of the Turning Tide" (1941), give any indication that posterity missed out on great things by his bringing this series to a quick end.

The second book is the better of the two, but is still very slack, much too loose in construction and in the writing to hold its own in comparison to Gardner's two other great series, about Perry Mason, and Donald Lam/Bertha Cool (written under the pseudonym A.A. Fair).

A crafty businessman arrives incognito in a small town, where he takes up residence at a cabin and - under another identity - starts to acquire property, apparently in an attempt to hoodwink the town's property owners. When he is found dead in the mountain retreat there is no shortage of suspects with excellent motives. Gramps Wiggins's granddaughter is married to the local district attorney, giving him an inside track to the physical evidence and to the misguided interpretation of that evidence by the authorities.

This book is something of an anomaly. The clues are good - puzzling, yet not so obscure that it is impossible to interpret them correctly and piece them together into the right conclusions. The mystery is good, and its solution fairly satisfying. Yet the book itself is pretty awful. It is basically short story material that has been expanded to novel length, and in doing so, dissipating tension, focus, and the reader's interest

Gardner tries hard, but in the end can't quite convince us that anybody could find Gramps Wiggins as adorable as the granddaughter and her husband apparently do. Their tolerance of him is a contrivance, a manipulation of the characters authentic feelings to preserve the structure of the story that Gardner needs to impose. I suppose that the Gramps Wiggins character can be thought of as Gardner's abortive attempt at creating an amateur detective who is more adept and insightful than the pros by virtue of his no-nonsense understanding of human nature, much like Agatha Christie's highly successful Miss Jane Marple. On that level the character - and the two books - have to be judged as failures.

Gardner was a writer of limited skills, and was certainly a poor creator of three-dimensional characters. Gramps Wiggins is as an insufferable bore with a terminal case of cutesy, that, unfortunately, doesn't reach the terminal stage nearly fast enough to suit me.

Rating:
Summary: Gardner's Colorful Character
Review: This book is about businessmen striving towards their goals of money and power. But their personal flaws often handicap their race for success. Ralph Pressman owned a successful company, but did not quite own his trophy wife. His choice of bookkeeper was also flawed. They are all introduced in short paragraphs that describe their character (or lack thereof). The goal is to profit from the oil rights on many small farms and ranchs. But Pressman has a powerful rival in George Karper, who has influence on Pressman's bookkeeper.

District Attorney Frank Duryea and his wife Milred are visited by her Gramps Wiggins because of gasoline and tire rationing. The old rascal smuggled in sugar from Mexico. Constable Carl Gentry tells Duryea of the trouble that will result from Pressman's oil drilling. The problem for them is that the voters will remember in November what they do today. [Isn't democracy great?] Gramps believes that this is still a free country, and you can do anything you like, as long as they don't catch you!

There is a rumor that the new chicken farm owner, Jack Reedley, is really Ralph Pressman. But Reedley is found dead, and the police begin the investigation. The "smoking chimney" refers to the oil lamp in the cabin. Can the oil consumed tell how long it was lit? Gramps Wiggins thinks so. When DA Duryea says the autopsy surgeon gave an estimate, Gramps points out they were wrong in the Thelma Todd case.

Gardner was showing his writing skill in this novel, as if to answer critics of his Perry Mason series. Chapter 26 describes a glib politician who always has a solution after the problem arises. Has that changed? As in later works, Gardner describes (and implicitly criticizes) the manners and morals of his times. "Perry Mason" was based partly on Gardner's own career as a lawyer. "Gramps Wiggins" seems to be based on Gardner's hobby as a tourist, down to the home-built trailer.