The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (Perry Mason Mysteries (Fawcett Books))

Rating:
Summary: Not enough plot nuances to overcome the natural flaw
Review: This is not one of the better Perry Mason novels. It starts when an elderly, cigar-smoking lady (Matilda Benson) enters Perry's office and asks him to somehow recover the gambling IOUs that her granddaughter (Sylvia Oxman) has written to pay off her gambling debts. The daughter is married to a chiseling man who would use the gambling debts in a divorce proceeding to prove that she a poor wife and an unfit parent. The owners of the gambling boat also understand the situation, so they will try to force a repayment substantially higher than the face value of the IOUs. While Matilda is willing to pay extra, she wants to hire Mason to keep the costs to a minimum and use his reputation to finalize the issue.
Mason travels to the boat, but suddenly finds himself a prime suspect in a murder. The circumstances indicate that only Sylvia Oxman or Mason could have pulled the trigger. To avoid being arrested, Mason goes into hiding and tries to piece together how the murder could have been committed. Della Street, his loyal secretary, helps him in his hiding, anticipating his needs and finding ways for him to keep out of sight. To complicate matters, one of private detective Paul Drake's operatives, (George Belgrade) sells out, getting paid by a newspaper to describe the events. His story appears to implicate Mason, but when Drake and Mason confront him, Belgrade is apologetic, and while Drake wants to fire and blacklist him, Mason prevents it. Mason tells Drake that the damage was done and they may need his goodwill later.
That policy proves to be the correct one, as eventually, Mason determines how the murder was committed and Belgrade's testimony helps convince the authorities that Mason is innocent. The primary weakness of the story is one that could be expressed about most of the Mason stories, namely that the police have a knee-jerk reaction to consider Mason guilty. In the better stories, the pace of the action and the plot nuances are enough to overcome this natural weakness. However, in this story, they are not strong enough to cover this flaw. After all, we know that Mason will prove his innocence, the only point of interest is how we get there. Matilda Benson is an interesting character, but since most of the story involves Mason and his flight, we do not learn enough about her.

Rating:
Summary: The whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts
Review: Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.

Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction.

"The Case of the Dangerous Dowager": B-

This Perry Mason mystery has a promising premise and opens nicely, but falters in the latter stages, never really bringing the disparate elements of the mystery together in a very satisfying way. The central problem with the story is that the mystery itself is too weak - Gardner fails to divert our attention from the crucial clue - the timing of the visits to the office where the murder is committed - and we realize who the guilty party is as soon as Perry himself does.

The situation is a good one, one that Gardner uses with outstanding results in some of the later entries in the Perry Mason series - dealing with a blackmailer. Matilda Benson engages Perry to buy back gambling IOUs signed by her niece, and held by the apparent owner of a gambling ship that cruises the waters just beyond the twelve-mile limit. Perry approaches the problem the way we've come to expect from a man who dearly maintains a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to blackmailers: with a frontal attack, full of bluff and bluster and the kind of aplomb that would unnerve the steadiest of criminals. This confrontation is very neatly handled by Gardner and makes for a very tense and satisfying read. A nice game of cat-and-mouse engineered by Perry.

On the night of the crucial confrontation, however, Perry finds the blackmailing holder of the IOUs dead, and Matilda Benson and her niece both aboard the cruise ship - and possibly engaged in that old shipboard pastime, toss-the-gun-over-the-railing. The coincidental visit to the ship of all the key characters on the same night is not carried off very convincingly - we are too aware of the sheer contrivance of the whole setup.

Despite the excellent situation and the effective ambiance of the gambling ship, getting Perry's client off the hook is a bit too easy - the comings and goings from the murder scene are too well monitored and too straightforwardly reported by Gardner to be sufficiently mystifying.

The set pieces are good and effective, but unfortunately the whole amounts in this case to less than the sum of its parts.

Rating:
Summary: The whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts
Review: Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.

Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction.

"The Case of the Dangerous Dowager": B-

This Perry Mason mystery has a promising premise and opens nicely, but falters in the latter stages, never really bringing the disparate elements of the mystery together in a very satisfying way. The central problem with the story is that the mystery itself is too weak - Gardner fails to divert our attention from the crucial clue - the timing of the visits to the office where the murder is committed - and we realize who the guilty party is as soon as Perry himself does.

The situation is a good one, one that Gardner uses with outstanding results in some of the later entries in the Perry Mason series - dealing with a blackmailer. Matilda Benson engages Perry to buy back gambling IOUs signed by her niece, and held by the apparent owner of a gambling ship that cruises the waters just beyond the twelve-mile limit. Perry approaches the problem the way we've come to expect from a man who dearly maintains a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to blackmailers: with a frontal attack, full of bluff and bluster and the kind of aplomb that would unnerve the steadiest of criminals. This confrontation is very neatly handled by Gardner and makes for a very tense and satisfying read. A nice game of cat-and-mouse engineered by Perry.

On the night of the crucial confrontation, however, Perry finds the blackmailing holder of the IOUs dead, and Matilda Benson and her niece both aboard the cruise ship - and possibly engaged in that old shipboard pastime, toss-the-gun-over-the-railing. The coincidental visit to the ship of all the key characters on the same night is not carried off very convincingly - we are too aware of the sheer contrivance of the whole setup.

Despite the excellent situation and the effective ambiance of the gambling ship, getting Perry's client off the hook is a bit too easy - the comings and goings from the murder scene are too well monitored and too straightforwardly reported by Gardner to be sufficiently mystifying.

The set pieces are good and effective, but unfortunately the whole amounts in this case to less than the sum of its parts.