The Case of the Angry Mourner

Rating:
Summary: Gardner's Mason Masterpiece
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 Angry Mourner": A+

"The Case of the Angry Mourner" is Gardner's masterpiece, one of the two or three best pure detective story he ever wrote. He is at his deftest in presenting the actual murderer's motive and opportunity in such a way that the reader is looking the other direction for the villain. Against the rural setting of this story, he plays by all the "rules" of detective fiction, never lying to the reader, and above all never hiding evidence that is crucial to the solution of the puzzle. He even one-ups us by repeatedly returning to important clues to the solution, but returning to them in such cunning ways that we constantly misinterpret them to arrive at the wrong conclusion.

The story is straightforward enough. Perry is on vacation at a cottage in the woods when a woman from a neighboring cottage calls upon him to defend her daughter against the charge of murdering a playboy who had become a bit too insistent after an intimate dinner at his rural retreat on the other side of the lake. The scene of the crime is positively cluttered with clues suggesting how the wheelchair-bound bounder met his end. Gardner uses one of his favorite detective story devices: a forensic "expert" who reads the clues and weaves them into a net that snares Perry's client. In this case the expert has two stages on which to strut his stuff: the interior of the murder cottage, and the back-road where the snow around the automobile abandoned by Perry's client tells the expert who came and went on the fateful night. Gardner truly enjoys laying out a set of clues that can plausibly be interpreted in a number of different ways, and his own guilty pleasure is in gently making fun of these experts and deflating the pomposity and closed-mindedness with which they typically deliver their chiseled-stone-tablet conclusions.

Fine stuff all around, with the only letdown being minor: the courtroom scenes are quite good in their own right, but they don't pack quite the punch of some of Perry's urban encounters.

Rating:
Summary: Gardner's Mason Masterpiece
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 Angry Mourner": A+

"The Case of the Angry Mourner" is Gardner's masterpiece, one of the two or three best pure detective story he ever wrote. He is at his deftest in presenting the actual murderer's motive and opportunity in such a way that the reader is looking the other direction for the villain. Against the rural setting of this story, he plays by all the "rules" of detective fiction, never lying to the reader, and above all never hiding evidence that is crucial to the solution of the puzzle. He even one-ups us by repeatedly returning to important clues to the solution, but returning to them in such cunning ways that we constantly misinterpret them to arrive at the wrong conclusion.

The story is straightforward enough. Perry is on vacation at a cottage in the woods when a woman from a neighboring cottage calls upon him to defend her daughter against the charge of murdering a playboy who had become a bit too insistent after an intimate dinner at his rural retreat on the other side of the lake. The scene of the crime is positively cluttered with clues suggesting how the wheelchair-bound bounder met his end. Gardner uses one of his favorite detective story devices: a forensic "expert" who reads the clues and weaves them into a net that snares Perry's client. In this case the expert has two stages on which to strut his stuff: the interior of the murder cottage, and the back-road where the snow around the automobile abandoned by Perry's client tells the expert who came and went on the fateful night. Gardner truly enjoys laying out a set of clues that can plausibly be interpreted in a number of different ways, and his own guilty pleasure is in gently making fun of these experts and deflating the pomposity and closed-mindedness with which they typically deliver their chiseled-stone-tablet conclusions.

Fine stuff all around, with the only letdown being minor: the courtroom scenes are quite good in their own right, but they don't pack quite the punch of some of Perry's urban encounters.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliance on paper
Review: The Case of the Angry Mourner is one of Earl Stanley Gardener's best works in his Perry Mason series. The premise of the book is very simple, the action is straightforward and suspenseful, and plot keeps you guessing until the very end. The book is a real piece of classic detective fiction because the reader is never lied to and is given all the evidence so that a cunning reader could potentially solve crime before Perry Mason. In fact, Gardener repeatedly gives clues to the ending, but uses his literary genius to present them in such a way that the reader jumps to a false conclusion. In The Case of the Angry Mourner, Perry Mason finds himself on vacation when his rest is suddenly disrupted by a murder. The millionaire Arthur Cushing, who was an infamous playboy, was murdered in his own home. A woman from a neighboring cottage, Belle Adrian, calls upon Mason to defend her daughter Carlotta, who she believes shot Cushing after he became too insistent during an intimate dinner. Carlotta believes that her mother killed him in a vindictive fury and police agree with her conclusion. Its is up to Perry Mason to sort of the clues and determine which woman, if either, killed Arthur Cushing. This book is a great murder mystery because of its presentation of the evidence. Unlike many Agatha Christie and Murder, She Wrote mysteries, the reader does not have to spot a single line of dialogue where the killer slips up and reveals himself or herself. Instead, The Case of the Angry Mourner depends heavily on circumstantial evidence. Gardner laying out a set of clues that can be interpreted in numerous ways and quickly deflates the "experts" who narrowly interpret the evidence against his client.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliance on paper
Review: The Case of the Angry Mourner is one of Earl Stanley Gardener's best works in his Perry Mason series. The premise of the book is very simple, the action is straightforward and suspenseful, and plot keeps you guessing until the very end. The book is a real piece of classic detective fiction because the reader is never lied to and is given all the evidence so that a cunning reader could potentially solve crime before Perry Mason. In fact, Gardener repeatedly gives clues to the ending, but uses his literary genius to present them in such a way that the reader jumps to a false conclusion. In The Case of the Angry Mourner, Perry Mason finds himself on vacation when his rest is suddenly disrupted by a murder. The millionaire Arthur Cushing, who was an infamous playboy, was murdered in his own home. A woman from a neighboring cottage, Belle Adrian, calls upon Mason to defend her daughter Carlotta, who she believes shot Cushing after he became too insistent during an intimate dinner. Carlotta believes that her mother killed him in a vindictive fury and police agree with her conclusion. Its is up to Perry Mason to sort of the clues and determine which woman, if either, killed Arthur Cushing. This book is a great murder mystery because of its presentation of the evidence. Unlike many Agatha Christie and Murder, She Wrote mysteries, the reader does not have to spot a single line of dialogue where the killer slips up and reveals himself or herself. Instead, The Case of the Angry Mourner depends heavily on circumstantial evidence. Gardner laying out a set of clues that can be interpreted in numerous ways and quickly deflates the "experts" who narrowly interpret the evidence against his client.