The Case of the Lame Canary

Rating:
Summary: An early classic in Gardner's Perry Mason series
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 Lame Canary": A-

One of Perry Mason's best early mysteries, "The Case of the Lame Canary" starts in typical fashion: a visitor to Mason's law office simply wants some advice on a peculiar situation that seems to make him or, more often, her legally vulnerable, but along the way introduces a puzzle that intrigues Mason and serves as the entry point to his involvement in a convoluted murder case. In this instance, Mason is drawn in by the relatively simple puzzle of determining why the canary his client is carrying appears to be lame. And the case that unfolds from this point forward is certainly satisfyingly convoluted.

In the "Lame Canary", Gardner is at his most adept in keeping the story moving and the reader fascinated by an "onion skin" narrative approach: A puzzling situation is introduced, Perry Mason probes the possibilities, plays a hunch, and pieces together a solution, peeling away one puzzling layer of the mystery - only to introduce another puzzling layer that conceals yet another puzzler that conceals.... Gardner is very adept at peeling away one layer at a time, carefully leading the reader through the logic that Perry Mason uses to get at the truth. And at the same time, preserving through each revelation the one tangled fabric of suspicion, of condemning evidence, that, as the story progresses, seems to be forming a tight noose that is a perfect fit for the neck of Perry's client.

Gardner uses this narrative approach a number of times in the early books, when his fertile imagination was generating innumerable puzzles and clues to their solutions. In "The Lame Canary", many little mysteries are cleared up as the evidence gets uncovered, holding the reader's interest and at the same time seeming to leave the final solution tantalizingly close at hand.

A solid mystery, from simple beginning through complex situations and conspiracies to the surprising yet plausible conclusion. A must-read for Gardner's Perry Mason fans who want to see their protagonist in top form.