Erle Stanley Gardner and the case of Perry Mason

ESPASA PUBLISHES TWO NOVELS

After the summer premiere of the eight chapters of the

(HBO) series, Espasa publishing house has encouraged to publish, in October, two novels of the character created by the American lawyer and writer

(1889-1970).

These are

(1933) and

(1935).

In the first and first of the series, a woman goes to the defense attorney in fear of being blackmailed after having

have been photographed with an acquaintance politician leaving a hotel.

In the second and sixth of the series, Mason must solve the mystery surrounding a rich man whose corpse has been found in a river.

In

The case of the glass eye

For the first time, the character of Hamilton Burger, the district attorney and Mason's regular antagonist in court, becomes relevant.

In Gardner's series of novels, in addition to Mason and Burger, the usual cast of characters consists of Della Street, the attorney's secretary;

Paul Drake, a Los Angeles private detective, who assists the attorney in his investigations, and Arthur Tragg, a police lieutenant.

Mason's mission is always to prove to the judge the innocence of his client, accused of a crime that he claims not to have committed.

Mason, with the cooperation of his detective friend and his secretary, engages in sometimes dangerous inquiries, as his goal in the courtroom is not only to exonerate his client, but to present evidence against the real culprit, to whom he owes unmask.

For this reason, the police officer who has carried out the proceedings and the prosecutor who publicly accuses his client frown upon his performance, all the more so when Mason resorts to unprofessional procedures to obtain his evidence.

This was especially the case in the early novels, before Gardner's fellow California attorneys criticized Mason's ploys.

A LAWYER MADE A WRITER

Erle Stanley Gardner practiced law from a young age, specializing in defending Chinese and Mexican immigrants who did not have much chance of proving their innocence but were beaten by judges.

Later, and after arduous research, he would write an award-winning book -

The court of last resort

(1952) - on judicial errors, of which a television series was also made.

Gardner hung up the robe as soon as his Mason novels made him famous and wealthy, and he retired to write at the Rancho del Paisano de Temecula, in Lower California, where he died at age 80.

At that time, he was the American writer who had sold the most books in the 20th century.

Gardner wrote other books - travel, for example - and other series, even using up to seven pseudonyms, but only the Perry Mason series sold 300 million copies.

Such was his fame that, today, a prestigious and centennial law firm where he worked dedicates a page to him in its

Web

, no doubt because he deems it beneficial to attract customers.

However, and at least in Spain, anyone would say that his name is much less known than that of his character, that Gardner is more anonymous than Mason.

The creator was devoured by the fame of his creature, in the same way that Perry Mason covered the name of

Raymond burr

, the actor who, after having chopped up a neighbor in

The rear window

, he played it, between 1957 and 1966, in the CBS series -271 chapters, black and white, each episode lasting one hour-, which was so popular in our country.

With that series, Gardner was also covered, among other reasons because he produced it himself.

POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE 1930s

When it appeared

The case of the velvet claws

, Gardner had already published hundreds of short stories and novels in magazines

pulp

.

Among them, in

Black Mask,

considered one of the factories of the most violent crime novel.

But the series

Perry Mason

It is not at all conceptualized as a crime novel, but rather a mystery or enigma.

Let's say, however, that Perry Mason appeared four years after the Sam Spade of

Dashiell hammett

, but six years before the Philip Marlowe of

Raymond Chandler

.

We have already said that Mason has nothing to do with these detectives, but it is necessary to erase the sixties images of Burr's series to recontextualize the novel in the 30s, years in which Gardner's lawyer was already the protagonist of at least half dozen of feature films.

In Spain, the novels of the Perry Mason series were widely published by Editorial Molino, with great popular instinct, an instinct shared -although in another line- by the North American publisher William Morrow and Company, which published almost all of the lawyer's novels and that it has writers from

best-sellers

as

Irving wallace

,

Morris West

Y

Jacqueline susann

.

Also to

Ray Bradbury

.

The two novels that Espasa has now released have quite conceptual black and white illustrations, very graphic design, which contrasts with the variegated and colorful comic-like drawings of the magazines

pulp

and of the original and later editions.

A WORKER WITH DISCLAIMER WITH SECRETARY

Erle Stanley Gardner published four stories and 82 novels starring Perry Mason, two of them posthumous.

On balance, this means that Gardner, in addition to his other books and series, wrote two or three Mason novels a year.

They used to have a length, averaging by eye, of about 200-odd pages.

Gardner, then, like so many writers of popular literature, did not stop writing.

Or rather, he did not stop dictating.

To gain speed and increase his checking account, he recorded on a dictaphone or tape recorder, his secretary would transcribe to paper, he would correct whatever he had to correct, and that's it.

In absolutely all of Mason's novels - which

Evelyn waugh

-, the lawyer manages to prove the innocence of his client and manages to blame - he drew the aces from his sleeve during the trial - the true guilty of the crime or crime.

And if Gardner only wrote 86 Mason stories, how come the first TV series had 271 episodes?

And how is it that, in addition, another 15-episode series was made in 1973 and some 25 stand-alone films were made for television between 1985 and 1995?

In the latter cases, some arguments were repeated, but, obviously, Gardner agreed in life to the writers inventing new plots respecting the structure and mechanics of their arguments and the characters of Mason and his four main companions.

Which has not happened at all, apparently, in the HBO series.

But I don't go in there.

Erle Stanley Gardner's love life was, so far as it is known, as irrelevant as Perry Mason's.

With a difference.

After his first wife died and more than 30 years after his separation from her, Gardner married his longtime secretary, who, according to all sources, inspired the character of Della Street, Perry Mason's secretary from the beginning. .

Things that happen.

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