For the love of Mason!

Posted on | Posted on Srihari Yamanoor

NOTE: I link to a lot of sites. I am not an affiliate (at least until now) and make no money whatsoever. Bookstores, ones with bricks and otherwise, all need support, or it will be very hard to find things to read. 

As a teenager, several moons ago, I absolutely, inexorably fell in passionate love for the writing of Erle Stanley Gardner. I would run to the library of a school, that was not mine (mine, though great in many ways, was stupid about not lending books), and pick up a Perry Mason and with bated breath and excitement, plow through the pages of the novels, just so I could get past the interminable drama, the feeling that certainly THIS time, Mason would lose, and then, I would watch Hamilton Burger lose his poise, and in the last 20 or so pages, beg and pray atheistically as I could, that Mason win, and yes, well…if this is a bit of edgy poetry, it is meant to be.

Then, a funny thing happened. The internet destroyed my reading habits for a solid decade-ish. Now, I listen to fiction and read non-fiction, so I may take notes on the latter. So, I did not read Mason novels for a long time, though they have always been in the back of my mind. Along came LibraryThing and I jumped on the bandwagon thinking, “well, I have read all these books, and I should get up to an even 500 in short order!”

Alas, no such luck for me!  It turns out, I forgot most of the books I read, including the Perry Masons. I remembered the passion, the mystery, the feeling of the gotchas and whodunits, but not much else! So, I started listening to the books, first buying a copy through Chirp, “The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat” which I reviewed here, and by that, I mean literally, here on this very site! After that, I found out my Scribd account had many of the audiobooks are available for subscribers. Since then, I have been carefully spacing out my Masons, so as to not finish them all in one swoop – which is ridiculous, because ESG literally wrote dozens of ’em!

To Prosyletize, and certainly not, not prosyletize…

The great Erle Stanley Gardner (ESG), by way of Perry Mason (having done other works of course) will never be shy of fans and followers. This includes the erstwhile Stephen King himself. On a recent read of the iconic The Green Mile, I found a reference made to Perry Mason. I suspected that the living legend might have made more than a passing contemporary reference. And lo, I found this!

Of course, it is very unfortunate that SK would mention PM in the company of, well, let’s move on.

So, atheist that I am, I still would love to prosyletize you, but then, you’d be in good company, alongside Stephen King, a million others, and yours truly!

To that end, I have been looking for a good novel in the Perry Mason series to recommend to new readers. This is important. For example, The Murder of Dr. Roger Ackroyd was the first Agatha Christie I laid my hands on, quite by accident (much more on this some other day), and I have never looked back.

I finally found it today! It is this specific book, The Case of the Howling Dog, #4 in the series! You see, in his earlier novels, ESG was still finding his voice so to speak. Some of the early ones are really a handful. While listening to the novel, I did not pay attention to the number, since the novels are all standalone works. Then, as the novel was getting to its end, I found it to be truly gripping. It has almost everything, except Tragg and Burger, two characters that spend a lot of time with the Mason gang in later works. So there’s the mystery, the suspense, the red herrings, the plot twists, and the ultimate unveiling. But also, it goes to the very soul of the character. He thrusts, he parries, he is sly, cunning and somehow fair!

I am going to recommend that this book be the one anyone new to Mason start with. And even if you are a seasoned fan, it is definitely worth a read. So do, and drop me a line!

Reference:

Cover Image: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Howling-Perry-Mason-Book-ebook/dp/B008H768YA