Just Finished Reading The Case of the Fabulous Fake by Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)  was the creator and author of the Perry Mason series of mystery/law novels, later adapted to the long-running fifties and sixties television series starring Raymond Burr as the tough-talking, meticulous, clever, courageous, ethical and persevering lawyer...the "Superman" of all attorneys.  Gardner wrote more than eighty Perry Mason books...my parents were big fans of both his books and the TV show.  My father's bookshelf had several old paperbacks of Gardner's works and it was common for me as a kid to lie in bed awake with that unmistakable Perry Mason Show musical theme booming through the thin walls of our home. The Case of the Fabulous Fake, from 1969, was his last published novel in the series before his death...it came three years after the TV series ended its own run.  It may have been Gardner's last, but for me it was my first...

Perry Mason is at his office when his assistant Della Street brings in the story's client, a mysterious young woman with a bag loaded with money bills and very little information to go on...and what "facts" she does share turn out to be lies.  Yet Mason, as he later regrets, takes on her case without pinpointing more directly exactly what her agenda is.  As the story unravels, it seems that she is working for a San Francisco-based import and export firm that keeps thousands of dollars of ready cash available to expedite possibly shady transactions of  restricted goods from overseas.  And it also seems that someone is apparently blackmailing her brother and she has taken it upon herself to deliver the payoff money herself after he is lying in the hospital in critical condition after a car accident.  Mason enlists the help of his friend and detective Paul Drake, who has her followed, as well as getting the blackmail agent to surface.  As with the other Perry Mason stories, there is eventually a murder committed in the midst of all this, but as this is a short, easy novel to read, why don't you get a copy for yourself and find out how it all ends?

I was very impressed with Erle Stanley Gardner's writing and plan to delve into more of his Perry Mason novels...it's no wonder that during Gardner's career it was the best-selling series in America.  I've written before that I seriously dislike anything about courtrooms and trials, this aversion arising from my multiple stints over the years on juries.  But the bulk of the story I just read is more like an Agatha Christie mystery novel, and it's got me interested in seeing what else is out there.  Who knows, I may just start watching the old TV show since it's being aired on one of the more obscure local channels...