The course of true love never did run smooth . . . particularly when the situation burst from the fevered brain of Erle Stanley Gardner. So far, we’ve been on four matrimonial adventures where every bride, groom, husband and wife has had a helluva time. You might start asking yourself if you would be better off staying single and getting a pet. I mean, how much trouble can you get into with a careless kitten or a lame canary for a friend?
It turns out that unmarried folks come into an equal share of grief and need the services of one Perry Mason just as badly. Take sweet Sue Fisher, the tortured heroine of 1961’s The Case of the Spurious Spinster. As executive secretary to the manager of the Corning Mining, Smelting and Investment Company, she probably wishes she had never agreed to work overtime at the behest of her boss, Endicott Campbell, in preparation for a visit from Amelia Corning, the company’s owner, who has announced her impending visit to Los Angeles all the way from her home in South America for reasons most mysterious.
Before she can even get started, Sue is visited by Elizabeth Dow, who also works for Mr. Campbell as his son’s governess. She drops little Carleton off at the office and asks Sue to look after him while she runs an errand. The boy is clutching a shoebox that he insists contains his father’s “treasure,” and when Sue opens it, she finds the box crammed to the lid with hundred-dollar bills! At which point, the phone rings and it’s Amelia Corning, calling from the airport where she has arrived two days early, demanding that Sue drop everything and pick her up immediately.
At this point, without even looking up the word “spurious,” I could make a pretty good guess as to what was about to happen: Sue Fisher is going to enter a world full of hurt. But the girl has enough of a good head on her shoulders to call up the world’s most expensive defense attorney and beg for help. And even though it’s Saturday night and Perry Mason is dining with his fabulous confidential secretary (and, according to the Cast of Characters in my copy, his “longtime fiancée”) Della Street, he agrees to meet with this sweet nobody who definitely can’t afford his services because he’s a good soul, a staunch supporter of the underdog, and probably because he has a sixth sense for who’s going to end up a defendant in a murder trial.
So far, you might say, so good. We have some shady business around a mining company and a poor dupe of a defendant, just like in the good old days. And yet I couldn’t help thinking, at least at the start, that something was a bit off here, a bit . . . anemic. This was, after all, Gardner’s 74th Perry Mason novel! In spite of being 72, he showed no sign of slowing down: in addition to Spurious Spinster, he published a second Mason novel, (the next in our matrimonial series, in fact), a Cool & Lam title and the Ed Jenkins novel The Blonde in Lower Six that same year.
Is this novel proof that Gardner’s famous plot wheel been spun one too many times? Or had the Perry Mason TV series, which had premiered in September 1957 with Gardner’s full approval and involvement, wrought some stultifying effect on the novels that followed? A strong feeling I got reading this was that Gardner was not changing with the times; not only that, but there is something very generic here about the setting and tone. The noirish overtones of the first two decades worth of Mason adventures is gone, and the snappiness and slang have been replaced with . . . nothing. The case isn’t particularly complex, and the defendant is so annoyingly stupid, er, credulous throughout that I couldn’t understand why Mason never flew into one of his instructive rages at the decisions Sue kept making.
Even so, the blatant chauvinistic attitudes of characters and author are even more annoying. I can understand if it’s a character trait as it is with Sue’s boss, who is meant to be a jerk. But the biggest crime here is in the portrayal of Della Street. She has always clearly been Perry’s greatest asset, and she accomplishes a great deal during this case. Most of this is done from her flashing her legs and batting her eyes at one witness after another until their tongues are lolling and they would tell Mason anything. She trades on her beauty so much that someone asks Mason if Della is a famous movie actress.
I suppose it’s clever that Della uses men’s chauvinism against them. At one point, after Perry has gotten nowhere appealing to a witness whose testimony could get Mason’s pretty young client out of trouble, Della takes over:
“Do you have any idea what it means to a woman to go to prison? A woman only has a few of the golden years in her life when she’s attractive. Even at the best, when she can get lots of vitamins, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and mental stimulation, she begins to fade after a few years. Think of what it means to a young, attractive woman to have the prison doors close on her and to realize that as she endures that treadmill existence, her beauty is slipping through her fingers.”
I have to say, however, in the novel’s defense, that it picks up at the end. Having recently read a District Attorney Doug Selby novel where the trickery of the defense attorney is painted as vile, it’s nice to return to the world of Perry Mason, where confusing a witness’ identification or mucking up fingerprints is depicted as extraordinarily clever and totally fair – if it’s on behalf of a client. There’s precious little courtroom time presented here, but Perry makes the most of it. And while it takes very little to get D.A. Hamilton Burger up in his chair to complain about Mason’s shenanigans, the judge as always is hiding his smile while he rules for the defense. When Burger objects to Mason’s “reputation for trickery,” this judge even takes a moment to laud the defense attorney –
“’For ingenuity,’ Judge Elmer corrected. ‘An ingenuity coupled with integrity. There are times when his ingenuity may be exasperating to the prosecutor’s office, but as far as this court can observe, the integrity of Counsel has never been questioned.’”
It all builds to a tense climax. I was pretty sure throughout who the guilty parties were, and I’m happy to say I was . . . only partially correct. The main concept of the spurious spinster – “spurious” meaning “false” or “fake” – is utilized more cleverly than one might at first imagine, and Gardner has a great time creating a few highly effective red herrings.
The novel was adapted for the Perry Mason series and premiered on February 24, 1962 as the 21st episode of the fifth season. For some reason, the title was changed to “The Case of the Mystified Miner.” (It has nothing to do with any fear of the word “spurious” confounding audiences as that was used in another episode!) I have been complaining a lot about the adaptations, but this has to be one of the very best! It confirms my secret theory that Gardner was now writing less complex books that would easily adapt to the TV format: the teleplay is completely faithful to the book’s plot, even to the point of lifting whole swaths of dialogue. It includes the last of four appearances made on the series by veteran actress Josephine Hutchinson, who here plays Amelia Corning.
Or is she the real Amelia Corning???
Or . . .
Or . . .
The Case of the Spurious Spinster is certainly not top-tier Perry Mason, but it’s a quick and enjoyable read. It proves that you can’t get around trouble simply by skipping marriage. Next month, the question of spinsterhood is moot – our victim is married to two spouses!!
Ah Sweet Mystery! 