(This year, my Perry Mason reviews have been appearing on the 17^th of each month, but as I’m leaving tomorrow for a week-long road trip and Christie reunion – more about that upon my return – I thought I’d slip in this month’s Mason a few days early. I hope that works for you. Our regular schedule will resume next month.)

As our year-long expedition through the Perry Mason Menagerie continues, we find ourselves in the Hall of Birds – and here we will remain for the next few months. 1937’s The Case of the Lame Canary is the eleventh adventure for Erle Stanley Gardner’s most renowned hero, the man with the “agile brain, unconventional methods, and daring technique (that) made him the city’s most feared and respected trial lawyer.”  Funnily enough, this was also supposed to be Mason’s final adventure! According to Jeffrey Marks, 

“Gardner was tired of not being published in the slicks and he was ready to try other characters. The Saturday Evening Post bought the rights to this story after Gardner had spent significant time in revising (and it shows.)”

Thank you, Saturday Evening Post!! Because as much as I enjoy D.A. Doug Selby and enjoyed my first taste of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool – and, yes, even have a frisson of anticipation over meeting Gramps Wiggins – more than any of them, I heart Perry Mason. And here he is, fresh-faced in the 30’s, doing what he does so well. 

From the start, Mason has only taken the cases that interest him: murder cases, knotty problems, and tragedies befalling the helpless (so long as these knotty tragedies involve murder!) Thus, when Rita Swaine enters Mason’s office and begs him to help her sister Rosalind out with her marital troubles, Mason has a quick answer for her: “I don’t handle divorce cases . . . I like trial work. I specialize in murder cases. I like mysteries. I sympathize with your sister, but I’m not interested in her case.”

Rita, who will prove to be one of Mason’s pluckier defendants, refuses to take no for an answer. And why should she, since she and her sister have been having a perfectly awful day. Rosalind, known to her friends as “Rossy,” is unhappily wed to Walter Prescott, an insurance adjuster who married her for her money and who is in the process of stealing her blind. Rossy has poured her heart out in a letter to her former boyfriend, stockbroker Jimmy Driscoll, who advises her to leave the rat. Unfortunately, Walter intercepted the letter and now has the plans to either divorce kill his wife. (Or both – it’s a little vague, but either plan seems to ensure that Walter does not have to pay Rossy back the money he stole from her.)

The future ex-Mrs. Prescott hopes to beat her husband to the punch by flying to Reno and suing him for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty and financial malfeasance. Jimmy comes to her house to help her skedaddle, but he can’t help engaging his ex-girlfriend in a little canoodling in her solarium, right next to a large picture windows through which the neighbors can see – especially the nosy lady across the street who everyone calls Mrs. Snoops. And then things get even more complicated when a sports car collides with a moving van outside the Prescott home. Jimmy goes out to help the injured car driver and is identified by the cops who have been called by the snoopy Mrs. Snoops, and Rita gets dragged into the mess to help her sister affect her escape and confuse the neighbor.

Oh – did I mention the dead body lying in the upstairs bedroom?

At the start, Mason knows nothing about the man with the bullets in his chest, and he remains disinclined to take Rita’s case. However, there is one complication that intrigues the lawyer: accompanying Miss Swain to the office is a cute little canary in a cage named Dickie who, for some reason, has a sore foot. I wish I could tell you that the part the canary plays in this case is as intriguing as that of the caretaker’s cat or the howling dog before him, but that is unfortunately not the case. The bird exists solely as lawyer bait – and it works.

Fortunately, the matter quickly evolves into the murder case that Mason craved, but it never shakes off its domestic roots. Everything centers around the neighborhood where the Prescotts live, along with Stella Anderson (Mrs. Snoops) and the Weymans, a violent drunkard and his worried wife. And then there’s that mysterious accident: the trucker was making a delivery to Mr. Prescott, but he refuses to say what he was delivering or how and why it has disappeared. And the driver of the sports car, who seems to have two separate identities, told the doctor in the ER who tended to him that he has seen something weird in the Prescott’s window, which distracted him and caused the crash – and then he vanishes!

This is not the most intriguing Perry Mason case I’ve read, but it’s still fun watching Mason work side by side with his trusted sidekick, detective Paul Drake, interviewing the Swain sisters and Jimmy, all the neighbors, Prescott’s business partner and his beautiful secretary, who also seems to be living a double life. Most of these characters appear only once or twice in the novel, but they each make an impression. 

Unfortunately, we get no whiff of a courtroom trial this time around, but we are witnesses to not one, but two inquests where the friendly coroner welcomes lawyerly interference, thus allowing for some dramatic fireworks. And while the assistant District Attorney this time around is something of a blank, Mason crosses paths with Abner Dimmick, described in my copy’s List of Characters as “an acrimonious member of the legal aristocracy”, and his assistant Rodney Cuff, a Mason-wannabe. Both do a nice job of getting in Mason’s way, even though we know they will get their comeuppance in court for their pains. 

The solution is complex and clever – and completely unsolvable, involving as it does an impersonation that comes out of nowhere. As Perry details the whole thing to Della, I wondered how he could keep a straight face about “figuring” this and “deducing” that. Maybe, as he claims, he got help by looking at the psychology of the characters, but how all the details fell into place before he set his trap confounds me. One thing I do know: he got no help from that lame canary!

But what about our favorite character, Perry’s secretary par excellence, Miss Della Street? Deciding early in the novel that this case is for the birds, Della declares it’s high time her boss and she took that round-the-world cruise she’s been hinting at over the past decade. To be honest, the greatest suspense in Lame Canary comes from whether or not Perry will be able to solve the case and get packed in time to make it up the gangplank before his luxury cruise liner sails. (This is where continuity pays off for those who read the books in order: the very next book, The Case of the Substitute Face, finds Perry and Della on the return leg of a luxury cruise and dealing with a shipboard murder!) Suffice it to say, Della lands up to her neck in the investigation to keep her boss from missing the boat. It all leads to the cleverest moment in the novel, one I won’t reveal here . . . let’s just call it The Case of the Mismonogrammed Luggage! It really is one of the most pivotal moments you’ll find in the canon regarding the Mason/Street relationship!!!

“The Case of the Lame Canary” premiered on June 27, 1959, as the thirtieth episode of the second season of Perry Mason. It’s an adaptation that feels like someone threw every plot point from the novel in the air, grabbed whatever they could as the pieces fell and put them together in some sort of coherent order. The screenplay ends up pretty much where the novel did, minus the book’s charm and most of its characters. The episode ends with Perry and his gang celebrating in his office with D.A. Hamilton Burger and Lieutenant Tragg. Burger asks Mason how he figured things out, whereupon Perry looks over at the canary in his cage and says, “A little bird told me.” Burger snorts and replies, “That’s the first time I ever heard of a canary becoming a stoolpigeon.” 

Lame, fellas . . . very lame.