Since time immemorial – well, say the last hundred years – a detective’s secretary has been the front line of information about new clients. Her first impression says everything!

“’There’s a girl wants to see you. Her name’s Wonderly.’

“’A customer?’

“’I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway: she’s a knockout.’”

Okay, Effie Perine might have got it wrong, costing Sam Spade his partner and the love of his life. Not so Della Street, perhaps the smartest stenographer in recorded history. Her descriptions of everyone who walks through the door of Perry Mason’s law offices are literary. And her assessments of anyone who needs Mason’s assistance are seldom off-track. 

Take Sylvia Bain Atwood, the beautiful woman who arrives at Mason’s office door at the start of 1953’s The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister.

“’If you’re going to do anything for this woman, (Della) said, ‘you’d better get a retainer.’ 

“’In other words, you don’t like her?’ Mason asked. 

“’I didn’t say that.’

“’ But you don’t?’ 

“’I think she’d cut your heart out for thirty-seven cents, if that’s what you mean.’”

Perry relies on Della for a lot, but as a man who thinks for himself, he ignores Della’s warning and meets with Sylvia. And has she got a story to tell: her invalid father, Ned, made a fortune in Texas oil, thanks to a loan he got from a man named Jeremiah Josiah Fritch, hereafter known as “JJ” (not to be confused with my pal and fellow Mason devotee JJ from the blog The Invisible Event!) A private investigator named George Brogan has approached Sylvia with a tape recording. It seems that the money JJ Fritch lent her father was gained during the commission of a bank robbery, and according to the conversation on the tape, Ned Bain knew full well how ill-gotten were the goods he accepted! 

JJ Fritch wants a lump sum payment of $25, 000 to make the tape go away, and Brogan is willing to broker the deal, for a nominal fee. It’s blackmail pure and simple, and Paul Drake, one of the good ones when it comes to P.I.s, is all too aware of Brogan’s perpetual scheme of grabbing huge one-time payments “on behalf of others” and then making a quick exit. Mason takes the case, and he and Sylvia head to a meeting with Brogan, where the attorney brings about a setback to the blackmailer’s plan using what for 1953 readers must have seemed like amazing technological acumen – things like wearing a wire and understanding the properties of magnetized tape. 

All too often in a Perry Mason mystery, you have to take the good with the bad. By “good”, I mean an intriguing set-up. Here we have a beautiful woman and her ailing father menaced by, not one, but two blackmailers! By “bad”, well, a lot of these books contain a dearth of suspects, and you end up picking out the killer by a quick process of elimination. I’m happy to report that this is not a problem here! Green–Eyed Sister is essentially a family mystery, and we are gifted with a half dozen characters who each offer intriguing possibilities.

Our first impression of Sylvia may be colored by Della’s appraisal of her – “She’ll turn those green eyes on you and start twisting and squirming like a cat getting ready to rub against your leg” – but she doesn’t fit easily into the mold of either heroine or vixen. She’s too self-serving for the one and too loyal to her family for the other. Plus, we’ve seen Mason in other cases mentally dismiss clients as bad news, but he doesn’t do that to Sylvia. Her brother Jarrett is an archaeologist, ruthlessly devoted to his work, while his wife Phoebe, “filthy rich and terribly snooty, is ruthlessly devoted to being an archaeologist’s wife. Their sister Hattie has spent her life devoted to the needs of the other family members, sacrificing her own happiness so that they will be cared for. And now, at last, Hattie has met a man, an architect named Edison Doyle, who might offer her some happiness of her own. Except – Edison seems to be drawn to the more glamorous life of Hattie’s green-eyed sister.

It’s to Gardner’s credit that he presents these characters in multi-faceted ways. Hattie is both admirable and a drudge: “There was a droop to her shoulders, a droop at the corners of her mouth, a worried look about the large, dark eyes set under a high forehead, surmounted by raven-black hair that was swept back in a style of plain severity.” Jarrett and Phoebe may be single-minded, even selfish in their pursuits, but their marriage seems to work. And Edison, torn between two sisters, can’t be dismissed as a typical cad. In fact, Gardner once again uses a mystery scenario to explore differing philosophies of life, as he did in The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito. Edison Doyle has a conversation with Mason about his life, which – now that he has met Sylvia – he is starting to believe has been too devoted to setting up his career.

“. . . when you see what happens to people who take life too seriously, and contrast them with a girl like Sylvia – I don’t know, Mr. Mason, I think life, like money, was meant to be spent. You can’t hoard money and ever get any good out of it. And life was meant to be lived. Somehow – it’s hard to express, but I don’t think there’s anything more perishable than the seconds that are ticked off by the second hand on a watch. You can’t save them. You have to spend them. You have to live them.”

Mason‘s response is one you might expect from a guy who went to law school and has become the most famous defense attorney of all time: “It’s not quite as simple as that. A person has to prepare himself. You have to lay a foundation for life. The time you spend in study is an investment, as good as money in a bank.” These strike me as the words of a Perry Mason who is older and wiser than the guy who used to jump on running boards and race down highways in pursuit of any lead to save his client. 

Fortunately, Mason here is not too wise to avoid walking into an apartment containing a dead body or having his license in jeopardy from the machinations of an over-achieving deputy D.A.. And he’s certainly not too old to succeed in making mincemeat out of each prosecution witness or in destroying a perfect alibi or in righting the ship of his defense despite a client who is every bit as troublesome as Della warned him she would be. While to my mind there’s ultimately something a bit “small potatoes” about this case, I appreciate that Gardner takes the reader down an all too obvious path right up to the end and then pulls a nice little switcheroo in the final pages. 

*     *     *     *     *

“The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister” debuted on February 8, 1958, as the twenty-first episode of the first season. It is an object lesson in creating an adaptation that stays true to the foundations of the original plot but makes enough changes to eliminate all the best that the book has to offer. 

The problems begin right away when the decision is made to have Hattie Bain consult Mason rather than the far more dynamic and interesting green-eyed sister. Sylvia is reduced to a stock villainess, as is Hattie’s fiancé Edison (here called Addison). Half the family from the book disappears, and the murderer’s identity is changed for the worse. 

The episode reaches the very bottom of the barrel at the end, however, when Della takes Hattie to a beauty parlor for a makeover and then arranges for her to take a European vacation accompanied by – Perry Mason!!! Can you imagine our Della setting the chief up with another woman?!? Not on my watch!!

That brings another episode of Girls! Girls! Girls! to a close! Next month, we have something special for you: a terrified typist (I wonder what Della Street will make of this secretary) and the only case in recorded history that Perry Mason loses!! 

This I find difficult to believe!