As my year of nostalgic reading continues, I’ve discovered that good books often go out of print, libraries weed their collections, used book stores don’t often carry copies of older books. In other words, it can be very difficult to find certain books.
Technology to the rescue!
Many out-of-print books that would perhaps not sell well if reprinted are being re-issued as ebooks. Currently, I am thoroughly entrenched in detective pulp, noire and mysteries, and at the forefront of my assault on those genres has been that judiciary steamroller, Perry Mason.
Perry hit the network airwaves in 1957, and I recall as a young man watching the occasional rerun in the afternoon. It wasn’t until my adult years that I watched the show in earnest, thoroughly enjoying Perry’s daily evisceration of Hamilton Burger. And it wasn’t until even later that I read one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s books, The Case of the Glamorous Ghost. While I did enjoy the story, it took several years for me to return to the courtroom, this time with a purchased ebook, The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink. I devoured this story in no time at all, so I purchased another. And another, and another … (They were on sale, so I was actually saving money by buying them!)
Anywho, after accumulating a handful of titles, I discovered that amongst them were the first two volumes in the series (there are roughly 87 titles!). I like to see how characters develop, and it appealed to my sense of order to start at the beginning. As it turns out, book character Perry, while similar to television Perry, is not identical to the icon we all know.
Mason first appears in The Case of the Velvet Claws, written in 1933. Keeping in mind that morés of the 30’s differed from current standards, that America was fiercely entrenched in an economic crisis and that law enforcement was perhaps less than 100% lawful, Mason’s character has what we would now consider questionable ethics. But his overriding goal is still laudable, to prove the innocence of all clients. The ends that he goes to, however, are certainly not legal, and the original written Mason is not above pulling dirty tricks to win cases. Television Mason, on the other hand, while pushing boundaries would not actually break the law.
Incidentally, Perry and Della do not have a platonic boss/underling relationship! But I’ll let you explore that in your own readings.
Out of the many other early pulp authors I have discovered, the library has scarce holdings. After all, these are long out-of-print items. But here are a few authors of interest that you can find on the shelves.
Library holdings Charles Willeford
You can practically smell the ink jump off of the pages! Lurid covers, foul murders, pathetic hopelessness, crooked cops … Ooh, I wanna go grab one off the shelf right now and hear the rapid staccato of a tommy gun sending a deadly warning, or the dull thud of a well-placed blackjack dropping a floozy like a pig from a zeppelin. Off I go!
Be sure to visit A Reading Life for more reviews and news of all things happening at the Everett Public Library.
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