A Suggested Syllabus for Teaching Erle Stanley Gardner Jeffrey Marks

While Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was not the “inventor” of the legal mystery, he was to it what Edison was to the telephone—the person who refined the instrument and made it accessible to the masses. Gardner influenced this subgenre with his fast-paced, plot-driven tales of the doings of Perry Mason, Doug Selby, and Donald Lam. In most of the books, the plots hinged on points of California law drawn from Gardner’s own cases. Though heavy on dialogue and lacking in descriptive literary passages and characterization, the tales won immense popularity for their legal verisimilitude and clever twists. Gardner is one of the best-selling mystery authors of all time. With Perry Mason, Gardner created the mystery genre's definitive defense attorney protagonist. In the Mason books invariably the legal situation confronting Mason's client looks hopeless, with a conviction and death sentence seeming certain. But after investigating the case himself (sometimes with the aid of a private detective), Mason saves the day for his client by discovering the actual murderer. Mason is every bit the archetypal genre character that Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot is. Over the decades, he has come to epitomize the scrappy defense lawyer in fiction and other media. The Doug Selby tales turned the Perry Mason formula on its head, making the hero not the defense attorney but the district attorney. In those books, Selby brings truth to light in the face of determined opposition from the duel malign forces of corrupt government officials/agencies and unscrupulous defense attorneys. With the last of Gardner's archetypal characters, Donald Lam, Gardner developed the idea of the shady shyster protagonist introduced by Melville Davidson Post. When introduced in The Bigger They Come, Lam has been disbarred for finding a loophole in the law that allowed him or a client to commit murder. With the help of Bertha Cool, Lam perverts justice—as strictly defined by the legal system--in order to achieve a more equitable form of fundamental fairness.

NOVELS. Perry Mason: The Case of the Howling Dog (1934), The Case of the Lame Canary (1937), The Case of the Borrowed Brunette (1946). Cool and Lam: Top of the Heap (1952). Doug Selby, DA: The D.A. Draws a Circle (1939)

SHORTER FICTION. Gardner wrote more than 650 short stories and novelettes for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. The collections The Blond in Lower Six (Ed Jenkins, 1990) and The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith (Lester Leith, 1980) represent two of Gardner’s most enduring characters from the pulp era.

MOVIES. While six films were produced of the early Perry Mason novels, they were so removed from plot and character of the books that it’s best not to watch them as a study of Gardner. A new Mason production with Robert Downey Jr. is in development with a tentative 2014 release date.

RADIO PROGRAMS. The radio program was in essence a soap opera using the Perry Mason and Della characters. While it may be helpful for a study of comparative media, on its own the program adds little to the Gardner canon.

TELEVISION. Gardner was deeply involved in the production of the Perry Mason television show and part owner of its production company, Paisano Productions. These episodes are from the 50th Anniversary Edition DVDs: The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe (1/3/1963) is from a Gardner book of the same title. The Case of the Deadly Verdict (10/17/1963) is an original script for the series.

FURTHER RESEARCH. Gardner’s papers were donated to the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. There are more than 600 boxes of material in the collection.