Customer Reviews

The Case of the Velvet Claws (The Best Mysteries of All Time)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I agree with the earlier reviewers that there is a notable shift between the earlier Perry Masons and the ones he wrote starting in about 1939/1940 or so. The earlier ones are definitely a straight continuation of Gardner's pulp books (Paul Pry, etc) and belong firmly in the Sam Spade category. The Perry here is very different from the Perry of the TV show and the later Perry of the books. Since Gardner kept tight control over the TV scripts, I imagine that the later book Perry resembles the TV Perry very closely for a reason....

In any case, the first few Perry Mason mysteries are very much in the Chinatownish genre--police corruption, decadent rich folks, and some surprise plot twists. To appreciate the earlier (1930s) Perry Masons, one must realize that the simple truth of the matter was that the DA's office was virtually the law enforcement division of the movie industry and the gambling syndicates and the LAPD was willing to frame any convenient sap it could lay its hands on. This explains the incredibly dark view of the establisment in the earlier books. Gardner, who was one of the few white lawyers willing to take Chinese clients in cases against the white establishment, had more than his share of run-ins against the 'Establishment' and more-often-than-not usually won because he was almost as good a lawyer as his creation, Perry Mason. In fact, once or twice he reworked some of his cases into the Perry Mason plots (e.g., the "Twice in Jeopardy" defense for an accused hit and run driver). When the LAPD was cleaned up and became more professional, Gardner retired Seargent Holcomb and brought in Lt. Tragg to update his books.

I have to agree with the earlier characterization and writing style critiques--as great writers go, Gardner would have to rank somewhere below me. However, as great mystery authors go, Gardner's ONLY competition is (the pre-1960s) Agatha Christie. The rest are all also rans but with some honorable mentions. I never pass up a chance to read a Perry Mason mystery because the court scenes are always a delight, there are NEVER any holes in the plot and I can almost never figure out who dunnit and why.

This is the very first Perry Mason book, and our hero is more akin to Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade than to the character brought to life on TV by Raymond Burr. It's a splendid rattle though a murky 1930's Los Angeles, with a convoluted plot, a femme fatale, and a Della Street who just may have lost faith in her boss.

Great stuff!

Perry Mason. Bet you instantly thought of Raymond Burr, the actor who played Mason on CBS from 1955-66, right? Who didn't? I did as I read The Case of the Velvet Claws, the first Perry Mason novel, published in 1933. I've been wanting to read some Perry Mason novels (there are 80) for awhile but I didn't want to start just anywhere. Sure, I've been told by more than one source that there is no chronological order to these books. Be that as it may, I am a purist when it comes to series. And, as a writer and creator of characters myself, I wanted to see how Erle Stanley Gardner started when he created the most famous lawyer in crime fiction.

Picturing Burr is not a bad place to start. You see, Mason in the novels is hardly described at all. His secretary, Della Street, gets more words of description ("slim of figure, steady of eye") than does Perry Mason. The one feature of Mason's physical appearance that Gardner describes more than once are his eyes. In fact, it only takes six sentences from page one to get a description of Perry Mason's eyes:

"Only the eyes changed expression. He [Mason] gave the impression of being a thinker and a fighter, a man who could work with infinite patience to jockey an adversary into just the right position, and then finish him with one terrific punch."

Knowing what I do about the television shows--Mason never loses--it's remarkable that there, in paragraph one of book one, the Mason template is laid out. Three pages later, Mason, himself, lays out his mission statement to his new client:

"Nobody ever called on me to organize a corporation, and I've never yet probated an estate. I haven't drawn up over a dozen contracts in my life, and I wouldn't know how to go about foreclosing a mortgage. People that come to me don't come to because they like the looks of my eyes, or the way my office is furnished, or because they've known me at a club. They come to me because they need me. They come to me because they want to hire me for what I can do."

She (the client) looked up at him then. "Just what is it that you do, Mr. Mason?" she asked.

He snapped out two words at her. "I fight!"

Hard to argue with that line. And Mrs. Eva Griffin doesn't. She's in trouble and she hires Mason to help her get out of it. The previous evening, Mrs. Griffin was out with Harrison Burke, a man who was not her husband, a man running for office. When a hold-up occurs at the hotel where they were dancing and dining, the police arrive. One of the sergeants, a friend of Burke, recognizes him and knows that the newspaper reporters will have a field day with the news of Burke and a married woman. That officer allows them to stay away from the reporters and then smuggles them out the back. Everything's good to go except Frank Locke, the editor of Spicy Bits, a gossip rag, finds out and threatens to publish the information.

Now, Mrs. Griffin is asking Perry Mason to help her. His first response: have Burke pay Locke off. That surprised me a little, knowing what I know about the TV version and Mason's stone cold integrity. And with Mason's fixation on money, he not unlike Bertha Cool, Gardner's other famous creation. But Mrs. Griffin refuses because she wants to keep Burke's name out of the papers. She lays down some cash on Mason's table and gives her new lawyer one tidbit of information: Locke has a secret he's trying to keep hidden. Mason rushes off to expose the secret and use it as leverage against Locke. The trail leads to one George Belter, owner of Spicy Bits. And his wife is there, none other than Mason's client, Mrs. Eva Belter.

From this point, the book races along but not before George Belter's shot dead, and Eva Belter tells the police that she heard Perry Mason's voice in her husband's bedroom seconds before the gunshot. Now, Mason must clear his own name while simultaneously looking out for the interests of his client. You think he can do it? Seriously, do you?

I am not an avid watcher of the TV show so I can't say how Burr-as-Mason goes about doing his job. And I've only read book #1 so, if Mason changed his tactics throughout the novels, I can't know about it either. I will say this: Mason is quite hand-on in this case. In fact, the most surprising thing he does is sock a guy to the ground. Didn't see that kind of action coming, but loved it. Another interesting aspect of this case was how soon Mason had an idea as to the truth of the entire plot. But he needed proof. And he went about getting the proof in ways I also didn't see coming. He set up on of the characters, not knowing, for sure, if his set-up would work. For example, he went to a pawn shop owner and paid the man $50 to verify that whomever Mason came back with was, in fact, the purchaser of the gun used in the crime. Now, as a reader, I got to wondering: who will Mason bring back? Later, Mason goes to another character and all but blackmails that character into saying something that needed to be said in front of a third party. Brilliant tactics but not entirely on the up-and-up.

The language of the book is obviously dated in places. Gardner loves his adverbs and uses some of them over and over again, including the word "meaningly." In an effort not to type (or dictate as Gardner did) the word "car" or "automobile" constantly, Gardner interchanges the word "machine." It's a bit odd to read a car described that way. And, like William Colt MacDonald in Mascarada Pass, Gardner spells out, phonetically, drunken speech, employing words like "fixsh," "shtayed," and "coursh." Humorous and easy to understand but, again, things we modern writers could never get away with.

And speaking of things you can't get away with, there's Gardner's choice of the word "girl" to describe Della Street. She's 27 and, while we never get the age of Perry Mason, he can't be that much older than she. But, nonetheless, Gardner has "the girl" get a file or "the girl" answer the phone or "the girl" take down dictation. The biggest shock of the story--and I don't this is giving anything away; apologies if it's so--was when Della and Perry kissed. It didn't seem romantic and I didn't get the impression that there was something more. But it was there. You never saw that in the TV show. Just one more reason to read these books, especially the early ones, to see how Perry Mason was originally portrayed.

There's a quote about Erle Stanley Gardner on the back cover of the Hard Case Crime edition of Top of the Heap, a Cool and Lam story that, I think, sums up Gardner's technique of crafting a story: "Among his many other virtues, Erle Stanley Gardner is surely the finest constructor of hyper-intricate puzzles in evidence..." The Case of the Velvet Claws is certainly intricate, a well-crafted tale. Heck, half the fun was re-reading chapter 1 when everything was set up, now that I knew the ending. But, like a good mystery author, all the clues were there. When Mason delivers his summation, you want to smack yourself on the forehead. (His summation, by the way, was not in a courtroom, something I, of course, kept waiting for. Not in this book. Perhaps Book #2.) As hard-boiled as the book is, this is the coziest mystery book I've read, perhaps ever. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to many more Perry Mason mysteries. (excerpted from http://scottdparker.blogspot.com)

Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.

Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction.

"The Case of the Velvet Claws": C

In this inaugural story in the Perry Mason series, Gardner spends a lot of time defining the by now all-too-well-known characteristics of the series - the characters (Della Street, faithful, adoring secretary and Paul Drake, beleaguered, efficient, somewhat dense private detective and Watson to Mason's Holmes), the urban setting, the typical client (in this case, as in so many others, an obstreperous, self-destructive, double-crossing female whose appearance was de rigueur in the pulps and the film noir classics of the forties) and of course our intrepid lawyer-hero - the impatient, no-nonsense, man-of-action who will stop at nothing to honor his client's right to be represented by the best legal mind possible. If all of this sounds a bit comic-bookish, well, it is, since its true ancestors - the pulps of that era - were only marginally removed from that form themselves.

In this outing the mystery is weak, the cast of suspects too small, and the situation and characters stock - lifted straight out of the pulp magazines where Gardner developed his style and his early following. There is none of the courtroom daring-do that earmarks the best of the Perry Mason series. The writing displays more of the dark-alley, rainy-night elements of the hard-boiled pulp style than the later entries in the series, and so has some interest for the reader who wants to trace Gardner's evolution to a new style, one that melds the elements of pulp with his unique blend of convoluted plot, legal intricacies, fast-paced action, and courtroom melodramatics.

The Case of the Velvet Claws

The opening chapter introduces us to Perry Mason and his secretary Della Street. People hire Perry Mason because he will fight for his clients. "Eva Griffin" has a problem that she can't discuss with her regular attorneys; she has stepped out with a political figure and a scandal sheet has found out. She wants the story squashed. Della tells Perry that "Eva" seems phoney and crooked. Perry explains that most clients aren't square shooters, that's why they're in trouble, and hire Perry; its business. "Eva Griffin" eludes the detective shadowing her. Perry meets with Frank Locke, the owner of "Spicy Bits" and talks about suppressing the story. Perry uses a ruse to get more information (Chapter III), and follows the clue to meet George Belter (Chapter IV). We learn of the complications this causes (Chapter V).

Chapter VI introduces us to Harrison Burke, "The Friend of the People". The substantial class of citizens know whose side he really is on. Perry asks him for expense money to handle this problem with "Spicy Bits". The complications begin in Chapter VII; Eva calls Perry to tell she heard a shot, and found a dead husband. Eva thinks the other man was Perry! Is Eva "a little liar"? Perry questions Eva, then calls the police. The police learn that Eva will inherit little, the bulk will go to the nephew who was out drinking that night. Perry returns to his office and sends Paul Drake out to discover things. Two people connected to this case receive telephone calls and leave in the middle of the night (Chapter XII). Perry begins to tie up the loose ends in this case (Chapter XIII).

In Chapter XV Eva Belter tells the police of the voice she heard. When she meets Perry at a hotel room she tells him what else she knew. Della Street is there and takes notes. The police arrive to question Perry. Perry asks Della to get information on the background of one witness, then sends Paul Drake to investigate another person. The interview of Harry Loring creates a new break in this case (Chapter XVIII). Then Mason, along with two police offices, returns to the Belter mansion and its crime scene (Chapter XIX). The questioning of two witnesses brings out the hidden facts that free Perry's client. Chapter XX has the closing comments, and Mason meets with Harrison Burke and Eva Belter. Eva admits she's done "play acting" before, but this time she's deeply grateful.

The "Perry Mason" character is similar to the earlier "Ken Corning", crusading lawyer in earlier works. But Erle Stanley Gardner found outstanding success with this new series. This story would still make a good dramatic story today.

Gardner introduced readers to Perry Mason and his gang--Della Street and Paul Drake in this interesting mystery. Mason does anything and everything for a client, but in this novel, his client tries to set him up as the killer. In order to save himself, Mason has to turn the tables on his client. Della begged Mason not to take the case, and once he did, started to lose faith in him. All works out in the end, and when you are sure you know who the killer is, Gardner twists the plot, and takes you by surprise.

Dateline, Los Angeles 1933:

A sultry, slinky blonde (to whom Mason's secretary, a young, attractive and starry-eyed Della Street takes an instant visceral dislike) enters the office and introduces herself as Eva Griffin.

Griffin tells the story of a robbery gone dreadfully wrong at a local hotel. During the course of the investigation of this robbery, police have determined that she had been stepping out with Harrison Burke, a high profile political figure whose career will be devastated if his public becomes aware of his philandering.

Somehow Frank Locke, the editor of a notorious blackmailing scandal sheet called "Spicy Bits", has also become aware of Burke's and Griffin's little tête-à-tête. In spite of Della Street's urgent protestations that Mason should stay away from this potential client who is clearly an accomplished liar with a spectacular aversion for any form of the truth, Eva Griffin engages Mason who has the reputation of "fighting" for his clients.

Mason's job is to ensure that Locke and "Spicy Bits" are persuaded to refrain from publishing the story and destroying Burke's fast-rising political career.

In rather short order, Mason's investigations reveal that Eva Griffin is, in fact, Eva Belter, wife of George Belter, the irascible and filthy rich owner of "Spicy Bits". When George Belter is shot in his study a few nights later, the mystery ratchets into high gear as everyone in sight, Mason included, is counted as a possible suspect in the murder.

"The Case of the Velvet Claws", first published in 1933, is of no little historical interest as it served to introduce Perry Mason to the reading public. The franchise, of course, lasts to this day and is most memorable as the fecund ground which birthed Raymond Burke's television portrayal of the gritty lawyer.

The plot is fabulous - a first rate, complex, highly believable mystery with all the requisite clues, twists and turns and red herrings that one would expect from a well-constructed mystery. In this regard, Erle Stanley Gardner does himself proud and competes neck and neck with his more famous colleague, Dame Agatha Christie.

But that characterization and dialogue. My, my, my ... in modern terms, they are so "B-movie", so over-written, so cartoonish and stereotyped, and so trite as to be utterly laughable! Any author that wrote that way today would be rejected by the publishing houses so quickly that they wouldn't even be given the doubtful privilege of receiving a bad review!

Four to five stars for the mystery contrasted with an exceptionally weak one to two stars for the characters and the dialogue average out at a three star mystery that is still worthy of being read because of its historical interest.

Paul Weiss

As I undertand it, this is the first novel portraying the character of Perry Mason and he doesn't display several of the characteristics Gardner would put into him later; he is rather hard with his client, but he is entitled to, because as his client's husband ends up dead, Mason appears to be the main suspect.

This is the first Perry Mason mystery written in 1933. Nobody will call it a masterpiece. No thrilling battle at the courtroom. Not so well-plotted as a whodunit. And Mason does not display his ingenuity of outwitting the authorities (the police and the prosecution) and/or trapping the real murderer.

Still this book describes Mason's unchanged attitude throughout the whole series most clearly; even if his client betrays him, he never betrays his client and does everything he can to protect his client. And the wild character of early Mason is vividly described. I don't recommend this book if you've never read Mason mysteries, but I bet this is a must-read for Mason fans.

The title means the client, a young beautiful married woman who seems to hide her claws under velvet. She is definitely the nastiest client of all the Mason mysteries.

Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.

Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction.

"The Case of the Velvet Claws": C

In this inaugural story in the Perry Mason series, Gardner spends a lot of time defining the by now all-too-well-known characteristics of the series - the characters (Della Street, faithful, adoring secretary and Paul Drake, beleaguered, efficient, somewhat dense private detective and Watson to Mason's Holmes), the urban setting, the typical client (in this case, as in so many others, an obstreperous, self-destructive, double-crossing female whose appearance was de rigueur in the pulps and the film noir classics of the forties) and of course our intrepid lawyer-hero - the impatient, no-nonsense, man-of-action who will stop at nothing to honor his client's right to be represented by the best legal mind possible. If all of this sounds a bit comic-bookish, well, it is, since its true ancestors - the pulps of that era - were only marginally removed from that form themselves.

In this outing the mystery is weak, the cast of suspects too small, and the situation and characters stock - lifted straight out of the pulp magazines where Gardner developed his style and his early following. There is none of the courtroom daring-do that earmarks the best of the Perry Mason series. The writing displays more of the dark-alley, rainy-night elements of the hard-boiled pulp style than the later entries in the series, and so has some interest for the reader who wants to trace Gardner's evolution to a new style, one that melds the elements of pulp with his unique blend of convoluted plot, legal intricacies, fast-paced action, and courtroom melodramatics.