Customer Reviews

The case of the empty tin

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

 

 

This novel was very unordinary as a Mason mystery; no trials, no clients charged with murder and Mason acted not as a lawyer but as a detective. The novel showed me various pictures like a kaleidoscope page by page; a mysterious empty tin, gunshot and bloodstrain but no corpse, another corpse in another house, secret smuggling business, domestic disputes between sisters-in-law and so on.

From early in the top decade for Perry Mason mysteries, the 1940s, this book offers a plot so complicated it took me two readings to sort it all out. Several plot threads, of the kind that in later books would have been followed up, are simply dropped here. For example, at one point, and after a long argument with her, Mason agrees not to tell the police about a woman he has just discovered at the scene of a murder -- and the woman never appears in the book again! The overall effect is good, though, sort of like a stew so rich you can't identify all the ingredients. A reader willing to draw maps and make character lists could get quite a lot of fun out of this one even on her first time through.

The Case of the Empty Tin

Chapter 1 tells about the Gentrie family who rent out a room and their garage. Why was an empty tin among the preserves? Florence Gentrie heard a noise in the night. Her husband Arthursaid the wind blew a door shut (Chapter 2). Rodney Wenston visits Perry Mason because of a nearby gunshot (Chapter 3). His stepfather Elston Karr wants an attorney because of the murder downstairs. Karr was an importer in China and now keeps out of sight for fear of murder. Hocksley the downstairs tenant had some kind of phoney exporting business. Perry goes to question the neighbors, the Gentries (Chapter 4). Perry learns about the empty tin and goes to look at Hocksley's garage. Perry looks at the cover of that tin can and finds a coded message on the inside lid. That coded message is a book code (Chapter 7). Hocksley's housekeeper Sarah Perlin calls Perry with information (Chapter 8). Could it be a trap? Perry keeps the appointment but Sarah Perlin will not talk. A woman also called Opal Sunley to the same house at the same hour. Perry questions her.

Paul Drake tells what happened (Chapter 9). Both Hocksley and Karr seem mysterious (Chapter 10). Chapter 13 has a meeting where historical facts emerge. Perry and Della fly to San Francisco to investigate (Chapter 14). Perry shows his driving skills. Perry and Della go to inspect the Luceman home (Chapter 15). There is suspense and humor there. Then they find the Gentrie's roomer, but he will not talk. Perry and Della return to the Gentrie home to look around (Chapter 17). Perry gets an early telephone call with a surprise (Chapter 18)! He calls Lt. Tragg and they rush to the Gentrie's house. The trap springs shut on the guilty party. The last chapter ties up the loose ends.

This is a very complicated story that requires acceptance of its premises. Would someone who does business in San Francisco hide out in Los Angeles? Does the story seem reasonable? This story seems more political (past foreign involvement) than other stories in this series. Some of the facts in the background are now quite dated. War-time shortages put an end to tin cans for home canning; glass jars replaced them. The early "Perry Mason" was more of a private detective than a courtroom wizard.

It's fun reading ecspecially if you've ever seen any of the original Perry Mason programs. It's a period piece from the 1940's. No blood and gore, just lots of twists and turns. I'll admit it, in the last couple of pages when the truth came out I was suprised. Reading a Perry Mason mystery will take you back in time.

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 Empty Tin": C

This undistinguished Perry Mason mystery has little to recommend it. There is some subterfuge, some shady business dealings, a bit of detection - unmemorable stuff for readers (and TV viewers) who have come to expect Perry to be getting into tight scrapes with the law and to unravel a complicated mystery with a bit of dramatic courtroom legerdemain.

A man is murdered in the apartment beneath the lodgings of Perry's rich, but somewhat shady, client, a man with a past that touches on gunrunning and possibly murder. But the key clues to the crime seem to lie next door, in the basement of a boarding house where an empty tin is unexpectedly found among the fruit preserves. The purpose of the tin is the central clue to the connection between the two houses and certain of its occupants...

A nice premise, but one that turns out - on closer inspection - to be too contrived and artificial - clearly a writer's somewhat desperate attempt to hang a mystery on an ingenious (but extremely implausible) clue. Another disappointment: in this case Perry acts solely as detective, and never enters a courtroom. This removes some of the drama, and a great deal of the suspense, since there is no court date relentlessly drawing closer and forcing Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake to race against the clock, which is half the fun of the Mason mysteries.