The Case of the Buried Clock - Erle Stanley Gardner

As I’ve mentioned before, the short Pocket Books editions with Robert McGinnis covers are the classic Perry Mason editions as far as I’m concerned. They’re the ones I saw on spinner racks and in used bookstores when I was growing up in the Sixties. (I’m also fond of the Triangle Books cheap hardback reprints published by Blakiston, many of which I checked out from our local library, but that’s probably the subject of another post.)

This Mason novel was published originally by William Morrow in 1943. The copy I read, which is the scan above, is the ninth Pocket Books printing from November 1962. So it’s sixty years old this month and in great shape for its age, square and uncreased and with only lightly tanned pages. But is it any good, you ask? Well, it’s a Perry Mason novel. Of course it’s enjoyable . . . but with a few reservations.

Most of the Mason novels start with a potential client showing up at Perry’s office and being announced by Della Street. This is one of the rare entries where Erle Stanley Gardner introduces most of the major characters and sets up the situation before Perry, Della, and Paul Drake ever appear. We have a mountain cabin belonging to a wealthy banker, the banker’s beautiful unmarried daughter, the banker’s other, somewhat less attractive daughter who’s married to a cad and a bounder, a stalwart GI who’s been wounded in action, discharged, and sent home to recuperate, a beautiful widow who runs a nearby ranch, an artist/wildlife photographer (who seems perfectly healthy; why isn’t he off fighting in the war?), yet another beautiful young woman and her brother, an abandoned mine, and the buried clock of the title, which is set for the wrong time.

Naturally, there’s a murder at the cabin, Perry is hired to defend the person put on trial for the crime, and the final third of the novel is a series of courtroom scenes with Perry sparring against a new opponent, an assistant district attorney named McNair, before the prosecution brings in poor old Hamilton Burger to deliver the knockout punch and finally convict one of Perry’s clients. Yeah, right.

The plot is the usual complicated stew of motives and deceptions, and the large cast of characters (some of whom are just names and never actually appear in the book) make the story hard to follow at times. The clock seems to be forgotten for most of the book before it plays a major part at the end, and the killer’s motive really seems to come from farther out in left field than usual in these books. Because of that, I can’t put THE CASE OF THE BURIED CLOCK in the top rank of Perry Mason novels, but it’s still quite a bit of fun to read anyway. At this point in the series, Perry is farther away from his pulp roots, but he’s still a little rough around the edges and doesn’t hesitate to bend the law on behalf of his client. And the banter between Perry, Della, and Paul is top-notch and pretty funny in places. Gardner’s writing seems a little more descriptive at times, too, and he does a fine job with the setting. If you’ve never read a Perry Mason novel before, this probably wouldn’t be a great one to start with. If you’re a long-time fan like me, you’ll probably find enough to like to make reading it worthwhile.