Review: The Case of the Terrified Typist - Erle Stanley Gardner

Any time I feel like a reading funk might be coming on, a Perry Mason novel is a sure-fire way of nipping it in the bud. THE CASE OF THE TERRIFIED TYPIST was published originally by William Morrow in 1956 and has been reprinted in paperback many times since then, like most of the Perry Mason novels. It’s currently available in e-book and paperback editions from Amazon.

In this one, Mason needs to hire a temporary typist to type up a legal brief in a hurry. His secretary Della Street calls the temp agency and tells them to send a girl right over. So, when a young woman shows up at Mason’s office a short time later, everybody assumes she’s the typist. She’s actually really good at it, too. But the reader is going to figure out right away that she’s not really the one sent by the temp agency, and she’s actually there because she’s mixed up in a complicated criminal conspiracy involving smuggled diamonds, an apparent suicide, a lobotomized mental patient, several beautiful women, and an alleged murder even though the victim’s body has been lost at sea.

If you like the courtroom scenes in the Perry Mason novels—and who doesn’t?—this novel is a veritable feast. Except for a few short interludes, the entire second half of the book is a series of one crackling courtroom scene after another as Mason, with the help of Della Street and private detective Paul Drake, untangles the whole thing and exposes the real killer.

I’m not sure Erle Stanley Gardner nails down the plot quite as well as he usually does. There’s at least one hole that’s not really resolved. But Gardner does spring a surprise that’s never occurred in the series up to this point, then neatly uses it to turn everything on its head. Anyway, I’ve long since reached the point where I stopped reading these books for the plots. The plots are just an excuse to watch Mason at work and enjoy the fast-paced prose and the occasional bursts of humor. Plus the friendship between Perry, Della, and Paul is one of the most appealing in fiction. THE CASE OF THE TERRIFIED TYPIST isn’t one of the best Perry Mason novels, but did I race right through it and have a very good time reading it? You bet I did.