The Constant Erle Stanley Gardner

Let me preface this post by saying that people leave books around at work after they are done with them. I've discovered such gems as Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker & Rina Lazarus novels and somehow stayed awake through the other books that were basically cliff-hangers that ran out of steam in the end and offered up all the nutritional value of said steam, as mind food.

I've just finished "Shills Can't Cash Chips" by Erle Stanley Gardner, known as the author of Perry Mason to you but known mostly as a crossword clue to me as this was the first thing I've read by him. I have read and heard praises of him through mystery fan pages, through friends and the Internet. The book was from 1961 and it had three times as much titillation and sex as anything else that I've read from that era. Of course, it was all hinted at.

There were, though not literally, "tell-tale panties" in this novel which you would imagine that even a starving Edgar Allan Poe would never have bothered to go there. The protagonist is strictly a ladies man yet he is by far the wimpiest hard-boiled detective ever. Richard Simmons kicked more ass at that airport incident than this guy would in four lifetimes. The real giveaway is the protagonist's name, Donald Lam.

His partner in the detective firm is Bertha Cool ("birth of?") or "B. Cool" as it says on her door. She's of mannish proportions and is the worst representation of Hammett's Continental Detective Agency's boss that I've ever read. She constantly harps on: his expense accounts, his detecting methods, that he's a little too good with the ladies, and her main reservation is the fact that the firm's secretary is in love with him. Thus, reducing her efficiency.

As a matter of fact, you wonder why she throws in with this guy at all because she doesn't trust him one lick and regards him as a two-bit gigolo except of course, he gets results. Bertha gets to spout such dialogue as "fry me for an oyster!" (four times, no less) and "dice me for a carrot!" That's right, Bertha is not just a cheap caricature of a boss, she is also a stew that's served from Bangor to the Bay Area.

She even goes prison matron on a culprit just before the denouement to get a confession, reducing the suspect's clothes to tatters. A police chief even deputizes her as such after the molestation to "make sure that the suspect gets dressed to go down to the station house."

This novel does make you ponder from a procedural standpoint just what life was like pre-Miranda rights as all the cops conveniently wait a few paragraphs to mention to the protagonist that anything he says can be used against him. "CSI" or "Law & Order" this ain't, yet a half-way decent real attorney should've been able to get the whole case tossed with very little effort.

You have gratuitous mishandling of evidence, illegal search and seizure, confessions clearly derived under duress, contamination of the crime scenes, and a police sergeant that willingly tells the protagonist that he will be framed for a murder because it's all too convenient for the court (cue Claude Rains at the end of "Casablanca").

Contrast that with what you might have read about how Stanley Gardner did so much to educate America about law through his Perry Mason character and you have to wonder if he just slapped this particular novel together to just meet a contractual deadline and just said to hell with the legal accuracy, it'll only get in the way.

I didn't enjoy this novel initially as much as I should have because my expectations were much higher as a result of the author's reputation and after mulling it over, I find it a little more enjoyable now. I recognize that is was not intended to be a pure mystery or study in detection, but the anti-hard-boiled book that it is.

Realistically, it's pure camp. A low-fi satire or subdued "Showgirls" without the "All About Eve" references, if you will.