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Criminal lawyer and bestselling mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner wrote nearly 150 novels that have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Now, the American Bar Association is bringing back his most famous and enduring novels--featuring criminal defense lawyer and sleuth Perry Mason--in striking trade paperback editions.Married Eva Griffin has been caught with a prominent congressman, and is ready to pay the editor of a sleazy tabloid hush money to protect the politician. But first Perry Mason tracks down the publisher of the blackmailing tabloid and discovers a shocking secret, which eventually leads to Mason being accused of murder.This is the first Perry Mason mystery and our introduction to secretary Della Street, detective Paul Drake, and the great lawyer himself.… (more)
User reviews
Meet Eva. A married
Perry Mason tries to help our damsel in distress - and gets himself accused of the murder. Then things turn to the worse.
And just when you do not see how things may get resolved, a few surprises and a few explanations are provided and Mason wins the case. You know he will - I am not sure if there is any of those books that do not have him winning - but for a while there, I really could not see how exactly.
It is a nicely constructed novel - despite some of the oddities. And especially for a first novel, it is well worth a read, even 8 decades later.
It was hard not to see, in my mind's eye, the bulky Raymond Burr who played Perry Mason in the long running television series. And yet, somehow, the central character in this novel does not quite match that tv character.
I can see why, even over 80 years on, why this novel was a winner with readers. The characters are well drawn, the action fast-paced and the plot is full of unexpected twists and turns. Perry Mason points out to his client. who constantly lies to him, that he is hardly a novice. He already has files from hundreds of previous cases in his filing cabinets, and he expects to have many more. He specialises in getting people out of holes. Most of the cases he has been involved in are murder cases, and mostly he gets people off. So here is a lawyer who takes on clients regardless of how much they can pay for his services. See more at Wikipedia.
THE CASE OF THE VELVET CLAWS was made into a film in 1936.
A good read.
Anyway, onto the book. An expensively dressed woman walks into Perry Mason's office and Della Street, his secretary and not so secret admirer, warns him she's trouble. It seems that married Eva Griffith was out on the town with up for election politician Harrison Burke and a murder occurred at the nightclub they were at. It would be political suicide if this liaison was made public and Eva is afraid that the scandal rag Spicy Bits is going to find out and publish the information. Eva wants Mason to convince them it is not in their best interest to do so.
Always up for a challenge and a big fee, Mason takes the case, against the advice of Della. But as you suspect, Eva is not who she says she is and furthermore it turns out that her husband is the hidden owner of Spicy Bits. When he turns up dead, Eva is a prime suspect.
We all know that Perry will come up with the truth, using whatever devious means he can. The Case of the Velvet Claws is classic Perry Mason and classic 1930s noir. It is not as dark as Hammett or Chandler or some of the other great Black Mask pulp fiction mystery writers (it's almost like a cozy mystery compared with them) put the action and the language put it in the same genre. It was a treat to see Perry, Della and private investigator Paul Drake in action. I haven't read a Perry Mason in a while.
I highly recommend it.