The Case of the Empty Tin is Erle Stanley Gardner's nineteenth Perry Mason novel, so you would think that by this point, having now had so much experience writing Mason and all the other recurring series characters, that the books would be consistently satisfying ones. Well, think again. This novel is actually so bad that I may never see Perry Mason, the character, in a positive light again. So let me count the ways/reasons I so much dislike The Case of the Empty Tin:
- It is overly complicated, and almost as soon as one possible scenario or solution to the crime is presented, it is immediately shot down by the all-knowing Perry Mason.
- After a while, it seems like the theories will be added to forever, needlessly complicating an already farfetched plot.
- There are way too many peripheral characters too keep up with without following your own detailed character cheatsheet.
- Perry Mason is most famous for having been one of the best defense attorneys of his day - and yet he does not enter a courtroom even once in this tedious tale.
- As a lawyer, Mason would be subject to an Ethics Code or Rules of Professional Conduct if he wanted to stay licensed - but here he takes great delight in creating false evidence, leads, and alibis.
- Della Street seems to exist only so that Mason can ridicule her and explain to her (and to all the confused readers) what has just happened a few pages earlier - over and over again.
- If the numerous explanations to Della were not already bad enough, the novel ends with Della reading a multi-page, detailed confession from the killer - an excuse for a long recap to explain to frustrated and confused readers all the clues they have probably missed.
- The plot is a bore because not much ever seems to happen, and the characters are pretty much all so laughable that it's difficult to take any of them seriously.
- Mason is dumb enough to implicate himself and Della in murder by investigating murder scenes before the police know that anything has even happened.
- Perry Mason is so unethical that it's more fun to pull for his nemesis Lt. Tragg than it is for the "good guy" - and Della Street is an air-head willing to do anything and everything her "handsome" boss tells her to do.
And I won't even hold it against Gardner that The Case of the Empty Tin is as sexist and racist as any novel of the 1940s I've read in recent years. That's not a surprise, really, because Gardner is simply reflecting the thinking of the times. But what I do detest is being talked down to by an author who apparently didn't think his readers could figure this one out on their own without several pages of dry confessionary prose to explain what they had just spent several hours reading. It took me forever to read Perry Mason No. 19 because I could barely force myself to keep picking it up even when only 50 or so pages still remained to be read. I think it will be a while before I pick up another Perry Mason mystery - and that really irritates me. It also makes me sad.
Sounds like he should have stopped with #18. I can't believe he never even steps inside a courtroom in this one, and that he's so unethical in his actions. What a disappointing read.
ReplyDeleteI KNOW a book is bad when it starts to make me angry enough to talk back to it. lol This is one I will remember for a very long time - for all the wrong reasons.
DeleteWow, you really did not like this one. I looked at the two reviews of the Perry Mason mysteries on my blog. One I definitely liked [The Case of the Restless Redhead, #45 (1954)], but I did not comment on Della. The other one [The Case of the Rolling Bones, #15 (1939)] I did not like (too complicated to follow) but I did like the interaction of Della and Perry. I also looked at some Goodreads reviews and at least two people said this was their least favorite Perry Mason book, but of course others praised it, which is typical of most books.
ReplyDeleteI read Perry Mason books in my teens and I was much less discriminating then, but I did read a lot of them.
The difference between this series and the Bertha Cool / Donald Lam series is that Bertha owns a detective agency and Donald works for her. So a different dynamic. I think they were more enjoyable reads but I had some criticisms of those books too, so I can only say that they are different.
I didn't know about the Bertha Cool books at all, so I'll have to try one of those for sure. It will be interesting to see how Gardner plays in a story where the woman is actually the boss and not the other way around. It surprises me at just how complicated his plots can be, even to the point (in my opinion) of being overly complicated just for the sake of confusing things exactly when everything should start making more sense to the reader. It's not so much that he overdoes the red herrings, more that he spends time fleshing out theories, only to immediately discredit them. That makes me want to skip to the end and get on with it because I am certain that he's just misleading me again for no real reason. I was really disappointed in the Della Street character as portrayed in this one, too. She was more a simpering ornament than a real professional, I thought.
DeleteOuch! But sometimes it's quite satisfying to just lay out all the flaws before you move on. I have never read a Perry Mason book or seen the TV show - maybe I am not missing much. I did love the show The Good Wife but I can't think of any legal thrillers I followed.
ReplyDeleteThe TV show was a lot of fun even though the formula was set and hardly ever varied. Mason never lost, but he played fair and always came up with a last second way to save his client. I've seen the TV version of this novel, and it really simplifies the plot and cuts to the chase. If not for the title, I wouldn't have even recognized it as being based on the novel. I read a lot of legal thrillers back in their heyday, but I've gone off them a bit in later years. They really can be predictable, but the best of them are really, really good tales.
DeleteA very well written review of why we should steer clear of The Case of the Empty Tin and those reviews are not easy to write because when we read a book we dislike we want to forget it but it's important to let readers know about the bad books as well as the good ones.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience with Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammet. I had read one of Hammet's Continental Op stories and was really impressed so I came to Red Harvest with a good feeling. Instead an entire book of rival gangs in cars mowing each other down which is fine but on every page it seemed like.
I don't think I'll ever forget this one, Kathy, much as I would like to. It pushed all of the exact buttons that make me dislike some crime fiction. Quite a feat in that it punched ALL of them in one novel.
DeleteI kind of agree with you on that Hammet novel...probably my least favorite of his books, in fact.