{"id":313,"date":"2020-07-25T15:54:19","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T15:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.zonkdev.uk\/?p=313"},"modified":"2020-07-26T13:13:55","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T13:13:55","slug":"the-case-of-the-howling-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"The Case of the Howling Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Case of the Howling Dog <\/em><\/strong>\u2013<\/strong> Erle Stanley Gardner –\u00a0<\/strong>a Penguin Perry Mason. Cover by Romek Marber – 1963<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Perry Mason series ranks as the third best selling book series of all time, with total sales of around 300 million. That\u2019s more than Terry Pratchett, Ian Fleming and George R Martin put together. Only Harry Potter and Goosebumps have sold more copies.<\/p>\n

\"TheThis makes the author of the series – the criminal lawyer Erle Stanley Gardner –\u00a0 the best-selling American author of the 20th century. Eat your heart out Ernest Hemingway. Unlike Hemingway, Gardner also published under numerous pseudonyms, including Kyle Corning, Carleton Kendrake and Les Tillray. He shouldn\u2019t have bothered. Perry Mason had Gardner, and his estate, laughing all the way to the bank.<\/p>\n

Perry Mason \u2013 also a criminal lawyer – \u00a0features in more than 80 novels and short stories. Most of\u00a0them involve a client’s murder trial. Mason\u2019s main M.O. is to establish his client’s innocence by implicating another character, who then confesses. The Case of the Howling Dog<\/em> was the fourth in the series.<\/p>\n

When a potential client goes to see Mason about a howling dog and a will, the attorney isn\u2019t interested. He doesn\u2019t enjoy drafting wills, and wonders if the man should see a vet. However, the man’s next question – whether a will is legal if the person who made it had been executed for murder – piques Mason\u2019s interest. In addition to the will and the dog, he encounters a man who has run away someone else\u2019s wife – and a sexy housekeeper. The latter explains the slightly risqu\u00e9 detail on Romek Marber\u2019s 1963 cover illustration.<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s TLS William Boyd announced that he\u2019d worked out James Bond\u2019s precise address in Chelsea from the details in Fleming\u2019s novels. There\u2019s not much chance of doing the same thing with Perry Mason.<\/p>\n

Characterisation wasn\u2019t Gardner\u2019s strong suit. His novels provide very few details about Mason\u2019s family, personal life, background, and education. We know that he lives in an apartment because he\u2019s occasionally roused from sleep to go to the office, but he doesn\u2019t entertain anyone at home. We know his tastes in food because many scenes take place in restaurants. And we know that he is an excellent driver as – unusually for a lawyer – he has a penchant for car chases. Despite the sexy housekeeper, his secretary is Mason’s only real romantic interest.<\/p>\n

Other than those sketchy facts, there is so little physical description of Perry Mason that the reader is not even sure what he looks like. Perfect material for film and TV adaptation then.<\/p>\n

\"01_12_PerryMason_S01_396104791_708649212-scaled\"As if selling 300 million books wasn\u2019t enough, Warner Bros released a series of six Perry Mason films in the 1930\u2019s, starting with The Case of the Howling Dog<\/em>. But for Baby Boomers, probably the best-known incarnation of the enigmatic lawyer was Raymond Burr in the \u00a0CBS TV series which ran from 1957 to 1966. Since Burr, three other actors have played Mason on screen. The latest is Mathew Rhys in the HBO series which premiered in June 2020.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Case of the Howling Dog \u2013 Erle Stanley Gardner –\u00a0a Penguin Perry Mason. Cover by Romek Marber – 1963 The Perry Mason series ranks as the third best selling book series of all time, with total sales of around 300 million. That\u2019s more than Terry Pratchett, Ian Fleming and George R Martin put together. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}