3.5* ( )

This is one of ESG's more entertaining novels. It could have been a 5, but no Tragg, not much of Holcomb, and Hamilton Burger was made to look like an idiot. That was a bit much. On TV, Mason is very pro-police, but in the books, he is not, and the DA's office is quite incompetent. This is one of those books. A bit jarring, and spoils an otherwise cool novel. Solid courtroom drama. Not at all incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial! ( )

Original price: $0.45 ( )

Perry Mason is one of those the most well known and beloved characters of modern American fiction. Gardner's character, who is sort of a modern day Sherlock Holmes, has been featured in radio, television, and movies, and, of course, Erle Stanley Gardner's novels- 80 of them.

The Case of the Sun Bather's Diary was originally published in editions of the Saturday Evening Post in 1955. I've never read a Perry Mason novel before or seen any of the various media presentations of the character. But I picked a fine one to begin with. Here, as the title suggests, we get a story involving a voluptuous young woman given to sunbathing in the nude, who calls Mason for help when everything she owns including the clothes she had set aside were stolen from her. A great opening that absolutely gets the reader's attention. Armored car robbery and forgery figure in to this tale as well.

The key to this case as Mason himself explains is keeping an open mind and not drawing any conclusions before getting all the facts. The writing here is superb and, as a reader, I was drawn into the story immediately and, although there isn't a lot of action, the story moves along quite swiftly ending with a grand jury hearing where Mason takes little clues and solves a case that appeared unsolvable.

Looking forward to reading the other 79 novels in the series. ( )

Years ago an impossible bank robbery happened. As it happened, obviously it was not so impossible but the circumstances were so unusual that when the robber was found, sending him to jail as an easy thing.

Or so everyone believes. One day Perry Mason gets a call from the robber's daughter - who is stuck on a golf course after someone stole her mobile home while she was suntanning - with all her clothes inside. Perry is intrigued and starts investigating - and becomes a suspect in a murder. And the only way to prove his innocence is to find what really happened during that robbery.

Now, why he did not call the police earlier or asked her to call the police or... pretty much tell the police what is going in is like asking why the series exists. So I won't.

Add to the whole mess a diary (this the novel name) which contain information about the life of the girl and who had been giving her money, some of the money from the robbery resurfacing and the things really start to look bad for Mr. Mason. Who cannot pull his usual shenanigans anymore because everyone knows him. But Drake is there to help - and to investigate for him.

I am not sure that I liked how he got out of that one - it felt like a cheat - I am not sure that we had enough information to figure it out. It made sense but in the "oh, I forgot to tell you this and it is what solves it" kind of way. Still readable and quite enjoyable but with a flawed ending.

The more mature novels are different from the early ones - Mason is a lot more set in his ways, he deals with the same DA, the police is not as incompetent, Drake and Della are always there to help and rescue him. Something from the excitement in the early ones is lost but it is more polished, more clear novel. Or would have been if not for the ending. ( )