Five Tuesdays in August, five stories about gentleman scoundrel Lester Leith from the pen of Erle Stanley Gardner — synergy.

Leith was a well-to-do gentleman of flexible ethics created by Gardner for a series of 60-odd pulp stories that ran from the late 1920s until the mid 1940s. I’ve read a handful of these, but it wasn’t until reading the introduction to The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith [ss] (1980) that I realised just how many there had been — and while I’m not entirely sure what Ellery Queen’s criteria were for picking the five in this volume, it’s to be hoped that they represent the cream of the crop, right?

First up, then, we have ‘In Round Figures’ (1930), and the first notable point is that Leith, in contrast to the Victorian gentleman rogues who recently graced this blog, is not on chummy terms with his valet:

The coal-black eyes of the valet glinted into smoldering fires of antagonism. He half-turned his head so that Lester Leith might not surprise the expression of enmity on his face … His hamlike hand knotted into a fist. For seconds he stood quivering with rage.

Whether Leith knows that his man Scuttle — not, incidentally, the valet’s real name but rather a sobriquet imposed on him by his employer — is a police spy, reporting back to his superiors at regular intervals, is unclear at this moment, but, well, it would hardly be surprising; Gardner made a career out of canny-minded individuals who are always one step ahead, and nothing which unfolds here seems to cause Leith much consternation. Scuttle knows what Leith is interested in, though — crimes which show “a dash of imagination, with a touch of the bizarre” — and so brings to his attention “the most carefully planned robbery in the past five years”, news of which has fallen off since the trail has now run completely cold.

At a society do, an unexpected guest turned a fainting fit into an opportunity to relieve the wealthy people there gathered of their gems and cash before vanishing so completely that the police were unable to run a single lead to ground. While the planning of the robbery shows no small ingenuity, Leith is convinced that he can solve it and recover the gems — and Scuttle, reporting to Sergeant Ackley, is hopeful that Leith might therefore be caught in the commission of a crime himself and the much put-upon valet might get “fifteen minutes alone in a cell with him”.

Leith is a more acerbic presence than most of Gardner’s protagonists, falling very much into the Arrogant Dilettante mould, forever blowing smoke rings and tracing their edges with his finger while never missing an opportunity to sneeringly dismiss those he encounters…who, in fairness, are all associated with the police here and trying by means not always above-board to capture our hero in some misdeed, and so perhaps have earned the sharp side of Leith’s tongue.

“Do you know, Scuttle, there are times when your reasoning powers absolutely surprise me?”

The valet flushed. “Is that so, sir?”

“Absolutely,” remarked Lester Leith in a tone of finality. “And, may I add, Scuttle, that this is not one of those times.”

The scheme which Leith develops is almost needlessly complex, and shows how it’s possible to hide something in plain sight without needing to be clever about it: you just overwhelm your opponent with information and options until they have too much to keep their eye on and end up overlooking the one thing you hoped they would. There’s very little artistry in such an approach, of course, but, well, once again these are pulp stories and we’re here to be swept along, have a thrilling read, and probably forget the whole thing by the time we open another book. In that regard, this may be deemed a complete success, with clever plot points from earlier on reintroduced in such a way that you appreciate the protagonist’s fore-planning if not exactly his ingenuity.

This falls slightly flat in that — it is an Erle Stanley Gardner story, after all — this final coup is achieved through a legal loophole which I’m guessing will be abstruse to the overwhelming majority of readers and so you’ll read the paragraph in question, go “Oh, is that a thing?” and have to enjoy Leith’s triumph through indication rather than full comprehension. I was reminded here of a story by Jeffery Deaver which similarly turned on a legal nicety, the difference being that Deaver had taken the time in his setup to establish the possibility of this so that the reader was in on the ruse at the moment of revelation. Gardner was ingenious, no doubt, but probably more concerned with making money than any literary heritage, and it’s in little points such as this that you appreciate why he’s not as celebrated as someone with his success in a diversified output in the most challenging genre in the world should be.

I’m a confirmed Gardner fan, however, and here for whatever he turned his mind to, especially if someone with an overview of the work in question is going to highlight five examples for my attention (I’m not a fan of Ellery Queen’s writing, but I fully respect their genre knowledge). So while this opening grab for your attention could do more to win over new fans, there’s also the argument that this collection isn’t for you. For which, my apologies: hopefully the next four Tuesdays won’t prove too frustrating.