While Brad adopts a thematic approach to reading the Perry Mason novels of Erle Stanley Gardner, I’m more a sort of wander in the meadow, la-la-la, isn’t everything beautiful kinda guy, and so I’m just getting it into my head I want to (re)read one and picking them up on a whim. But let’s attempt some method and stick to the approximate era of the last one I reviewed, eh?

My memory of The Case of the Substitute Face (1938), the twelfth published volume in Gardner’s very long-running series, was that it took place entirely aboard ship, but I was wrong in that: we’re merely here for the first third or so to set up the characters and, of course, the murder that pulls Mason into their orbit. Mason and Della Street are on board, you may remember, having sailed into the sunset at the end of The Case of the Lame Canary (1937), and it’s as they return to the mainland United States from Hawaii that the Newberry ménage comes into their orbit.

It’s Mrs. Newberry herself who approaches Perry, telling him a story of how her husband, Carl Moar, recently came into $25,000 (approximately $500,000 in today’s money) and, following hard upon, decided that he would change his name from Moar to Newberry, the surname used by Mrs. Newberry’s daughter, Belle, from her first marriage. It’s this sudden affluence which concerns Mrs. Newberry — because either he got the money from an illegal lottery, from some financial defalcation at the job he quit as soon as he became wealthy, or…well, where else could it have come from?

Additionally, little oddnesses have haunted the Moar-Newberry party since they started on this trip — Mr. Newberry seems very keen to make himself scarce whenever nurse Evelyn Whiting, travelling with an injured man, comes out on deck; someone seems to have taken a photo of Belle from Newberry’s luggage and replaced it with one of a film star she very closely resembles — and difficulties have arisen now that the Newberrys have been mixing with the monied set, in the shape of Belle’s growing infatuation with the youthful, attractive, and very wealthy Roy Hungerford. In short, it’s a classic Gardner setup, and that’s before someone shoots Newberry and throws his body over the side of the boat during a storm.

One of the things I love about Gardner is how seamlessly he builds his plots, with the opening chapters on the boat — I can’t find its name in the text now I search for it, so forgive me for calling it merely “the boat” like a commoner — slick and sleek and acutely observed, the characters all clearly in their places and the difficulties they’re facing neatly limned in clear lines that leave no room for doubt…lines that you just know Gardner will have drawn in altogether different patterns come the finale. Not everything Gardner wrote was equally good, of course, but he’s usually on a firm footing with Mason, the characters’ moods keenly felt…

There were many vacant chairs at the captain’s dinner. Sheeted rain lashed against the portholes. Those passengers who made merry with colored paper cups, balloons and pasteboard horns lacked spontaneity. Their merriment seemed merely a forced attempt to comply with maritime conventions.

…and tone set lightly with an occasional aside that doesn’t interrupt the flow of plot, plot, and more plot:

The roar of troubled waters furnished a steady, ominous undertone of sound.

Plus, Gardner’s just funny at times, in a way that suits the sometimes wiseguy-ish tone of his dialogue without ever overdoing it:

Mason grinned, “You don’t seem to like him, Jackson.”

Jackson said, “He’s an arrogant, dictatorial, obstinate nincompoop.”

“You really should take up profanity, Jackson. It’s a lot more satisfying.”

Once we’re on dry land, Mason’s pet investigator Paul Drake finds himself running to and fro (“[H]is parents had made a mistake. He should have been quintuplets.”) and, very interestingly indeed, what seems like one of the key plot strands is resolved well before the halfway stage. Nevertheless, the pace rarely lets up, and you can almost feel a newfound enthusiasm in Gardner’s writing, since he’d all but vowed to give up on this series with …Lame Canary, and is here committing fully to the characters, the clever reversals, and, best of all, the courtroom drama that closes it all out.

The one flaw I’d level at this is that Mason’s one extended piece of courtroom grandstanding is, unfortunately, made all too easy by the nature of the person he’s up against (rot13 for minor spoilers: n “jvgarff” jub jnfa’g jrnevat gurve tynffrf — p’zba, Reyr, lbh’er orggre guna gung!). Still, the writing here remains tense and top-notch (“[She sat with] her chin held high, her eyes slightly defiant, as though daring the machinery of Justice to do its worst…”) and the reversal in the closing stages is, of course, expertly wrought. You should see through it, and maybe some of you did, but I was too surprised at finding the plot here taking a different direction to the one I remembered, and I was busy wondering if I was in fact remembering a different book [Editor’s note: I read a lot of Mason back in the day, sometimes three or four in a row, and my memories are hazy].

Interesting, too, to see the Perry/Della Street axis a little more explicitly explored here, with Della’s scorn for Ann Moar poured forth at one point, and Perry, when he believes Della to be in danger, toting a revolver at one point as they chase after her. Perry Mason packing a piece? I don’t remember that anywhere else in the canon. We know it’s one of the great unrequited love matches in fiction, but the clear lengths these two are willing to go to for each other haven’t been explored this nakedly before, and I can’t recall — though see above, re: me and remembering thing about the Perry Mason books — it ever being done so again.

Some nice historical touches fill this out: a brief mention of “the European situation” (which is actually quite a good joke in its own way), and the acknowledgement that “a young woman of twenty-five these days is quite apt to have done a lot of living” — good heavens, is there life for women beyond making a home and looking purty for their husbands at the end of a long day?! Apostasy! Also, what’s the deal with three people lighting their cigarettes from the same match? Google’s A.I. thingy tells me that this was a suspicion started in the Boer War, but I’m naturally chary when A.I. tells me anything — so does any real person know anything about this, or have another example of it turning up in fact or fiction?

If you’re not a fan of Perry Mason, well, first I pity you and second you’ll find nothing here to convince you of his obvious brilliance. If you’re on the fence about Perry Mason, …Substitute Face does much to show why he’s such a character beloved by so many people, highlighting his humour, his loyalty, his humanity, and his legal acumen in a way that delights and thrills in equal measure. And if you’re already signed up to the fan club, well, welcome aboard: everything you want from a Perry Mason case is here and ready for you. I consider myself lucky to have found him, and luckier still to get to experience him again in this blogging life of mine. He’s not one of my favourite sleuths for nothing, after all.