THERE'S YOUR SUMMER READING:

Gardner's pact with readers promised that Mason's clients, whatever else they've done, would always be innocent of murder. That way, when the lawyer plays things fast and loose, we can revel in every wild scheme without troubling our consciences one little bit. He explained, "I write to make money, and I write to give the reader sheer fun. People derive moral satisfaction from reading a story in which the innocent victim of fate triumphs over evil. They enjoy the stimulation of an exciting detective story. Most readers are beset with a lot of problems they can't solve. When they try to relax, their minds keep gnawing over these problems and there is no solution. They pick up a mystery story, become completely absorbed in the problem, see the problem worked out to final and just conclusion, turn out the light and go to sleep."

Mason is as much detective as lawyer, but typically the payoff is a courtroom showdown that sees Mason clear his client's name and pull a "J'accuse!" with the guilty party. These justifiably famous showdowns are rich in legal detail, offering an education in American law of the era. Legend has it that Gardner, whose fan base boasted numerous judges and lawyers, only made one mistake in his prolific career, when he allowed the beneficiary of a will to witness it as well.

When he died, in 1970, Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American fiction author of the century. He wrote 100,000 words a month for some fifty years. His New York Times obituary cited sales of more than 170 million books in the US alone, and reported his paperback publisher saying that in the mid 1960s they sold 2,000 Gardner books an hour, eight hours a day, 365 days a year.

From the 1920s on, Gardner produced an avalanche of pulp stories, novellas, cowboy yarns, science fiction, travelogues and several mystery series, on top of the 80 Perry Mason novels that cemented his fame and fortune, and won him fans such as Einstein (reported to be reading a Perry Mason novel on his deathbed), Harry S. Truman, and Pope John XXIII.

Oh, and in 1949, Evelyn Waugh told interviewers that Gardner was America's best writer. People dismissed this as a joke. It wasn't. Writing to Gardner in 1960, Waugh called himself "one of the keenest admirers of your work." People still scoffed, yet when it was put to his widow, Laura, she confirmed that Evelyn had read every book, and pressed them on the entire family.

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