book report

Just went through a round of fiction: Elizabeth Peters, Night Train to Memphis and Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Howling Dog and The Case of the Velvet Claws.

I read an article about Elizabeth Peters a while back, and her work sounded intriguing (she writes mysteries, and I was looking for a new series), so I picked one up. Made the mistake, however, of choosing the book by the title rather than the jacket description. So I got a book from a series set in the modern world, instead of one from the Victorian series. And I was not all that impressed. As a matter of fact, I was unimpressed enough that I didn't bother to finish it. Her main character seemed very plastic and the plot just didn't grab me. Very superficial, it seemed like, and a little too fast—not that the plot moved that fast, but the main character's voice (it was written in first person) made you wish she'd stop for a breath at some point.

Moving on to Gardner. I've reached the point in my attempt to reread my entire library that I can start on a really fun project—reading the works of prolific authors in the order in which the books were written. (I absolutely cannot wait to start on Agatha Christie that way. I'm saving her for last because I look forward to it so much!) I just finished reading my rather limited collection of Zane Grey in chronological order. I didn't find a lot of difference in his works over time, actually. He remained fairly consistent—but also highly formulaic.

So next up to reread in order, Gardner's Perry Mason mysteries. (They're my car books now, and will be for a while. Gardner wrote a lot!) So I read The Case of the Velvet Claws. And you could really tell it was an early one. Lots of description that's left up to the reader's imagination in the later books, and he clearly didn't have a handle on the sort of dry, factual, just short of hard-boiled style with a California tinge that he would develop later on. What was interesting, however, was The Case of the Howling Dog. I hadn't read that one before, and it was written just a year later than Velvet Claws. Later works don't have to describe Mason's style of lawyering, since the reader knows what to expect, but these early ones really do hit the note of what a different kind of lawyer he's supposed to be over and over. In both books, most of the scenes with Mason and Della Street, and even the ones with Mason and Paul Drake, really consisted of Mason trying to explain to his co-workers what his style is like. I have to say, I prefer the later ones, when he just does it and doesn't talk about it so much!