The Case of the Velvet Claws

This is the very first Perry Mason book, and our hero is more akin to Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade than to the character brought to life on TV by Raymond Burr. It's a splendid rattle though a murky 1930's Los Angeles, with a convoluted plot, a femme fatale, and a Della Street who just may have lost faith in her boss.
Great stuff!

Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.
Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction.
"The Case of the Velvet Claws": C
In this inaugural story in the Perry Mason series, Gardner spends a lot of time defining the by now all-too-well-known characteristics of the series - the characters (Della Street, faithful, adoring secretary and Paul Drake, beleaguered, efficient, somewhat dense private detective and Watson to Mason's Holmes), the urban setting, the typical client (in this case, as in so many others, an obstreperous, self-destructive, double-crossing female whose appearance was de rigueur in the pulps and the film noir classics of the forties) and of course our intrepid lawyer-hero - the impatient, no-nonsense, man-of-action who will stop at nothing to honor his client's right to be represented by the best legal mind possible. If all of this sounds a bit comic-bookish, well, it is, since its true ancestors - the pulps of that era - were only marginally removed from that form themselves.
In this outing the mystery is weak, the cast of suspects too small, and the situation and characters stock - lifted straight out of the pulp magazines where Gardner developed his style and his early following. There is none of the courtroom daring-do that earmarks the best of the Perry Mason series. The writing displays more of the dark-alley, rainy-night elements of the hard-boiled pulp style than the later entries in the series, and so has some interest for the reader who wants to trace Gardner's evolution to a new style, one that melds the elements of pulp with his unique blend of convoluted plot, legal intricacies, fast-paced action, and courtroom melodramatics.

This is the first Perry Mason mystery written in 1933. Nobody will call it a masterpiece. No thrilling battle at the courtroom. Not so well-plotted as a whodunit. And Mason does not display his ingenuity of outwitting the authorities (the police and the prosecution) and/or trapping the real murderer.
Still this book describes Mason's unchanged attitude throughout the whole series most clearly; even if his client betrays him, he never betrays his client and does everything he can to protect his client. And the wild character of early Mason is vividly described. I don't recommend this book if you've never read Mason mysteries, but I bet this is a must-read for Mason fans.
The title means the client, a young beautiful married woman who seems to hide her claws under velvet. She is definitely the nastiest client of all the Mason mysteries.

I have read all of the Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett books and find Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason to be another one of the good old fashion crime drama books. This is the first book of the series that Gardner wrote of Perry Mason attorney at law and I found it to be a fun read. I am older and use to watch the old TV series Perry Mason but the books of course can go into more detail about the individuals of Mason and his girl Friday Della Street. My sister told me about the HBO series with Perry Mason before he became an attorney and told me her and her boyfriend really enjoyed it. I guess the series will continue on HBO sometime later with Attorney Perry Mason and I think I will definitely check that out when it comes out. Now off to read the next Perry Mason book. Fast reads and fun with great characters very much like Agatha Christie's books I have to add since I have read almost all of her books.

Book was shipped quickly and was as advertised. Would buy from this company again.

Fun book.

First Earl Stanley Gardner story of Perry Mason- lets you in on issues never stated in TV series