We don't seem to have any Gardner fans among our reviewers yet, which is a shame. I see Gardner as occupying a similar position to Christie in the US context: so prolific and so consistently good as to be almost above criticism. But let me make a start:
Ailing mining engineer Banning Clarke runs a strange household. He sleeps outside in the garden amongst the cactus and saltbush with his old prospecting partner Salty Bowers. His nurse Velma Starler sleeps indoors ready to come running with his heart medication, as do his in-laws the Bradissons, his associate Hayward Small and his cook Nell Sims and her worthless husband. Clarke calls on Perry Mason to carry out what looks like a hopeless defence against a fraud case, but complications arise when first the Bradissons and then Perry and Della go down with arsenic poisoning. It is Clarke who pegs out in the end, however, shot while slowly dying from the arsenic.
The best Mason books always have a legal twist: here Mason outsmarts himself by winning a case that he was hired to lose. There is a good deal about the clean healthy life of the desert and its romantic qualities, and it ends with two marriages and the closest Perry has yet come to a proposal to Della. The details of mining leases lost me a little, but the history of lost gold mines and the clever way of hiding a map easily redeemed it. A B+ for Gardner -- which makes it a very good book indeed.
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