The Case of the Lonely Heiress PDF Free Download

This is the first Earle Stanley Gardner novel that I have read. I chose to read a Perry Mason novel because I recently completed watching the first five seasons of the TV Perry Mason series from the 60s. This review is written for someone like me who has watched some or all of the TV series and is thinking of reading one of the novels.

This novel starts with Robert Caddo, the publisher of a cheaply printed “Lonely Hearts Are Calling” magazine. He is being threatened by authorities for false advertising if he can’t produce the identity of the person behind one classified ad that is reportedly from an heiress. After much skepticism, Mason accepts Caddo as a client and asks to an excessive fee which Caddo pays. Perry writes a few responses to the ad, and the heiress responds to one. Paul Drake sends one of his men as the author of the response. Her identity is discovered. Case closed. Fortunately for reader, the heiress calls Mason because she discovered a dead body, and it sure looks like she was the murderer. The novel continues, and Mason goes into high gear at this point.

As Mason works to uncover the truth behind the murder to defend his client, there are plenty of twists, turns, and misdirections. My attention was captured from page 1. There are so many things that I really enjoyed in reading this novel. Here are some:
* three of Mason’s schemes backfire spectacularly so he does make mistakes and pays for them;
* Della Street’s character is much more complex and interesting character than she is in the TV series, and she provide a critical point to bolster the defense;
* There is a real blowup between Mason and LT Trag, and not the pillow fight tiffs in the TV series;
* LT Trag smokes a cigar;
* Street regularly calls Mason chief; and
* the dead woman was nude—this was not prurient as she lived alone and was attacked after taking a bath, which is a critical point in the case.

As to what some readers may object, the worst examples of vulgar language were “For the love of Mike” and “You get the hell out of here.” There were not any intimate scenes but there were some references to first and second base. All of the violence is described after the fact. The vast majority of reads should not find anything objectionable while reading this novel.

This is 32nd Perry Mason novel. I found absolutely nothing that appeared to depend upon a previous novel, so you should be able to read this book first without any issues.

I did find some editing issues, but as such I did not give them any weight in my rating of this novel. There were one misspelling, two hyphens where not needed, a shift in margin, a bolded word for no reason, and two periods instead of a space between words in the middle of sentences. This is a reprint. Due to the pandemic, the libraries are closed so I could not confirm if these existed in the original publication. Still, this is sloppy editing.

I had only one question. The heiress is described as a beautiful blonde and whose name is Marilyn Marlow. This novel was published in 1948. The best I can find is that Marilyn Monroe first bleached her hair around 1946 and started modeling and bit parts in movies. I wonder if the name of the heiress was a play on Monroe’s name.

One last statement, if you have watched the TV series version of this novel, it is entirely different. The only novel specific characters in both are Caddo and the heiress by another name. Otherwise, the storyline is quite different.

Overall, this was a quick and enjoyable read. It was a quantum step of from the 60s TV series but I suspect that it was the moral TV code at the time. I rate this novel with five stars. If you want read a Perry Mason novel, “The Case of the Lonely Heiress” would be a good choice with which to start.