FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE D.A. GOES TO TRIAL

 The D.A. Goes to Trial by Erle Stanley Gardner (1940)

Gardner (1889-1970) is best known for his series of 82 novels featuring criminal defense attorney Parry Mason.  At the time of his death, Gardner was the best-selling American author of the 20th century.  Perry Mason has also appeared in films, a radio show, three television series, 30 television films, comic books, a daily comic strip, and a stage play.  Beginning in 1937, and through 1949, Gardner published nine novels about a dedicated district attorney, Doug Selby, who just did not have the reach of Perry Mason

The Selby novels are set in a sort of alternate universe to the Mason books.  In this world, Selby is the opposite of Perry Mason's frequent opponent, District Attorney Hamilton Burger; Selby is an idealist who would prefer to lose a case if it meant that an innocent man would go to jail.   Selby has to be convinced beyond any doubt that those he prosecutes are guilty.  This idealism leads Selby to investigate murders as well as simply prosecuting them.  Selby's frequent adversary is the wily Los Angeles attortney Alphonse Baker Carr, often referred to as "A.B.C."  Carr is unsrupulous, devising ways to hamper Selby's investigations and to muddy the waters both for his clients and for his personal profit.  Carr's clients are invariably guilty but know they can get off the hook by hiring Carr -- it's "as easy as A.B.C."  Carr is the opposite of Perry Mason, as Selby is the opposite of Hamilton Burger.

Selby is the district attorney of Madison County, an agricultural county not far from Los Angeles, whose seat is Madison City.  (It may not be a coincidence that the name Gardner gave to Doug Selby's turf is an anagram (with one vowel substituted) of MASON, D.A.)  For a long time, Madison City was controlled by illegal and powerful gambling interests.  A scandal involving a former sheriff led to a political upheaval, placing a young Doug Selby in the District Attorney's office, and his friend Rex Brandon -- a plain-spoken ex-rancher -- as county sheriff.  Despite their political victory, the two face strong opposition from the defeated yet still powerful political bloc, including the former D.A., Sam Roper, and The Blade, one of two daily newspapers in Madison City.  These enemies are constantly trying to thwart Selby and Brandon from fulfilling their duties.  They are aided in part by the headline grabbing, bumbling, and inefficient police chief of Madison City, Otto Larkin.

Two other regular series characters should be mentioned.  Sylvia Martin is the gutsy and talented reporter for the town's other newspaper, the Clarion.  She is in love with Selby.  Her insights often help Selby and Brandon in their investigations.  Also in love with Selby is Inez Stapleton, the daughter of the town's most powerful man.  When we first meet Inez, she is smart but frivolous, spending much of her time on the tennis courts with Selby.  When Selby is elected to office, he takes on a more mature stance and seldom has time for Inez.  During an early book in the series, Selby is forced to convict her brother for a fatal hit-and-run while under the influence.  Ines realizes that that Selby has changed and wants him to respect her as an equal, so she decides to become a lawyer.  For his part, Selby is kind of a dim bulb when it comes to women.  Although he is attracted to both, he hides his feelings from himself, remaining good friends with both women.  Inez and Sylvia recognize each other as rivals for Selby's affections and remain wary of each other.

In The D.A. Goes to Trial, Inez Stapleton returns to Madison City, a newly-coined lawyer.  She has managed to complete three years worth of studies in just seventeen months, while also taking various criminology courses.  A dead hobo has been found by the railroad tacks, apparently hit by a passing train.  The coroner found nothing suspicious in the death.  The hobo had one of those in-case-of-accident cards in his wallet, pointing to a brother in Phoenix.  The brother request the body be cremated and the ashes sent to him.  After that was done, it was discovered that there was no brother and the identity of the now-cremated corpse is unknown.  Luckily, railroad inspectors had taken photographs of the corpse, and the coroner regularly took fingerprints of any dead hobos that came across his table (this was California in the late 1930s, remember, and there were a lot of hobos, some of them ending up dead).  Selby's investigation showed the dead man to be John Burke, an employee of a lumber mill suspected of embezzling thousands.

Why was Burke dressed as a hobo?  Further investigation showed that Burke was married with a child.  His wife had formerly been married to a Phoenix rancher.  She claimed her husband was abusive and that she wanted to go back to her first husband, who she still loved.   He had given her ten thousand dollars to cover Burke's theft so that the child will not grow up under the shadow of having  a criminal father.  This portrait of Burke did not align with what Selby had been told by a former employer.   They $10,000 was placed in a bank vault and the bank manager was found shot dead in the vault, with the money and some $40,000 in other funds missing.  

Selby had a lot of unanswered questions, but a politically motivated grand jury indicted the first husband before Selby was ready to act, forcing his hand.  Selby was legally obliged to follow the grand jury's recommendation.  The rancher, Jim Lacey, hires Inez to represent him.  Inez has a few tricks of her own that Selby resents.  In the background, A. B. Carr is muddying the waters for his own purposes.  Fingerprint evidence indicates that the dead hobo may not has been John Burke.  Selby's enemies are speading the rumor that Selby is hesutant to prosecute because of his feelings for Inez.  Most poeople have forgotten about the dead banker and the missing $50,000.

Part of me questions Gardner's handling of the law in this case.  I am not familiar with California law, nor with the law as it stood some seventy-five years ago.  I'm sure Gardner got it right, but it seems slightly off to my modern sensibilities.  Then Gardner throws in two surprise witnesses at the very end of the novel, creating a deus ex machina effect that also threw me.  Selby manages to resolve everything satisfactorily, but Gardner had juggled so many balls into the air, I was unsure if there were not some balls still hanging there.  I'm still unsure.

The D.A. Goes to Trial is a rapid-paced detection novel with with interesting (sometimes cookie cutter) characters.  There's a lot of flash and a lot of substance and I truly enjoyed it, even though it left me somewhat disquieted.