"Honest Money" by Erle Stanley Gardner (from Black Mask, November 1932; reprinted in Honest Money: and other short novels, 1991)
This s the first of six stories Gardner wrote about Croning, a newly-minted lawyer who finds himself pitted against a corrupt political machine. Unlike with Gardner's better known attorney-sleuth Perry Mason, Corning does not have a chance to engage in courtroom shenanigans, but there's enough slam-bang action here to satisfy the most jaded of Gardner's fans. And when things seem their bleakest, that's when Gardner pulls out all the stops.
It starts when Sam Parks, who owns a small resturant cum illegal speakeasy hires Corning to defend his wife, who was arrested in a sudden raid on the place. Paying a simple fine should have gained the woman her release, but when one of the officers had placed his hands out and, assuming he wanted a typical bribe, she had given him fifty dollars, whereupon she was also arrested on bribery charges. The assistant district attorney is demanding a twenty thousand dollar bond and is pushing for penitentery time for a very minor crime against a very minor defendant. Why? Then Sam parks is shot down outside of Corning's office and murdered. The newly appointed head of the city water department -- who is vowing to clean up corruption within the department -- is somehow involved. Corning finds himself facing a charge of counterfeiting and is "arrested" by a man posing as a Secret Service agent and is about to be murdered by a city detective and his crony...
Justice does not realy prevail, but Mrs. Parks is released and the city machine have moved her far away so she cannot incriminate them. Corrupt politicians have put Ken Corning under notice with out realizing the he, in turn, has put them under notice.
The saga continues in the next story in the series, "The Top Comes off" (Black Mask, December 1932).
Fast action...Complication following complication...A tough protagonist going against the odds...Nothing seems to say Black Mask in the 1930s better.
And all the ways that BLACK MASK, its progenitor THE SMART SET, and its heir EQMM (and TSS's heir AMERICAN MERCURY) have touched on so many aspects of our culture, beyond the obvious. That Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich published in THE SMART SET first by itself...
ReplyDeleteH. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan founded THE BLACK MASK as a cash cow to keep their other magazine THE SMART SET afloat. THE SMART SET also included the first paid publication of Murray Leinster/Will F. Jenkins in 1915 -- something I always found interesting.
ReplyDeleteThey were open to talent.
ReplyDeleteEQMM was similarly begun to help keep AMERICAN MERCURY afloat (this worked once, after all)...along with the various digest paperback series, MERCURY MYSTERY et al., that rolled in about the same time ELLERY QUEEN'S was launched.