The Case of the Runaway Corpse by Erle Stanley Gardner

It was this that gave him the real confidence he needed, and in his next series of books focused on a man named Doug Selby who was known to be a highly regarded crime solver within his fictional world, a very similar situation to that of Perry Mason. Fair, he wrote about a private detective firm named Cool and Lam. He set himself with the target to write at least 1,200,000 words a year, and created many characters during this period which included Lester Leith, Ken Corning and a parody of the gentleman thief’.įollowing his small success in the pulps, Gardner began writing his own novels, and under the name of A.A.

His first big break in the the writing world came in 1923, when his first story was published in the pulps.

Gardner always stated that although he enjoyed some practices of the law industry, he had become bored with by it, and instead in his free time he started to write for pulp magazines. He eventually returned to law in 1921 and stayed within the industry until 1933 when he released his first book within the series of the Mason series. Proving to be gifted in the law industry, Gardner managed to pass the state bar exam in 1911 after learning himself on the job, and began defending clients in cases, many of which were poorer clients, to get his foot in the door.īy 1917 he had opened his first law office but the company was short-lived as Gardner decided to quit law altogether and take on a job at a sales agency to help support his wife and daughter, who was born back in 1912. He dropped out of Valparaiso University in Indiana, where he studied law, after just one month and instead moved to California where he took his career into his own hands and started working for a law firm as a typist. But how did this once former lawyer become to be one of the greatest writers the world has seen?īorn in Malden, Massachusetts on July 17th 1889, Gardner was raised within a working class family, and moved around a lot in his childhood due to his fathers job as a mining engineer.

His long list of novels, which includes the Perry Mason collection, are still widely accessible, even today, and are taught throughout schools and universities worldwide. Renowned as one of the best-selling American authors of the 20th century, Erle Stanley Gardner is globally recognised within the world of literature as one of the best mystery and detective novel writers of all time.

The Case of the Runaway Corpse by Erle Stanley Gardner