Gardner’s Forgotten Courtroom Series

Pretty much everyone is familiar with Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels (if only through their translation to television), and more readers are coming to know his Bertha Cool/Donald Lam private-eye yarns (thanks to Hard Case Crime having republished several of those in recent years). But Gardner also created other protagonists, for use in both books and short stories, including Terry Clane, Gramps Wiggins, Ed Jenkins, “Speed” Dash—and Douglas Selby.

Douglas Who, you ask? I was equally in the dark until a few years ago, when, after delighting in many of Mason’s early adventures, I took a flier on Gardner’s nine novels featuring Selby, the freshly elected district attorney in fictional Madison County, California. I started with the first, 1937’s The D.A. Calls It Murder—and couldn’t stop. So taken was I with Selby and his eccentric supporting cast, that I tracked down and devoured the whole series.

Today, in CrimeReads, I recount the history of Selby’s creation (it came at a time when Gardner was seriously considering killing off his Los Angeles defense attorney, Mason!) and look individually at the novels in which he appears. I’m very proud of the piece (a version of which appeared originally in Down & Out: The Magazine), and hope you will find some enjoyment in it as well.

Click here to investigate the whole story.