Perry Mason Book Idea

The notion of a book about Perry Mason struck me in a dive bar as I waited for someone to arrive. Sometimes I think I do my best creating while waiting for people.

There I was looking out to a lake and The Method of Perry Mason: How Watching Television’s Greatest Show Can Improve Your Life (working title) emerged. I have no idea why it occurred at this particular moment, but when such an idea for a book appears, I don’t ignore it. The same thing happened with the bridge and rain books.

The idea clearly originated with my viewing of the show with my father every weekday morning. It’s how we start our day and we always converse during the episodes about what we are watching and how Perry Mason the character as played by Raymond Burr embodied everything potentially wondrous in Americans: probity, hell-bent on justice, compassionate, non-judgmental, ethical, loyal, intelligent and so much more.

So for the book, Dad and I would watch all 271 episodes in order, I would take notes, record impressions (I’ve already written extensively about our Perry Mason moments for the blog) and then provide a commentary on certain episodes and suggest something that occurred on the show as a way to live better, to live like Perry.

Other book notes:

Mention how I came to watch Perry with dad every weekday morning. Mention the long Portland history with Perry Mason when it used to air at noon on an independent station for something like 40 years, apparently unique for a market.

Discuss the reboots, including the terrible HBO series.

Discuss Burr’s odd invented biography and incredible generosity to cast and crew members.

Delve into the original source materiel, the 82 Perry Mason novels written by Erle Stanley Gardner. (NO, I won’t read them all!)

Short digression into the character of hapless prosecutor Hamilton Burger. He always wanted the system to “serve the interests of justice,” unlike most current prosecutors who are totally unfamiliar with that idea.

Highlight the clothes, the dresses, the robes and ascots, the cars, the cigarettes, the decanters of brandy, the dames, the drinking, the pill popping, the furnishings, the drawing rooms, the telephones, the floor model TVs, all of it.

His desperate clients sometimes pick him out of phone book the size of a wedding cake!

Perry often says “We gotta move fast!” in the interest of justice. No one does that anymore. It took 18 months to hold a Congressional hearing on the attempted overthrow of the American government by a defeated President.

Remark upon the scenery of and around LA and how much of what we see in the rural scenes has been developed or burned.

Perry always implored his clients to just tell the truth. Clients often lied to him and he became exasperated but he never quit on them. What a quality! Not quitting on someone.

It’s never about the retainer, the money. It’s about justice, the search for truth.

Connect my experience in the legal system with a Perry Mason comparison.

Highlight the incredible vocabulary on the show. It teaches vocabulary! Bring back the words “louse” and “rake.”

Dad caught only two grammatical errors in the shows. And never from Perry! He loves the articulation by the actors and loathes the lack of articulation in current shows.

Comment on how the episodes we watch on free TV have had roughly 5-7 minutes cut from the show to broadcast more commercials, of course. It makes watching the show a bit discombobulating because key scenes are often left out. Insist that readers of the book watch the original uncut episodes.

The names are perfect: Lt Tragg, Hamilton Burger, Paul Drake, Della Street, Perry Mason.

Discuss how the black and white and grays of the broadcasts fit perfectly with the morality issues presented by the series.

Perry Mason is loyal. His loyalty can never be severed. We all need friends like this.

Perry never panics or rushes to judgment. He never judges. He is always patient and measured. We need more of that in America.

Point out my favorite episodes.

“Facts matter,” says Perry in multiple episodes. They don’t anymore in American political life.

Would Perry have defended Kyle Rittenhouse and Derek Chauvin? Yes. Everyone deserves a competent defense.

Highlight how in several episodes Perry uses dogs to win cases! Dogs! Make that connection to the real world. Dogs tell the truth.

Mention how a friend of mine was assisted in her recovery from a traumatic brain injury by watching episodes of Perry Mason in the hospital!

The show educated people to basic American legal principles and the Bill of Rights. This was before the Miranda decision.

Remark how defense attorneys are in critical, unconstitutional short supply and we need a new kind of Perry Mason show to inspire people to become criminal defense attorney and not more CSI geeks.

Connect to my life and discuss how if I had it do all over again I would have become a public defender and moved to a rural area on the Oregon Coast and given my all to my clients and set up shop in a small office with an ocean view.

Comment on the brisk pacing of the episodes as opposed to today’s bloated shows and what that suggests to modern storytelling and writing.

Possible opening to The Perry Mason Method:

This book originated because my beloved step mother Pauline died from cancer in 2020 and my then 89-year-old father, Karl, was shattered by the loss. He now lived alone in Portland and didn’t drive, had mobility issues, and didn’t know how to use the internet, something indispensable to live in modern American society.

At the time, I was living in a 42-year old Winnebago in a disheveled RV park on the Southern Oregon Coast. After consulting with my father and older sister, I decided to move in with my father and take care of him until…

We quickly established a routine of watching Perry Mason every weekday morning and the show put the hook in me in a way contemporary television and streaming show dramas do not.

Then one day almost 18 months later, the idea for this book hit me in a dive bar on the Oregon Coast and I still don’t know why it emerged the way it did. But Perry Mason had jolted and bolted into my creative mind and I dared not ignore its presence. Here is the result. (Cue the opening of the Perry Mason theme.)