Ulguva koera juhtum by Erle Stanley Gardner

Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate.

Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest ( Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State. “Flight into Disaster,” a 1952 yarn, seems included to prove that Gardner (Honest Money, 1991, etc.) never developed as a writer his gifts for lightning-fast movement and antiestablishment insouciance were there from the beginning, and he rode them hard till the very end. The two best are “Time for Murder,” in which a bored socialite turned amateur thief gets more thrills than he bargained for, and “Barney Killigen,” whose raffish attorney has as many tricks up his sleeve as Perry Mason. And their plots, for all their relentless velocity-Gardner always built for speed-are mostly routine. Once he brings them to life with a vivid phrase of two, Gardner has no interest in developing them further. Yet it’s clear why they all remained also-rans. Like most of Gardner’s hardboiled heroes, they reflect his enduring fascination with the equivocal figure who can bring justice to a lawless world because he’s not burdened by undue respect for the law himself.

The second-string relics of the 1930s here range from freelance diplomat Major Copely Brane to loose-cannon investigator Pete Wennick to Snowy Shane, a shamus who gets the cops to do his heavy lifting.

Though best known for his legal sleuth, Gardner (1889–1970) created detectives as regularly as some attorneys post billable hours. Eleven pulp reprints resurrect detective heroes coeval with the first decade of Perry Mason.

Ulguva koera juhtum by Erle Stanley Gardner