If you have followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a big fan of Erle Stanley Gardner’s detective lawyer, Perry Mason. Gardner wrote more than 85 novels and short stories about the lawyer. Of the 36 novels Gardner wrote between 1933 and 1950, only one was never adapted for TV or movies. That one is the Case of the Counterfeit Eye.
And that’s a shame because this is one of the better written stories in the early history of the character. This was the sixth novel that Gardner wrote and it is the first story to introduce the 
audience to the new District Attorney, Hamilton Burger. Written in 1935, this story has not seen the light of day in any medium other than print. The reason is probably because of it deals with a man who has not one, but six artificial glass eyes. Gardner is very specific in terms of how artificial eyes are made and inserted in this story. And it might be this attention to detail that makes the story difficult to translate to television.
It is, however, a typical Perry Mason story, in that a wealthy businessman named Hartley Basset has killed himself. Or so it seems. After all, there’s a typewritten suicide note and three guns are lying near his body. There is trouble in Basset’s life: his wife wants him out, his stepson hates him, and an embezzler can’t pay him back. And then there’s the man with a glass eye who hired Mason even before his missing eye was found in the hands of the very dead Hartley Basset. Like I said, it’s a typical Perry Mason novel.
But I think there’s also another problem with this particular story, thus delaying its suitability for visual medium. In this novel, Perry Mason breaks the law several times including manufacturing (and planting) false evidence. To compound matters, Mason manipulates other evidence and intimidates witnesses as a means to get the real murderer to confess. And yet, it is all of this that endears this novel to me and makes it such a fascinating read.
It’s a very good book and a good review of the novel can be found at Ah Sweet Mystery! You can actually read the first couple of pages of the book at Scribd.com. The book can be purchased from Amazon. Hopefully, someone will translate this novel to a visual medium someday because I think it’s a good story that needs telling.
Edited to Add: The novel was adapted to TV as The Case of the Treacherous Toupee. My 2017 review is here.