Paw Prints Anecdotes: Erle Stanley Gardner

In the early days of his career, Gardner churned out stories for pulp magazines at the rate of 200,000 words a month. As he was paid by the word, the length of the story was more important to him than its quality, and he tended to draw the maximum potential from every incident. His villains, for example, were always killed by the last bullet in the gun. Gardner's editor once asked him why his heroes were always so careless with their first five shots. "At three cents a word," replied Gardner, "every time I say bang in the story I get three cents. If you think I'm going to finish the gun battle while my hero has got fifteen cents' worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you're nuts."

U.S. lawyer and writer of detective stories. His best-known character is lawyer-detective Perry Mason, who features in some 80 novels, including "The Case of the Velvet Claws" (1933) and "The Case of the Duplicate Daughter" (1960).

READ a brief biography of Erle Stanley Gardner and details about his most popular character, Perry Mason.