This book is the fortieth in the Perry Mason series by Erle Stanley Gardner. If you’re more of a television person, it is featured in season eight of the show. (I’m slowly working my way through the episodes via streaming, which I’m loving, but man those were long seasons back in the day.)

The basic premise of the story seems to be that a medical researcher is mistreating his primate subjects and a brilliant gorilla turns to thievery, and I presume, eventually to murder. I’m a little fuzzy on the details for reasons that will become clear below. Mystery File has a nice plot summary with minimal spoilers, if you want a more reliable summary.

The writing is sharp, the plot flows well, and I didn’t mind hearing the voices of Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale in my head as I read the snappy dialog. This is my first encounter with Gardner’s writing, and I want to come back for more at some point.

But that point is not now. I didn’t finish reading this book. It was engaging and enjoyable, but current demands on my time have me in “short attention span reading mode”, and a sweeping mystery — with its cast of many characters — is not conducive to irregular consumption. Every time I picked up the book to read a chapter, I found myself a little lost in who was whom and what they had done. Rather than continue to struggle, I asked for a continuance (see what I did there?) and returned the book to the Little Free Library where I found it. (You can begin your search for a copy on the Amazon.)

But now I know that Gardner should be on my reading list, and I have a new appreciation for the television series too.