Who’s Guilty Party in This Mystery?

Monday passed in Ventura County just like every other July 17--an unsung holiday.

There could have been a big birthday blowout for the county’s most famous and prolific author. There could have been fireworks, dances, self-help legal clinics. There could have been a festival with little children dressed up as middle-aged lawyers from the 1950s, shrieking “Ob-jection!” every time a parent tried to drag them home.

But no.

As usual, Erle Stanley Gardner’s birthday passed without public comment, tight-lipped as a bumbling prosecutor after losing yet another case to Gardner’s incomparably brilliant Perry Mason.

Between 1915 and 1933, Gardner worked as an attorney in Ventura. From his office on the third floor of the stately old office building at California and Main streets, he gazed out at the courthouse just up the hill, closed his eyes, pondered legal strategies, and dictated the first of his 82 Perry Mason novels, starting with “The Case of the Velvet Claws.”

In all, Gardner, who died in 1970, wrote 155 books and more than 400 articles. In the 1960s, his books sold more than 26,000 copies per day, spurred by the success of the 271 Perry Mason episodes on TV. Meanwhile, he investigated the cases of prisoners he believed unjustly convicted, springing a number of them. He also was an amateur archeologist, rancher, wildlife photographer, expert on the California gray whale, and general bon vivant.

But being a dead literary hero--now that’s work.

Usually, the only people who pay heed to dead literary heroes are the English majors of the world--not, I must admit, a group with oodles of clout. An army of 10-year-olds and their mothers might be brushing up on guerrilla tactics to secure the latest, greatest Harry Potter, but nobody these days is beating down bookshop doors for “The Case of the Borrowed Brunette.”

Even so, you’d figure Ventura would do at least a little crowing over its role as the home of Erle Stanley Gardner.

Why?

Because literary heroes in Ventura County are as scarce as really good fish places.

Because Perry Mason is more charismatic--that is, nicer--than Alan Dershowitz, Johnnie Cochran, and the rest of the day’s legal celebrities. Of course, it helps to be fictitious.

Because Perry Mason and his brisk, beautiful secretary Della Street managed to get through years of close contact under highly stressful conditions without so much as a peck on the cheek. Monastic self-restraint has never had better spokespersons than Perry and Della. Because, as a result of Perry Mason, an entire TV-watching generation grew up with the lovely pre-O.J. notion that defendants could actually be innocent. In fact, the defendant was innocent every week; the show’s only suspense lay in deciding which hapless witness would be pinpointed as the real culprit by actor Raymond Burr: “Your Honor, the cold-blooded killer is someone right here in this courtroom--and it’s not my client!”

For all this, Ventura has done little to celebrate Gardner.

In 1995, city officials installed a plaque on Gardner’s old office building. It’s now Historic Point of Interest No. 86.

To be sure, a handful of Gardner aficionados keep the flame alive.

Richard Senate, Ventura’s historian, wrote a book called “Erle Stanley Gardner’s Ventura.” From time to time, he leads tours of city sites associated with Gardner, pointing out, for example, that the lawyer’s first house in town stood on the site of the Rosarito Beach restaurant.

John Anthony Miller, an online book dealer, has collected numerous Gardner first editions and memorabilia and has plans to establish a museum. Since his Phantom Bookstore in Ventura closed, the material has been in storage.

“There seems to be a limited interest about Gardner here,” he said. “We’ve sold first editions of his work to people in Texas, Yugoslavia, Germany, England--but not to Venturans. Maybe we just take him for granted.”

Miller and Senate got together on Gardner’s birthday for a cup of coffee and a bagel. Meanwhile, Randall Richman, owner of the Erle Stanley Gardner Building, laid plans for a Gardner birthday barbecue--an annual observance for his building’s tenants.

Richman hands out Gardner postcards, coffee mugs and pens, but more is needed.

A few years ago, I suggested that city officials rename a street Della--for the secretary, get it? Their response suggested that renaming a city street is a bureaucratic task on the order of plugging a 16-lane freeway through a national park.

But so much is possible, especially in a city that constantly wonders where all the tourists are.

An annual Erle Stanley Gardner mystery writers conference. An annual Erle Stanley Gardner courtroom-drama film festival. An Erle Stanley Gardner park, an Erle Stanley Gardner statue.

More of us should join the small band of local stalwarts in caring about Gardner’s legacy.

What could be more noble than joining the dukes of Erle?

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.