Джеймс Алан Гарднер
Prolific American author, whose best-known works center on the lawyer-detective Perry Mason, his helpmates the loyal and beautiful secretary Della Street, the private detective Paul Drake, and the opponent, District Attorney Hamilton Burger. Gardner worked as a professional attorney for twenty-two years. He was an ardent sportsman, an enthusiastic wildlife photographer, and a constant traveler, who spoke fluent Chinese.
“Murder is not perpetrated in a vacuum. It is a product of greed, avarice, hate, revenge, or perhaps fear. As a splashing stone sends ripples to the farthest edges of the pond, murder affects the lives of many people.”
From The Case of the Horrified Heirs, 1964
Erle Stanley Gardner was born in Malden, Massachusetts. His father, who was a mining engineer, took the family west to Portland, Oregon. Three years later his father found employment as a mining engineer in Klondike. Finally the family settled in the small mining town of Oroville. During these years Gardner also picked up knowledge of mining, which was reflected later in his novels. In 1909 he graduated from Palo Alto High School, in the San Francisco Bay Are.