Case of the Backward Mule

Chow Koh Koh was a Chinese philosopher who rode his mule backwards. He claimed it made no difference where he was going. All that counted was what he did along the way.

Terry Clane thought this a serene and comforting way of life. He liked it so much that he bought a small statue of Chow Koh Koh riding his mule, and gave it to his fiancee as a gift. That was Clane's mistake. Instead of a good luck symbol, it proved an omen of evil. For within a short time, Clane's favourite young lady was up to her neck in murder. And Clane's beloved statue of the peaceful and fatalistic Chow Koh Koh was covered with the blood of the killer's victim!

Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Erle Stanley Gardner left school in 1909 and attended Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana for just one month before he was suspended for focusing more on his hobby of boxing that his academic studies. Soon after, he settled in California, where he taught himself the law and passed the state bar exam in 1911. The practise of law never held much interest for him, however, apart from as it pertained to trial strategy, and in his spare time he began to write for the pulp magazines that gave Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler their start. Not long after the publication of his first novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, featuring Perry Mason, he gave up his legal practice to write full time. He had one daughter, Grace, with his first wife, Natalie, from whom he later separated. In 1968 Gardner married his long-term secretary, Agnes Jean Bethell, whom he professed to be the real 'Della Street', Perry Mason's sole (although unacknowledged) love interest. He was one of the most successful authors of all time and at the time of his death, in Temecula, California in 1970, is said to have had 135 million copies of his books in print in America alone.

Chow Koh Koh was a Chinese philosopher who rode his mule backwards. He claimed it made no difference where he was going. All that counted was what he did along the way.Terry Clane thought this a serene and comforting way of life. He liked it so much that he bought a small statue of Chow Koh Koh riding his mule, and gave it to his fiancee as a gift. That was Clane's mistake. Instead of a good luck symbol, it proved an omen of evil. For within a short time, Clane's favourite young lady was up to her neck in murder. And Clane's beloved statue of the peaceful and fatalistic Chow Koh Koh was covered with the blood of the killer's victim!

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