Erie Stanley Gardner was a successful California criminal lawyer long before he tried his hand at writing fiction.
Encouraged by the response to his first Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933), Gardner decided to write fulltime. His works sold over 135 million copies during his lifetime. Gardner also wrote for the Perry Mason radio series and helped create the award-winning television series starring Raymond Burr. Fred MacMurray and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., by the way, were first considered for the lead. Burr tested for the role of Mason's nemesis, the prosecutor Hamilton Burger. Gardner himself appeared as a judge in one episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout."

For recreation, Gardner loved to go houseboating in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. He enjoyed spending several weeks each year lazily drifting through the sloughs and backwaters of California's heartland. He often traveled with a couple of secretaries and, in order to avoid what he called "the problems of privacy that go with mixed company," he had separate houseboats for men and women. On the men's boat, he said, "we live just as we darn please." Gardner mastered the art of leisure, listening to owls hooting at night, sleeping late, and lounging on deck in his pajamas. Over the years, he became a familiar figure in the little Delta towns where he would stop and buy groceries or have a meal. One of his favorite hangouts was the Big Horn Restaurant in Rio Vista.

Occasionally Gardner traveled with friends and associates who helped him with his writings. He especially enjoyed the company of the warden from the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. Gardner was indebted to the warden for rescuing him one afternoon after he had spoken at a luncheon in Reno. A group of amateur writers descended upon Gardner, pleading with him to spend the afternoon helping them with their writing. The warden hastily intervened and took Gardner out to the prison for a visit. When they arrived, Gardner was smitten by an attractive female inmate, one Emma Jo Johnson, outfited in a specially tailored prison uniform. "Prison uniforms are not particularly stylish," Gardner noted, "but the fit across the hips on this one was something out of this world." He agreed to take the case of this comely convict and eventually got her pardoned. Not even Perry Mason ever came across an m.o. (that's modus operandi) as unusual as hers. Emma Jo had been convicted of murder...by can-opener!