Erle Stanley Gardner created characters such as Perry Mason, Bertha Cool and Donald Lam (mysteries written under his pseudonym AA Fair), and Doug Selby, the D.A., and also had a variety of characters and situations which appeared in stories he wrote for magazines.
As a struggling young lawyer in Oxnard, California, Gardner became known as the defender of the Chinese, a minority group then considered beneath the dignity of rights unalienable to others. Thus began an interest in the Oriental that lasted throughout his life and which found expression in a number of his short stories.
From his earliest days, Gardner was lured by the desert and spent as much time there as he could snatch from the rigorous schedule imposed by his success as 'the world's best-selling author'. His love and respect for these arid reaches of the west emerge through the pages of many of his books.
Erle Stanley Gardner also writes under the pseudonym of AA Fair. [edit]