Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Clue of the Forgotten Murder / The Clew of the Forgotten Murder | 1942 | Erle Stanley Gardner | Buy |
| 2 | This Is Murder | 1948 | Erle Stanley Gardner | Buy |
| 3 | Dead Men’s Letters | 1990 | Erle Stanley Gardner | Buy |
| 4 | The Exploits of the Patent Leather Kid | 2010 | Erle Stanley Gardner | Buy |
Erle Stanley Gardner produced four standalone novels across his career and posthumously. The Clue of the Forgotten Murder (1942, also published as The Clew of the Forgotten Murder) and This Is Murder (1948) are crime novels featuring characters outside his regular series. Dead Men’s Letters (1990) and The Exploits of the Patent Leather Kid (2010) were published decades after Gardner’s 1970 death, drawn from unpublished manuscripts or archival material.
These standalone works represent a small fraction of Gardner’s output compared to his series fiction. The Patent Leather Kid, published in 2010, is particularly notable as a posthumous discovery, offering readers who have finished the main series characters a glimpse at material Gardner produced but did not publish during his lifetime.