Showing results by author "Erle Stanley Gardner" in All Categories

Married Eva Griffin has been caught with a prominent congressman, and is ready to pay the editor of a sleazy tabloid hush money to protect the politician. But first Perry Mason tracks down the publisher of the blackmailing tabloid and discovers a shocking secret, which eventually leads to Mason being accused of murder. This is the first Perry Mason mystery and our introduction to secretary Della Street, detective Paul Drake, and the great lawyer himself.

Who was that masked woman? That was the question plaguing Perry Mason. No one loves a good mystery more than Mason - but being asked to represent a client who is concealing her identity, not to mention the particulars of her case, has given even the legendary legal eagle a case of ruffled feathers. Yet the intriguing cloak-and-dagger tactics have Perry hopelessly hooked. As for the silent siren behind the mask, is she heiress Byrl Gailord or penniless Adelle Hastings?

Frances Celane has good reason to pout. Thanks to a provision in her late father's will administered by her uncle, she's caught in the middle of a family feud between matrimony and money. If she chooses marriage, she loses a million. But beautiful young Frances has a strong will of her own that she's not afraid to use. One way or another, she means to hear wedding bells and cash registers making beautiful music together. Her first move: hire Perry Mason to orchestrate things.

In his will, Peter Laxter guaranteed his faithful caretaker a job and a place to live...for life. But Laxter's grandson Sam says the deal doesn't include the caretaker's cat - and he wants the feline off the premises by hook, crook...or poison. When Perry Mason takes the case, he quickly finds there's much more at stake than an old man's cat - a million dollars or more to be exact....

On his way to finding out, Mason meets Mrs. Milfield, a barely distraught widow, and a slew of suspicious characters all intimately connected to the recently deceased, a man murdered on someone else's yacht. As the surprising scenario unravels, it takes a sharp mind like Mason's, the savvy of his secretary Della Street, and the legwork of investigator Paul Drake to pull all the clues out of the water before the case sinks like a deadweight.

Perry Mason had no hesitation in defending Albert Brogan, a broke ex-salesman against a charge of robbery. He's counting on the testimony of the nightclub hostess Martha Lavina to clear him. She had most of the requirements for a good professional hostess, and one was an innocent face. That, plus various other attractions, made her a formidable challenge as she faced Perry Mason on the witness stand.

Aspiring actress Stephane Olger just wants to be in pictures. But she may end up in mug shots instead when she gets herself caught up in a crime. Shortly after quitting her job and moving to Hollywood, she is picked up by a well-dressed man while hitchhiking. The man loses control of the car and they end up in a horrible accident. Both Stephane and the driver escape unscathed but the strange man flees the scene leaving Stephane to face a charge of manslaughter.

Young Marjorie Clune's best asset is her greatest misfortune: a pair of exquisite legs. They attract the perfect heel, a self-professed movie promoter named Frank Patton, whose scam seems even more flawless than Marjorie's lissome limbs. When the hype clears, the local chamber of commerce is many dollars poorer, Marjorie's been hung out to dry - and Patton's been found with the knife of Marjorie's lover implanted in his chest....

Lorraine Elmore is a well-to-do widow who's ready to marry again. But nervous Linda Calhoun is certain that the man her aunt Lorraine has fallen for is a fortune-hunting Bluebeard who's out to make a killing - in more ways than one. Perry Mason allays Linda's paranoia - until Detective Paul Drake digs up enough dirt to convince the lawyer that dashing, mysterious Montrose Dewitt is digging a grave for his bride-to-be.

Compared to a juicy murder trial, a case of feuding neighbors isn't exactly Perry Mason's cup of tea. But Arthur Cartright insists that Mason is the only one who can muzzle the howling hound that's driving Cartright crazy. But Perry doesn't realize just how crazy until he meets his client's neighbor. Clinton Foley says Cartright is barking up the wrong tree with his canine companion - and swears that the man is dangerously insane to boot.

Take a no-holds-barred proxy war for a rich Texas oil company, with Jerry Conway, its young president, fighting for survival. Add a beautiful woman in a mudpack and not much else who gives up a freshly fired .38 to Conway before she shows him the door. Top it off with the body of another young woman with a bullet in her chest fired by the same gun, and you have the recipe for the perfect murder - and the perfect frame-up.

Joan Kirby doesn't believe her husband's story about picking up a stranded woman in the middle of the night and dropping her off at a hotel. She asks Perry Mason to cross-examine him. Mason uncovers a much murkier trail involving murder, illegal adoption, stolen narcotics and blackmail.

Did Wealthy Fremont Sabin divorce his wife before his untimely death? That's the multimillion-dollar question. And the right answer will mean a windfall for either the dead man's angry son or headstrong widow. Each has accused the other of destroying Sabin's will - and murdering Sabin. But with no document declaring to whom the affable eccentric intended to leave his fortune, Perry Mason faces a prickly puzzle.

While enjoying a leisurely ocean cruise in the company of secretary Della Street, Perry Mason is approached by passenger who is worried about the wellbeing of her husband. Not long afterward, her husband is seen jumping off the ship, an apparent suicide - but when the body is recovered, it turns out that he was shot. Accused of murder, the wife puts her fate in the hands of Perry, who in the course of piecing things together unearths the fact that the husband had once accepted a huge bribe while serving on a jury.

After her well-to-do Aunt Sarah is caught shoplifting, Virginia Trent is convinced she needs to seek psychiatric help for kleptomania. So why does Virginia turn to legal eagle Perry Mason? Because a cache of valuable diamonds - left in Sarah's care - has suddenly vanished into thin air. Virginia thinks Sarah swiped the stones, but gem dealer Austin Cullens begs to differ. In fact, he's prepared to forgive and forget - until he is mysteriously murdered and Sarah is caught running from the crime scene.

Years ago Alden Leeds found a rich vein of gold in the Klondike. Now his greedy relatives fear he's planning to throw his fortune away on a gold-digging spouse, Emily Milicant. So to prevent the two from joining in holy matrimony, they commit their affluent kin to a sanitarium on a trumped-up charge. Then Leeds escapes, only to end up in the company of Emily's blackmailing brother, John, a manufacturer of fixed dice, rolling bones that always come up seven.

A dead man in the kitchen, gas fumes permeate the house, a duck seems to be drowning in the fishbowl, but it didn't die. Maybe that fact has something to do with murder? John L. Witherspoon, a wealthy patrician, is loath to let his daughter marry Marvin Adams, the son of a convicted murderer, something Marvin's mother managed to keep a secret - until now. To set the love-struck lass straight, Witherspoon engages Perry Mason to weigh the 20-year-old evidence that sent Marvin's father to the gallows, and prove that the young man is kin to the murdering kind.

Virginia Baxter is the only witness still living who can vouch for the authenticity of Lauretta Trent's will. Lauretta Trent, a wealthy widow is also living. But for how long? Someone has been peppering the spicy food Lauretta loves with arsenic. Could it be the same someone who tried framing Virginia Baxter for drug smuggling?

When Mae Farr becomes the presumed stalking victim of wealthy playboy Penn Wentworth, she asks Perry Mason for help. Wentworth says he merely wants her for forging his name on a fat check. Farr claims he just wants her. Enter Harold Anders, a love-struck suitor from Mae's small hometown who's determined to ride to her rescue. But fatal gunplay leaves Wentworth dead, Mae a wanted woman, and Perry Mason in trouble....

He announced himself as Mr. Cash. His calling card was ten crisp hundred-dollar bills! "My wife has disappeared," he told Perry Mason. "She's in trouble of some sort. I want to find her." Mr. Cash's wife was indeed in trouble of a most serious sort. First, her jewelry disappeared. Then she disappeared. Perry Mason had to find her before the police could arrest her - for murder.