Perry Mason
23 primary works • 39 total works
Book 82
Book 85
Book 86
'Why would anyone hire a girl with the figure of a stripteaser and pay her $100 a week to put on weight?' Perry Mason asked Della Street.
'In the course of my secretarial career,' Della said demurely, 'I've seen quite a few approaches, but this is a new one.'
'According to the letter of this contract,' Mason mused, 'if Dianne Alder should marry a millionaire and her husband should die, the party of the first part would be entitled to fifty percent.' Suddenly Mason snapped his fingers.
'You've got it?' Della Street asked.
'I have an explanation. I don't know whether it's the explanation, but it's quite an explanation'.
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? Both women have ties to a man named Tidings, a man who may be a protector or predator. A man who could answer a lot of tough questions - if only he hadn't been murdered.
The first woman wouldn't even give her name. But the clear, feminine voice faltered considerably over the question of what Perry Mason's charges would be for a day in court - a day doing nothing but listening.
The second woman gave a good deal more - but the question was, what did she expect to get? Dorla Balfour, lethally lovely and dangerously rich, forced a $1,000 retainer on Mason to deal with a case already tried and decided.
The offense involved appeared to be manslaughter, hit-and-run, but it soon became murder ... with the corpse killed twice.
When Norda Allison saw her husband-to-be slap his young son, she immediately called off the wedding. Now she is terrified. Her ex-fiance has beaten up her new boyfriend, and anonymous newspaper clippings are flooding her mailbox - articles graphically depicting what jilted men do to the women who leave them.
Then Norda's life takes an even darker turn. It begins with a barking dog, a child's scream, a gun shot, and the discovery of a dead body - and takes a further twist when Norda is arrested and charged with brutal murder. Now only the brilliant courtroom strategist Perry Mason stands between Norda and a sentence of certain death ...
Enter Perry Mason, retained by Olga to keep the press at bay while discovering from Eleanor the sordid details of her last escapade.
Perry Mason and the Case of the Velvet Claws
by Erle Stanley Gardner and M J Elliott
A suspicious personal ad conceals nefarious intent - and eventually lands in the lap of Perry Mason.
It appears that Marilyn Marlow inherited a small fortune from her mother, who got the sum from her wealthy employer. But now the old man's relatives are contesting the will, putting Marilyn on shaky ground.
Whoever sways Rose Keeling, the key witness to the signing of the will, is sure to be the victor. Enter the personal ad. Marilyn intends to find Rose a Mr. Right in order to get the goods on her. But when Rose is murdered, Perry Mason sets out to find a gentleman caller who had a date with death ...
The ingredients were quite simple: one middle-aged tycoon with a lovely young wife; one oh-so-apologetic visitor to the tycoon's office; one devoted secretary, graduate of a correspondence course of How to Be a Detective.
But when these ingredients were combined and brought to the boil with the addition of one inflammable blonde - the result was murder.
And when Perry Mason was called in to clean up the kitchen, he found that too many cooks almost spoiled the broth.
Defense lawyer Perry Mason needs a temporary typist, but the one he hires turns out to be more temporary than expected. When she disappears, leaving a couple of diamonds behind in her haste, Mason winds up taking on a new client: a gem importer in his office building who’s been charged with smuggling and murder. But if Mason’s going to untangle this case, finding the typist is key . . .
This mystery is part of Edgar Award–winning author Erle Stanley Gardner’s classic, long-running Perry Mason series, which has sold three hundred million copies and serves as the inspiration for the HBO show starring Matthew Rhys and Tatiana Maslany.
“Millions of Americans never seem to tire of Gardner’s thrillers.” - The New York Times
DON’T MISS THE NEW HBO ORIGINAL SERIES PERRY MASON, BASED ON CHARACTERS FROM ERLE STANLEY GARDNER’S NOVELS, STARRING EMMY AWARD WINNER MATTHEW RHYS
Perry Mason orders a double serving of trouble the night he and Della Street dine at an intimate restaurant after a hard day at law. In the middle of their steaks a waitress flees the premises in terror, leaving the puzzled proprietor holding her mink coat.
Why a humble working girl abandons such a pricey wrap is only the first question in a cop-killer case that traps Mason's client with both an impossible story and the murder weapon, makes Perry himself a prime suspect, and blazes a gunpowder trail that leads straight to the heart of the police department itself.
Ellen Robb came into Perry Mason's office with a gun in her purse. She had been framed, she said, by her gambler employer because she had refused to help fleece a customer.
The customer had dropped nearly $10,000 in the gambling establishment and then done his best to pick up Ellen. His wife, none too pleased with either shenanigan, ended up dead as a herring.
Della said Ellen was too beautiful to be trusted; Perry thought he could find out by switching guns on her - thus starting a series of explosions that nearly blast him out of court ...
Muriell Gilman left her father at the breakfast table while she cooked seconds of sausage and eggs. When she returned, he had disappeared - seemingly into thin air.
She searched the house from cellar to attic. Then she went out to the workshop ... there, scattered on the floor, were hundred-dollar bills - and in their midst a spreading, crimson stain. That's when she telephoned Perry Mason, who soon discovers that the missing piece of the mystery seems to belong to his arch nemesis Hamilton Burger.
She pulled herself out of the water and into a canoe and gasped, 'I don't know who you are ... but you'd better paddle like hell!' Flashlights appeared on the shore. Someone shouted 'There she is!' but Perry Mason was doing as he was told for a change, paddling into the night, with a strange girl, towards the hottest water he had ever been in.
By morning, Mason was in all the papers - wanted for robbery. By afternoon, he had a second client - in jail. Then murder arrived and he was precipitated into the tensest battle of his career.