Criminal lawyer and bestselling mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner wrote nearly 150 novels that have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Now, the American Bar Association is bringing back his most famous and enduring novels-featuring criminal defense lawyer and sleuth Perry Mason-in striking trade paperback editions. Rhoda Lorton doesn't always marry the right men. Her first husband, Greg Moxley, took off with her savings, only to have his plane crash. Lorton has gone on to marry millionaire scion Carl Montaine when Moxley turns up alive and well and demands money to stay silent about Lorton's first, extant marriage. When Moxley is found dead, two eyewitness claim to have seen Lorton kill him, and she says she killed him, too. But did she?


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 ...


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.