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

Poker-faced Nellie Conway, the nurses bed-ridden Elizabeth Bain, brings trouble when she calls on Perry Mason with a glass phial containing four pills which she suspects are poison. Her employer, Nathan Bain, she says, had promised her money to give them to his wife. But when Mason has one of the pills analyzed it is found to consist of acetylsalicylic - in other words good old-fashioned aspirin. Is Perry Mason's client a hoaxer, a psychopath, or something trickier?

When Matilda Benson solicits the help of Perry Mason, her request seems simple enough: cruise to a gambling ship moored just beyond the twelve-mile limit and buy back the IOUs signed by Miss Benson's niece. But after Mason reaches the floating casino, he discovers problems aplenty - most notably the ship's owner with a bullet hole through his head. Strangely enough, Matilda and her niece are also on board that night...when someone tosses a gun over the railing. Does Perry Mason's client have something to hide?

A spanking-new tin can, secretly placed among the rows of Mrs. Florence Gentrie's preserves, contains not a speck of food - but it does carry one very damning clue to a murder that took place right next door. Such an unsavory discovery in such an unlikely place can't help but pique the curiosity of a dedicated mystery hunter like Perry Mason.

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.

The Case of the Lucky Legs is the story of a confidence man who promoted fake beauty pageants in small California towns. Marjorie Clune was one of his winning victims, "The Girl with the Lucky Legs". She was promised a Hollywood movie contract, but the scam artist fled with the money. Marjorie fled too; left her hometown in shame to try and “prove” herself in Hollywood. Perry Mason is hired to track her down, but when the deceitful pageant promoter turns up murdered, Marjorie becomes the prime suspect in this “edge of your seat” murder mystery.

It all began when pretty Gladys Doyle lost her way and was forced to spend the night in a remote cabin. The next morning she discovered her handsome host gone and a stranger in his place - dead as the proverbial herring.

Art student Maxine Lindsay, as the guest of her mentor, art dealer Colin Durant, attends a reception aboard the yacht of millionaire Otto Olney , who is unveiling his newest purchase, a $130,000 Gauguin. When Durant confides that the painting is a fake, Maxine becomes involved in a complicated series of deceptions. Soon gallery owner Leslie Rankin threatens Maxine.

In The Case of the Howling Dog, Arthur Cartwright, an anxious man, goes to Perry Mason to have his neighbor arrested for his vindictive and noisy dog. He is under the belief that his howling is an indication that somebody has been murdered in the neighborhood. He demands that his will be written bequeathing the estate to the lady living at the neighbor's house. However, the will is mysteriously altered by an unknown person, and Cartwright goes missing, along with the lady.

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?

A waitress in a favorite restaurant of Mason's runs out in the middle of the lunch rush, leaving behind her pricey mink coat. But this is only the first question in a cop-killer case that traps Mason's client with both an impossible story and the murder weapon. With Perry as a prime suspect with a blazing gunpowder trail that leads straight to the heart of the police department....

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.

In the dead of night, a thick fog lies over the black waters. You are aboard a fancy yacht full of fancy people who loathe one another. Suddenly you hear...A scream! A splash! A shot! The fateful cry, "Man Overboard!" And the next thing you know, you find yourself clutching a beautiful woman wearing only a flimsy nightgown. In her hands she holds a gun. That's the predicament in which Perry Mason suddenly finds himself. But that's only the beginning.

Successful florist Mildred Faulkner finds that the flower business is no bed of roses when arch-competitor Harry Peavis secretly buys stock in her small, family-owned business. To keep from being muscled out of her own company, Mildred goes to Perry Mason. But the legal eagle is stymied when Mildred's company is plundered by her brother-in-law to pay off gambling debts. The money trail leads to a nightclub hostess and her boss. When both are found dead, the trail of evidence leads back to Mildred.

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?

In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help - it seemed the fate of the "Red-Headed Killer" hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness.

"The Case of the Irate Witness," the mystery which is the star of this collection of 4 novelettes, is the only one that the incomparable Erle Stanley Gardner ever wrote featuring Perry Mason in short story form. Each of the stories revolves around the subject of stolen jewels and each story is a gem in itself.

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.

When Norda Allison saw her husband-to-be slap his young son, she immediately called off the wedding. Now she is terrified. Her ex-fiancé has beat up her new boyfriend. 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 gunshot, and the discovery of a very dead body - and ends when Norda is arrested.

The client was young, blonde, and beautiful, and she wanted to disappear. The trouble was she wouldn't say why, and she wouldn't give her name. So Perry Mason agreed to a code of identification based on her measurements: 36-24-36. But according to Della Street, the figures were padded, and as it turned out, so was everything the client said. Certainly the bag full of cash she carries isn't shopping money.

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.