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

A talented but overprotective young man has his hands full as trustee of the inheritance of a beautiful blonde but very naive young woman. But his love and her money don't mix. Why would he embezzle a quarter of a million dollars from his client "for her own good?" Perry Mason may be able to prove, in fact, that his client is no embezzler...but what happens when murder rears its head?

This Perry Mason mystery is a tantalizing triple-decker. One threesome comprises three glamorous ladies - all long-legged models with ambitions that range from keeping the home fires burning to putting the home fires out. Another trio is a far-from-pleasant collection of small metal objects called guns.

Ellen Robb does more than just sing for her supper - she also dances and sells cigarettes in a two-bit gambling parlor in a one-horse town. But when she hits a sour note with her scheming employer by refusing to help fleece a fat-cat customer in a crooked card game, she finds herself out of all three jobs. That's when she sings her song of woe to Perry Mason, who promises to turn her blues into greenbacks with the help of his crack team, Della Street, and Paul Drake, and a hefty lawsuit.

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.

Mason gives Della Street two weeks' vacation! That is, it was supposed to be a vacation, but Della turned it into a busman's holiday. Target of interest was a well-stacked blonde - one who incredibly stashed away five enormous meals a day.

Engaged to a dynamic young go-getter on his way up the corporate ladder, secretary Mildred Crest was riding high. Until her prince charming embezzled company funds and skipped town, leaving Mildred with nothing but a ring on her finger and egg on her face. Now all she wants is to start life over again and when a fateful drive leads to the death of a lone hitchhiker, Mildred gets that chance.

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.

Helen Cadmus was dead - but how had it happened? Suicide, most people said. She jumped off that millionaire's yacht in a fit of despair, her body was never found, and the case was closed. The story was too neat to suit Perry Mason. It didn't add up. Somebody was concealing the truth about Helen's death, and how was going to uncover it even if it killed him.

After catching his shady son-in-law, Jack Hardisty, in the act of embezzling, wealthy banker Vincente Blane plans to hang him out to dry. Then murder turns Blane's restful mountain retreat into Hardisty's final resting place. When the evidence points to wronged wife Millicent, her father makes a point of calling in Perry Mason. And it's up to the legendary legal eagle to unravel the case's most baffling mystery: a buried clock at the murder scene.

The two women in Perry Mason's office were a cat-and-mouse combination. And at first glance it seemed that little Mrs. Davenport was the mouse. But her husband said she was trying to kill him...that she had already murdered once and would not hesitate to strike again. Mason's own curiosity made him take the case, and before long he was wanted for questioning by several different officers of the law. Question: was Myra Davenport a quiet little person, who enjoyed nothing better than pottering about in her garden? Or was she a poisoner, a minx, a modern Lucrezia Borgia?

The blonde wandering nude at the Remuda Gold Club tells Perry Mason a strange story. She says that while she peacefully sun-bathed near the course, someone made off with her Cadillac, her trailer, and all of her belongings - including her precious diary. The woman blames the police who suspect her of having stashed away nearly half a million dollars allegedly stolen by her father, who is now in prison. She swears that both she and her father are innocent. So who is bankrolling her leisurely lifestyle?

Though some think they saw a ghost, it was a real, live woman in the (mostly exposed) flesh flitting through Sierra Vista Park. Eleanor Corbin has a taste for trouble - and a talent for getting out of it using the most outrageous means to cover her tracks. Now her scandalized half-sister, Olga, fears Eleanor may be using lascivious antics to camouflage more larcenous acts.

When Perry Mason and Paul Drake ran the ad, all they were hoping for was a clue to the identity of a hit-and-run driver. The first reply looked suspicious. It said that the license number of the wanted car was written down in the notebook of a woman who could be out of her apartment from two to five on a certain afternoon, and a key to the apartment was enclosed.

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.

In order to help her seriously ill boyfriend, gorgeous Sally Madison sets out to separate wealthy Harrington Faulkner from some of his money by offering him a cure for his ailing exotic fish, but her plan goes awry when the fish mysteriously vanish and Faulkner turns up dead.

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.

Wealthy businessman Hartley Bassett has killed himself. There's a typewritten suicide note and three guns lying near his body. But for Perry Mason, that's evidence overkill. He knows there has been trouble in Bassett's life. His wife wants out, his stepson hates him, an embezzler can't pay him back - and there's the man with a glass eye who hired Perry Mason even before his glass eye went missing and was found in the hands of the deceased.

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.

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....

Who killed Philip Rease? Peter Kent was known to be a sleepwalker and a bloodstained knife was found under his pillow. There were people who would like to see Peter Kent out of the way, but would they frame him for murder? And would that explain the reason for Rease's death? It was another case full of traps for Perry Mason.