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

Thanks to a bungled robbery at a fancy hotel, the already-married Eva Griffin has been caught in the company of a prominent congressman. To protect the politico, Eva's ready to pay the editor of a sleazy tabloid his hush money. But Perry Mason has other plans. He tracks down the phantom fat cat who secretly runs the blackmailing tabloid -only to discover a shocking scoop. By the time Mason's comely client finally comes clean, her husband has taken a bullet in the heart.

After con man Greg Moxley married Rhoda Lorton, he took her money and flew - only to have his plane crash. Years later, Rhoda weds millionaire scion Carl Montaine. But now Moxley has turned up alive and well...with plans to pocket the Montaine fortune - or else make Rhoda's bigamy public. Desperate to protect the good name of Montaine, Rhoda seeks out Perry Mason. But before Mason can reel in Moxley, somebody murders the scheming blackmailer.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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?

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.

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....

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?

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 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....

Criminal lawyer and all-time #1 mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner wrote close to 150 novels that have sold 300 million copies worldwide. His most popular books starred the incomparable attorney-sleuth Perry Mason. The Case of the Sulky Girl: An impetuous niece who demands her trust fund be released comes to Perry Mason for help. But it's her boyfriend who needs defending when he is charged with murdering her controlling uncle.

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.

Platinum blonde Veronica Dale is arrested on a charge of vagrancy. Yet, she has a hotel reservation in her name. Addison, head of a department store, booked the room for her and is now being blackmailed. Perry Mason can't decide who is hiding what. Then comes murder - and one of Perry Mason's toughest trials.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.