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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Frances Celane has good reason to pout. Thanks to a provision in her late father's will administered by her uncle, she's caught in the middle of a family feud between matrimony and money. If she chooses marriage, she loses a million. But beautiful young Frances has a strong will of her own that she's not afraid to use. One way or another, she means to hear wedding bells and cash registers making beautiful music together. Her first move: hire Perry Mason to orchestrate things.

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....

Perry Mason had no hesitation in defending Albert Brogan, a broke ex-salesman against a charge of robbery. He's counting on the testimony of the nightclub hostess Martha Lavina to clear him. She had most of the requirements for a good professional hostess, and one was an innocent face. That, plus various other attractions, made her a formidable challenge as she faced Perry Mason on the witness stand.

When Mae Farr becomes the presumed stalking victim of wealthy playboy Penn Wentworth, she asks Perry Mason for help. Wentworth says he merely wants her for forging his name on a fat check. Farr claims he just wants her. Enter Harold Anders, a love-struck suitor from Mae's small hometown who's determined to ride to her rescue. But fatal gunplay leaves Wentworth dead, Mae a wanted woman, and Perry Mason in trouble....

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.

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.

Julia Branner insists her marriage was sabotaged by her millionaire father-in-law, who forced her to give up her baby girl for adoption. Now, years later, a young woman appears, claiming to be Julia's long-lost daughter. But Julia insists the heir-apparent is a fake - and vows to keep the family fortune from falling into the wrong hands.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Perry Mason is dining peacefully at the Golden Goose cafe when he receives a mysterious phone call. The frantic woman on the other end of the line is desperate to retain Mason's services, but suddenly vanishes during their cryptic phone conversation. The only clues: a newspaper clipping about a blackmail case, and the combination to a safe scrawled on a scrap of paper.

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.

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.

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....