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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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?

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.

Criminal lawyer and all-time number-one 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. In The Case of the Curious Bride, a woman claiming not to be a bride consults Mason about her "friend", whose husband, long thought to have died in a plane crash, turns up alive.

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.

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.

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.