Perry Mason Series

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. Now it appears the lady with the sticky fingers may have blood on her hands.

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.… But will a single cunning lie her lawyer, Perry Mason, tells catch a killer and free her from a nightmare of accusation?

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. In a case that abounds in lethal twists, Perry Mason suddenly finds himself on a collision course with a cold-blooded killer.

Criminal lawyer and bestselling mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner wrote nearly 150 novels that have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Now, the American Bar Association is bringing back his most famous and enduring novels—featuring criminal defense lawyer and sleuth Perry Mason—in striking trade paperback editions. 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.

Her Uncle was healthy, but in order to get wealthy did she plot his demise? Is there evil in the heir? 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. Unfortunately, stubbornness runs in Frances Celane’s family, as Mason discovers when he confronts her Uncle Edward Norton. After Perry’s powers of persuasion fail to penetrate his hard head, someone decides the only way of cashing in is by bashing in the uncooperative uncle’s skull. But when the blood spills, so do the secrets. Then it’s Mason’s turn to brood, as he tries to figure out if a girl as pretty as his client could have a hand in something so ugly.…

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 case takes many shocking twists and turns before revealing its surprising conclusion.

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. Abetted by a bishop with questionable credentials, Julia plans to expose the imposter. But things take a devilish turn when the curious cleric vanishes and Julia’s father-in-law is murdered. Charged with the killing, Julia turns to Perry Mason. But with overwhelming odds against him, Perry may not have a prayer.…

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. Mason’s not the type to cop out on a client—but when Cartwright draws up a will that leaves everything to his neighbor’s wife, even Perry has to wonder if the man has slipped from anger into madness. That’s why he pays a personal visit to Clinton Foley’s house, where he finds one missing wife, one poisoned dog, and one corpse.…

When the cat’s away the murderer will play.… 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.…

Time and tide wait for no man—neither does Perry Mason.… A mystery in the best Gardner tradition chock full of action (mighty fast), angles (inventive and voluptuous), and aqua pura (meaning watertight solution as well as H20). 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.

Blind man’s bluff… 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. There are too many suspects and too many lies. But leave it to Mason, his resourceful secretary Della Street, and clever detective Paul Drake to their wits about them and their wiles tucked away, as they piece together the missing parts of this fatal family puzzle.

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.

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?

Do birds of a feather plot murder together? The extraordinary Perry Mason never handles straightforward divorce cases, but this one is an especially strange bird. Rita Swaine is dating her sister’s ex-boyfriend. Her sister, Rosalind, is married to shady insurance adjuster Walter Prescott, who’s got dollar signs in his eyes and ice water in his veins. When Rita’s beau gallantly steps in to warn Rosalind about her heinous husband’s designs, Prescott hatches a plan to prey on them all…by suing for big profit. For Mason, this case should be a lark. But when a murdered man is found in the Prescott home—and a nosy neighbor sings an incriminating song about illicit love and a hidden gun—legal eagle Mason suddenly finds himself defending a sitting duck.

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? Both women have ties to a man named Tidings, a man who may be a protector or predator. A man who could answer a lot of tough questions—if only he hadn't been murdered.

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. Even more puzzling, however, is the talking parrot. Casanova was Fremont Sabin’s beloved pet. But the bird found at the crime scene proves to be a foul-mouthed impostor. Suffice it to say that more than a few feathers will be ruffled as Mason sets out to clip a clever killer’s wings.

Unlucky in Love 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. But when John is murdered—with Leeds's fingerprints found all over the apartment—Perry Mason must crack a baffling case before his client bumps from the nut house to the jail house.…

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. She was also deadly clever and she held the jury spellbound. When Mason sprang his bombshell they stayed that way, for the hoped-for explosion was a dud. That was just the beginning of a smashing, freewheeling attack with no holds barred on either side. Then another hostess, his key witness, fled. Failure to find the missing witness in forty-eight hours could cost an innocent man his liberty and his life, when the prosecution serves up a shocking new charge of murder. But the high-tailing hostess has a host of her own secrets, and a cast of shady characters—from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. She seems determined to keep them and herself hidden. It all leads Perry Mason down the trail of an amazing crime that might have gone undetected.

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.

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. But as time runs short, the ticking of the clock sounds more and more like the rattling of family skeletons that everyone wants silenced.…

Fowl play? 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 twenty-year-old evidence that sent Marvin’s father to the gallows, and prove that the young man is kin to the murdering kind. Reopening the case, however, quickly opens up a can of worms. While Mason dredges the past for new clues, a blackmailer threatens to dredge up the whole sordid affair in the society pages. Then the whistle-blower is done in by a dose of deadly homemade gas, and the damning evidence points to chemistry whiz Marvin. Like father, like son? Like hell, says Mason, who sets out to bird-dog the clever killer who’s trying to turn the young swan into a sitting duck.

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. “You want to consult me about a goldfish?” Perry Mason couldn’t believe his ears. Prospective clients had come to see him about many things but never a matter as seemingly silly as this. He didn’t even have time to tell Harrington Faulkner that he wouldn’t take the case before a process server slapped on a summons and complaint for $100,000. During the evening, a golddigger got Faulkner to write a check for $5,000. Before two days had passed there was a murder. And both Perry Mason and Della Street were in danger of being convicted as accessories.

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. “Could this letter,” Mason asked Della Street, “have been written by the woman herself? I want to get the feminine angle.” Della laughed. “There aren’t any feminine angles—they’re all curved.” Fast curves. From the very first time Perry met the voluptuous blonde, Lucille Barton, she pitched him trouble. She lied about her past, about her many marriages, about her gun, and about her boyfriends. Then the murders began. And the cops turned up with evidence which pointed clearly to one person as the killer—Perry Mason!

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. Stephane’s rich uncle hires Perry Mason to defend her and he and the private detective Paul Drake immediately start gathering evidence. It turns out that the car, of course, was stolen, and belongs to a Hollywood producer who has been in contact with the mystery man who is from San Francisco. A woman has been promised a job by him, but is given one by Perry Mason instead. She, too, disappears, and in another room of the hotel her luggage is found with a man who has been shot. In the courtroom Perry Mason discovers many other facts, but in the meantime the film producer’s chauffeur is murdered, making his task much harder. It’s up to Perry Mason to find the truth behind a suspicious scenario starring a menacing movie mogul, a hoodwinked housewife, and a man no one has ever seen—alive!

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. The case: a tangled web indeed, strung between an eccentric widower with something to hide, a sexy cigarette girl selling with plenty to cry about, a real-estate broker with his own home on the selling block, a wife, a lover, and too many loose ends. The common denominator: murder, of course.…

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? Nathan Bain’s next move is to accuse Nellie of theft and provide proof by shining ultra-violet light on her fingers. The case which began like a joke suddenly becomes sinister. Perry gets his client out of this spot but trails her to Orleans where he has a hard job disentangling fact from theory on the subject of Mrs. Bain. This is one of the toughest, most complicated webs of intrigue that Perry Mason has ever had to fight his way through. The Case of the Fiery Fingers shows Mason at his most efficient and Erle Stanley Gardner at his most professional.

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. But the real mystery about this murder is who—and where—is the victim? Upstairs neighbor Elston A. Karr heard the telltale sounds of foul play, but his foul temperament (and his own dark secrets) make him most uncooperative. It takes a second murder to clear up the mystery of the missing body—and to make Perry Mason the next prime candidate to disappear.…

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.

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? A superb courtroom expose climaxes Perry Mason’s brilliant detection.

Death and taxes…and murder? The affairs of her husband—financial and otherwise—are what concern Steffanie Malden. The young and stunning bride of a prominent physician killed in a private plane crash, the widow Malden stands to inherit more than just a sizable estate. Unfortunately, she's also the unwilling heir to an IRS investigation. It appears that the deceased was squirreling away a king's ransom in undeclared cash—with the able assistance of his head nurse and secret paramour, Gladys Foss.