Perry Mason refused to believe the proof against his client. The district attorney was too smug. The evidence was too good.

Two poisonings and two shootings at the Shore mansion on the thirteenth of October are no mere coincidence. Nor is the presence, in the neighborhood, of that celebrated man-about-murder, Perry Mason.

Warned by the local police to stay off the Shore case, Mason refuses to do so Result? His secretary, Della Street, is indicted on a charge of hiding a witness. And Mason is held as her accessory!

Watch the Mighty Mason extricate himself from this legal noose while solving the Shore mystery with his usual finesse.

Mason (with Della Street and Paul Drake, of course) takes on a super-baffling case involving — among other strange things—

A shattering car wreck in which apparently no one was injured...

A glamorous widow who should have had a husband but didn’t...

An alarm clock that ticked away cheerfully under ground...

A bank clerk who boasted brazenly about a $90,000 embezzlement...

A girl who was always on hand when Perry Mason wanted her miles away, but was always missing when he needed her most...

A client on trial for murder who wouldn’t even talk to Mason...

A blood-stained bullet about which there was something very phoney...

A photographer who could make a camera do everything but climb a tree...

A gold mine without any gold...

AND, last but not least — Perry Mason, all but hoist with his own petard.

Arthur Bickler was mad. The truck marked Skinner Hills Karakul Company was responsible for the accident. What’s more, the driver unceremoniously had snatched away his notebook in which he had written down the license number of the truck. He certainly thought he was entitled to $750 damages. Jackson thought he might get $500. Perry Mason compromised for $2000... He smelled more than sheep in them that hills...

The first person Perry Mason ferreted out was Daphne Milfield, obviously a blonde bomber in spire of the swollen eyes. Then there was suave Harry Van Nuys — a bit too solicitous about his friend’s wife. And Carol Burbank, a streamlined beauty who knew she had brains — and used them.

From then on it’s a matter of ships and shoes and candlewax — and for a time Della Street, paul Drake, and Perry mason wished they had left their clothes on the hickory limb and not gone near the water...

Perry Mason and Della Street are writing love letters this time — to a girl they’ve never seen. In fact they don’t even know her name.

But they’ve seen a letter she wrote to a Lonely Hearts Magazine. According to her, she’s both attractive and an heiress, an heiress who’s tired of people who love her for her money...

According to Perry Mason, she’s lying. And there’s something phony about the Lonely Hearts business — including Mr. Robert Caddo who runs it. But there’s nothing phony about the beautiful corpse that almost puts Perry behind bars for life.

In this novelette Perry Mason clears his client, despite damning evidence in the victim’s lovenest, through the lipstick kiss impression on the dead man’s forehead.

While Perry Mason is enjoying a moonlit canoe ride, he admires a naked bathing beauty. Little does he know he'll soon be rescuing her and that next day he'll have to clear her of a jewlery-theft charge. But then she's suddenly charged again--this time with murder. It takes all of Perry's wiles, Della's insights, and Paul Drake's deft detecting to solve 'The Case of the Negligent Nymph'.

“What prominent lawyer received the mitten in front of his office building last night? Who was the mysterious blonde spitfire who swung one from the hip and left him groggy...?”

That gossip columnist knew that Perry Mason was the lawyer. But Mason himself didn’t know who the girl was... and he wanted to.

She had climbed down the fire escape from the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company — right into Mason’s office on the floor below. After a story which neither believed, she ran away. And the next day Ed Garvin came to see the lawyer.

Garvin said he didn’t know the girl. He was just crazy about his new bride... but he did want Mason to find out whether or not he had two wives. He, himself, didn’t quite know.

Perry Mason takes the case that soon involves murder and reaches a climax in one of the most brilliant courtroom scenes of Mason’s career.

Perry Mason knew it was murder. But when the police got there it looked like suicide — except for the tall man in the tan-colored topcoat... and a most interesting fingerprint on the gun.

Mason was after a hit-and-run driver and he set a trap. Into the trap walked a girl with innocent blue eyes and wheat-colored hair. Then, within twenty-four hours, Mason realized that someone was after him, and that he was holding a great big bag.

At first Della Street and Paul Drake ribbed him about the girl, but it wasn’t funny when the police started building up a case not against the murderer, but against Perry Mason himself.

The D.A. was licking his chops. But Mason had other ideas. With a few breaks he could rip the D.A.’s case wide open — he hoped!

Perry Mason refused to believe the proof against his client. The district attorney was too smug. The evidence was too good.

People did not see eye to eye about Nadine Farr. Some called her sweet... some called her sour... some branded her a vicious murderess and blackmailer. But all agreed that she was a very good looking young woman, a real knockout.

Perry Mason reserved judgment and came up swinging on the count of ten in the most harrowing legal battles of his career.

First there was a corpse... but no corpus delicti. Then there was too much cyanide. Then Mason himself was accused of perjury.

Erle Stanley Gardner has contrived a brilliant puzzle for this 50th case of his famous lawyer-detective, and Perry Mason pulls out all the stops in a dazzling courtroom climax.

A recipe to delight every gourmet of mystery fiction...

Take a proxy fight and a series of mysterious phone calls from an unknown female who said her name was Rosalind.

Add a couple of guns and a very dead blonde in a bare hotel room.

Season with Perry Mason’s brilliant analytical mind... and some fast action by Della Street and Paul Drake.

Pop it all into the courtroom... and you will have a murder case that is almost too hot to handle. At least that is the way Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, felt about it.

It’s a sensational pièce de résistance that calls for whirlwind action by three of the best cooks in the business, Perry Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake.

It takes talent to kill two birds with one stone... but it takes genius (Erle Stanley Gardner variety) to make three bull’s-eyes with one arrow.

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.

Finally, the favorite triumvirate of mystery readers around the world: Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake. This is one of Mason’s most absorbing cases — meaning sensational action all the way, with a fabulous courtroom climax.

A Perry Mason Mystery... featuring the famous lawyer-detective in a bewildering case. Not one but TWO courtroom sessions — each with a different defendant — make this one of the most intriguing novels Erle Stanley Gardner has yet created.

It all begins with a minor automobile accident featuring a building contractor and a glamorous photographer’s model.

From then on it is a matter of snap decisions, snap judgments, and some telling snap-shots — one of them candid, and one of them fatal.

When Mason gets in the act, Hamilton Burger figures the D.A.’s office can make a killing of its own — and bring in Mason’s head on a platter!

Start on page one, play it to win, and you’ll be in on one of the most fabulous photo-finishes of Perry Mason’s career.

Perry Mason has cause to ponder the old adage “Like Father, like son” in this explosive drama of murder among California’s upper crust... featuring a small boy ho just loves guns — preferably those that go Bang!

The curtain rises on Mervin Selkirk’s scandalous divorce. Then, with the battle for custody of seven-year-old Robert still pending, Selkirk’s fiancée, Norda Allison, learns of some unfortunate qualities in her intended. Exit romance; enter letters — crude, threatening ones addressed to Norda.

That’s when Selkirk’s ex-wife and her second husband come on stage, his powerful father lurks behind scenes, and Perry Mason makes his entrance as star in a daring — and deadly — role.

Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake... faced with a puzzle to which their arch antagonist, Hamilton Burger, alone seemed to have the missing piece...

Muriell Gilman left her father at the breakfast table while she cooked seconds of sausages and eggs. When she returned, he had disappeared — seemingly into thin air.

She searched the house from cellar to attic. Then she went out to the workshop... there, scattered on the floor, were hundred-dollar bills, and in their midst — a spreading crimson stain... That’s when she telephoned Perry Mason.

Some of the characters: Nancy Gilman, a talented photographer who looked like a picture herself; Glamis Barlow, a chic blonde who loved to gamble and was definitely in the chips; Hartley Elliot, an up-and-coming beau of Glamis’, who, unlike his car, had a battery charged for action; Vera Martel, a shady detective interested in shady pasts.

If Della Street had not been so intrigued, Perry Mason may well have missed one of the most baffling cases of his spectacular career...

Take one wife, strikingly beautiful... one ex-wife, whittled down to make a comeback... a gorgeous secretary trying to play the role of Ugly Duckling... and you have three lovely and shapely ladies who figure prominently in the life — and death — of Morley L. Theilman.

It started with blackmail: the suitcase bulging with $20 bills, the crude, threatening notes, the clever directions for payment — and ended with murder. But why kill the goose who laid the golden egg?

Perry Mason pulls some of the fastest legal footwork of his career — in front of judge and jury — before he finds the answer and cracks the case of the prosecution.

Even Paul Drake was convinced... this time, Perry Mason’s client was guilty!

Although Amelia Corning, owner of the Corning mine interests, was confined to a wheel chair, no one had the misconception that she was a gentle, little old lady. Half-blind and crippled, she might be, but lesser characters quailed before her steel-trap mind and razor-sharp tongue — and Susan Fisher was no exception.

How could Susan explain the discrepancies she found in the company accounts, or the shoe box she had wrested from the district manager’s 7-year-old son — a shoe box filled with $100 bills?

She couldn’t. That’s why she went to Perry Mason, and in no time flat the lawyer was walking the worst tight rope of his legal career. As for Miss Corning, she barely missed being wheeled out feet first.

Perry Mason finds that “art is long but life is fleeting” — especially in the fine art of murder...

The painting was a modern masterpiece. But was it authentic? Three experts staked their reputations on the fact that it was. But Collin M. Durant called it a rank imitation. The witness to his remark gave Perry Mason a signed affidavit, and millionaire Otto Olney, owner of the painting, sued for slander.

Then the witness — a beautiful blonde art student and model — disappeared, leaving Perry Mason headed for the courtroom and a spectacular trial. A trial not, as originally planned, for slander, but one for murder in the first degree...

When a man’s past threatens his family’s future there’s only one way to turn — to Perry Mason

Harlow Bissinger Bancroft, head of a vast corporate empire and a happily married man, had a battery of lawyers — not one of any use to him in his present situation.

That’s why he sat facing Perry Mason, his air of authority vanished, a deeply disturbed man.

“There are three ways of dealing with a blackmailer,” Mason told him, “but only one should concern you — tell him to go jump in the lake.”

The blackmailer was found on the lake, all right, but he’d not had a chance to jump in it for he was as dead as the proverbial mackerel.