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

When a stuttering bishop comes to Perry Mason's office for help, Mason becomes involved in a battle of wills with a woman and the long-lost daughter she believes to be a fraud. The key to the puzzle lies in the bishop--who, unfortunately, has disappeared.

GUN OVERBOARDWhen 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? With the support of his trusty secretary, Della Street, and the ever-helpful Paul Drake, Mason dives into an ocean of menace.

When a murdered man is found in the home of shady insurance adjuster Walter Prescott, a simple divorce case turns into a courtroom puzzler, as Perry Mason follows the clues to catch a killer.

Perry Mason has been batting around the Orient, taking a well-earned vacation. (Yes, Della Street is along.) We pick up on his way to the roar of the city, the jangle of telephones, the blast of automobile horns, to clients who lie to him and yet expect him to stand behind them. And Perry can hardly wait to get back!He doesn’t have to wait to get home, however, for excitement to start. Just out of Honolulu, a fellow passenger comes to him with a very strange story.Mason has already noticed the party of three: the middle-aged man with the piercing gray eyes, the slender, graceful woman, and the daughter who looks so much like a famous movie actress. Now beside the ship’s rail, he listens to the queer tale a woman tells in a voice of nervous hysteria. Until two months before she was known as Mrs. Moar. But overnight her husband — and so we have: The Case of the Substitute Face.

It all began enough when, to get out of a shower, Della — Perry Mason’s “girl Friday” — dragger the lawyer-sleuth into a department store restaurant for tea.That was where they first saw Mrs. Sarah Breel and her niece, Virginia Trent. They where in a spot too, with the store detective on Mrs. Breel’s trail, and even Virginia admitting her aunt was a kleptomaniac. It all seemed so strange, naturally Mason got interested. And Della Street, trained by years of experience to read the how’s moods, realized he didn’t go far just on theory... that if he appeared to see more than met the eye, his perception was based on scene point in practical psychology.From this odd beginning, the vagaries of a whimsical fate catapult Perry mason into the case of the missing diamonds, the homey woman who didn’t look like a shoplifter, the methodical drunk, the thick reddish stain on a woman’s kid shoe, and beautiful Lone Bedford. No one knew much about her, but all the men wanted to know more — including Perry Mason!

An exceedingly profane green parrot, with wicked glittering eyes and a genius for saying the wrong thing...A pretty (if rather prim) young librarian with a curious interest in dangerous weapons...An eccentric multi-millionaire, with a penchant for books, trailers and birds...An apparently un-traceable murder, committed with a double-barreled derringer, obsolete in design but deadly in efficiency... These, and some other bizarre details, which we won’t reveal, plunge Perry Mason and Della Street up to their necks in one of the most exciting mysteries that Erie Stanley Gardner has ever written!

Here’s a PERRY MASON story, with a murder hinging on as ingenious a trick as has appeared in a mystery in a long time, and containing some of the most exiting courtroom scenes Erle Stanley Gardner has even written.It’s about:Alden E. Leeds, millionaire and black sheep of the family, about to the torn limb from limb by a pack of gold-greedy relatives; Phyllis, old man Leeds’s niece and business manager; Ned Barkler, once his partner in Klondike days; L. C. Conway, who sold dice almost anyone could roll; blonde, hard Marcia Whittaker, who seemed to have said that all she wanted was a cozy little home; and, of course, wily Perry Mason, Della Street, his secretary, and lanky Paul Drake, the detective.Readers will find here the usual swift pace and ingenuity, the unexpected twists and surprises that have made Erle Stanley Gardner the most popular detective-store writer in America.

It was beautiful bait: two lovely thousand-dollar bills and a torn half of a ten-thousand-dollar note. Perry Mason swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.They had gone to a lot of trouble. They had Mason’s private number, woke him up and persuaded him to meet them at his office in the middle of the night. There he found a man and a girl; a man who knew exactly what he wanted but wouldn’t explain; a girl who wore a man’s overcoat, a mask — and wouldn’t speak. It was the girl who kept the other half of the ten-grand note. When and if they needed Perry Mason he’d get her half. Not until then would he know who his client was. Perry suspected he was being played for a sucker, but he was too interested to swim away.The next morning, he felt the hook. It was murder, a murder obviously linked to his mysterious visitors. And the barb on the hook was that Perry couldn’t discover who his client was or what he was supposed to do. Della Street’s mocking jibes were hard to take.A racing Gardner story full of action, suspense and one of the most original plots Gardner has ever created.

A dynamic young businesswoman is in danger of losing control of her flower shop, and someone sends poisoned bonbons to a nightclub hostess. Mason must reacquire some stock and defend the businesswoman.

It started as the case of the disappearing driver. Stephane Olger was hitchhiking to Los Angeles when the accident happened. When it was over she was found unconscious behind the wheel — alone. There was a manslaughter charge against her...

A bright, shiny tin can in a dark, cobwebby corner of the cellar preserve shelf — unlabelled and empty!Mrs. Gentrie, the meticulous hose-wife, was annoyed but not too upset. Her sister-in-law Rebecca was exited and suspicious. Delman Steele, their new young boarder, was quietly interested...Then things began to happen. A man and his housekeeper were found missing from the house next door. Willful old Elston Karr, who used to run guns up the Yangtze and was now confined to a Wheel-chair in the flat above the missing man’s apartment, retained Mason to protect him from — well, Mason wasn’t quite sure himself. But his mind began to work fast.Then Mason heard about the empty tin can. It interested him — a lot.All our old friends are here, Della Street, Paul Drake, Lieutenant Tragg, in a mystery so fast and exiting that it has been called “even better than Gardner.”

The new Perry Mason murder mystery has...terrible pace......stirring court-room drams......a duck that can’t swims...John L. Witherspoon was accustomed to having — and paying — his way. There was a definite reason why he didn’t approve his daughter Lois’ love affair, and he hired Perry Mason to break it up. If Mason would investigate an 18-year-old murder, Witherspoon was sure the results would change his daughter’s mind.Perry took the job because several things about the old case intrigued him. And because he had a hunch that the answer to it might save Lois’ happiness.Mason, Delia Street and Paul Drake went to El Templo, Witherspoon’s great California ranch; they went into action at once, and soon they smoked out a string of crooked plots, brought several shadowy figures into too strong a light, and ran plump into murder-up-to-date with Mason caught in the middle.

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.

The receptionist told Perry Mason there were two men waiting in the outer office; one of them looked like a prosperous banker, the other a tramp. One wanted to see him about some corporation law, and the other had a damage claim. So Mason said, “I’ll see the tramp. Tell the banker I can’t be bothered with corporation law.”But it turned out it was the tramp who wanted to sec him about corporation law. And that, in turn, merged into the story of one of the famous Lost Mines of the desert region of Southern California; of a sinewy little desert prospector and his partner, who had struck it rich, “housed-up” and, losing his health, had forsaken the big red-tiled mansion in the fashionable district of San Roberto to spread his sleeping bag out in the cactus garden at the far corner of the grounds. And finally there was the mysterious drowsy mosquito — was it a harbinger of death?These characters, together with the lure of a fabulously rich gold deposit, discovered more than half a century ago, then lost, and lying untouched year after year, waiting only for chance and the ingenuity of Perry Mason to bring it back into the limelight, make for a fast moving, baffling Perry Mason yarn.

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...