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...

Perry Mason is presented with a strange bag of tricks in THE CASE OF THE MISCHIEVOUS DOLL.Dorrie Ambler was a beauty. She also proved to be one of the most startling clients in Mason’s career — she insisted that he carefully inspect her appendectomy scar.Perry thought this sort of thing was much more in Paul Drake’s line — and indeed, Paul was delighted to oblige...But later, when Dorrie proceeded to make history — and the headlines — at the International Airport, both Mason and Drake realized that any future scars would he theirs battle stars, inflicted by Lt. Tragg and Hamilton Berger...

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.

The team of Mason. Street and Drake was never in better form.

Perry Mason and Della Street were both out to lunch. Gertie, the receptionist and telephone operator, was indulging in her favorite noontime occupation munching chocolates and reading a love store — when the door burst open and a woman rushed in.

Gertie got her name, all right, dimly registered the fact that she was not only very attractive but very upset at having to wait for Mason, and Gertie even looked up when the woman left before he returned.

But vicarious romance was the rule of that day — much to the annoyance of Lt. Tragg when he later tried to piece together what had happened. And although his plan for surprising Gertie into an identification of the lady was ingenious, Perry’s counter-measure was even more so...

A beautiful young woman seeks the help of the world-famous lawyer to free her frail, wealthy uncle from the clutches of a conniving half brother. But the police believe she may be a murderer. Could they be right? Or will Perry Mason and his clever assistants, Paul Drake and Della Street be able to prove her innocence?

Horace Warren pays five hundred dollars to have Perry Mason attend a buffet dinner to observe his guests. He also wants Mason to investigate a fingerprint and suspects his wife is being blackmailed. Mrs Warren's mysterious past may hold the clues.

The client had an extraordinary air of assurance about her — one could almost say a queenly air.There was no doubt that she was in some sort of jam, which had started years before when she had won a beauty contest. The question was, why was she trying to hide what had happened since — and who was trying to expose it?Perry Mason was intrigued, and soon found himself unraveling a past that led straight to a trial for murder.Erle Stanley Gardner is the world’s best-selling mystery writer for reasons this fast-paced story makes abundantly clear.

The client was young, blonde and beautiful and she wanted to disappear.

The trouble was she wouldn’t say why, and she wouldn’t give her name. So Perry Mason agreed to a code of identification based on her measurements: 36-24-36.

But according to Della Street, the figures were padded, and as it turned out, so was everything the client said.

When Morley Eden burst into Perry Mason’s office claiming that a beautiful brunette has placed a five-strand barbed-wire fence through the middle of his property — house, pool, grounds and all — Mason is intrigued. But when he jumps into this bizarre situation with both feet, he finds himself in no time at all up to his neck in some very hot water indeed.

The last of the Perry Mason mysteries features the headlong pace, wealth of red herrings, and sizzling courtroom scene characterizing the best of Gardner.There was something phony about the girl her cheap coat didn’t go with her smartly tailored suit, her hair-do didn’t go with her beautifully kept hands — and her face didn’t go with her story.It didn’t take Mason long to figure out that this so-called Sylvia Farr was no poor little girl from the country in search of her missing sister, but was indeed sister Mae herself — a girl in trouble of some sort, deep trouble.So Perry went to bat and soon found himself in a hot ball game — one called murder.