Mason defends Della Street, who is accused of helping a material witness or possible murder suspect vanish from a crime scene. A classic mystery! Includes an introduction by Karl Wurf.

Seven intriguing mysteries featuring the talents of the inimitable Perry Mason.

The Case of the Sulky Girl,

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.

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 still 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? Lauretta doesn’t trust her greedy heirs. But could a scheming servant be behind a master plan to fleece her estate? It all seems to fit. But when Lauretta is murdered on the highway, all the evidence places Virginia Baxter squarely in the driver’s seat. Confused? Just think how Virginia’s lawyer, Perry Mason, must feel.

White provides the most comprehensive scholarly compilation of fictional work of legal suspense in existence. Primarily a bibliography of novels, it also annotates plays, scripts for film and television, novelizations, and short-story collections about lawyers and the law. The idea behind the principal of selection is to disdain labels that reduce the variety of the legal thriller to a subgenre of mystery fiction. Novels that range from suspense thrillers through science fiction to the philosophical novel are included if justice is thematically important. It is therefore an eclectic reference source beyond a compilation of books about lawyers as protagonists. Its biographical and scholarly information about authors, major and minor, and their novels or works is traditionally encyclopedic and objective regardless of whether the work has been genre-defined, or worse—deified as a classic or denigrated as a bestseller. Many novels included are long out of print, but historically interesting for their contribution to the lineage of the courtroom drama, showing that the history of the legal thriller is one of the major branches of modern literature since the Age of Reason. The criterion of justice denoted moves beyond the fact of lawyers and courtrooms to select seminal novels like Robert Travers' Anatomy of a Murder as well as the romantic potboiler. Among the more than 2,000 works are the Perry Mason novels of Erle Stanley Gardner, John Mortimer's Rumpole series, along with a staple of fiction by major authors of the genre like John Lescroart, Lisa Scottoline, Margaret Maron, Scott Turow, and John Grisham. There are also individual works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Kafka, Camus, and Twain delineating humanity's obsession with the law as its shining prop of civilization and, alternative, béte-noire of the common individual caught up in its maw. The appendices include comments by lawyer-novelist Michael A. Kahn, a historical introduction to the legal thriller, craft notes by writers and prominent trial lawyers responding to author and lawyer questionnaires, bibliography of critical sources and articles, series characters, and the legal terminology found in courtroom dramas and novels. An essential reference tool for scholars, researchers as well as the occasional reader of legal thrillers.

Perry Mason investigates a case of blackmail with a side of loaded dice Years ago, Alden Leeds struck it rich when he discovered a vein of gold. Now, aging and single, he finds himself surrounded by family waiting patiently to inherit his fortune. When he announces his engagement to a much younger woman, it sends that family into a panic, fearing that it might threaten their future gains. They have him admitted into a sanitarium, claiming incompetence—and that’s when lawyering super-sleuth Perry Mason gets involved, but the case is about to get much more complicated… Before all is said and done, Mason will tangle with a cheating gambler, a blackmailer, multiple aliases, multiple corpses, and enough red herrings to lead even the most astute reader astray. It will push the attorney’s deductive powers to their very limits before all is revealed, finally, in his masterful courtroom cross-examination. A fast-paced yarn with a delightfully convoluted plot, The Case of the Rolling Bones is among the best of the long-running Perry Mason novels, which would go on to inspire multiple television series as well as adaptations for radio and film. The book exemplifies the masterful page-turning action for which its prolific author is remembered today.

Perry Mason is hired to identify a woman based on an appendix scar, as she fears being a look-alike to an heiress may be a setup for her arrest. A classic mystery!