In the sixth Perry Mason mystery, Perry must defend a young woman framed for a murder. The only clue: the murdered man has a crimson lipstick-print on his bald head.

In the past Drake Michaels has overcome many obstacles in his path. He survived a vicious vampire attack. He adapted to living the life of a vampire. He fought his thirst for human blood. He is the protector of the humans from wicked vampires. One of the hardest obstacles that Drake had to face was when Arianna, the mortal who he loves,married his best friend Brett. Now, Arianna and Brett share a secret that could shatter the trust between Drake and humans. Raven, the vampire temptress, has her sights set on Drake as her mate through eternity.She has become aware of the secret that Arianna and Brett share. What will Raven do? Will she tell Drake? Will she be able to turn him to the dark side? Will this be the one thing that could bring Drake down permanently?

In 1933 the crime writer Erle Stanley Gardner, himself a practicing lawyer, unleashed the character Perry Mason in the novel The Case of the Velvet Claws. Perry Mason entered into public consciousness as a new conception of the role of the defense lawyer, so that millions of Americans came to expect every criminal trial to have its “Perry Mason moment.” In the 1950s the Perry Mason TV show had a phenomenal success, and Mason came to be identified with Raymond Burr. Now Perry Mason has again been restored to life in the HBO series starring Matthew Rhys and John Lithgow. Meanwhile, the eighty-two original Erle Stanley Gardner novels continue to sell thousands of copies each week. Perry Mason gave America a new conception of the trial lawyer, as someone who was always loyal to his client and always prepared to use dirty tricks such as misdirection and withholding of evidence to protect the innocent and secure the ends of Justice. The Mason of the novels is less scrupulous than the Raymond Burr Mason, and would sometimes be in danger of going to jail if the trial didn’t turn out right—which it always did, largely because of Mason’s cleverness. The Perry Mason icon raises many philosophical issues explored by seventeen different philosophers in this book, including: ● Can we defend Paul Drake’s claim (The Case of the Blonde Bonanza) that Mason is “a paragon of righteous virtue” despite his predilection for skating on thin legal ice? ● Can complex murder cases be solved by facts alone—or do we also need empathy? ● The most convincing way to give a TV episode a surprise ending is by the guilty person suddenly confessing. But in reality, is a confession necessarily so convincing? ● Does Perry Mason represent the Messiah? ● How does the Raymond Burr Perry Mason compare with the more recent TV character Saul Goodman (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul)? ● Is it morally okay to mislead the police if this helps your client and your client is innocent? ● How does Perry Mason help us understand the distinction between natural law and positive law? ● Do the Perry Mason stories comply with Aristotle’s recipe for a good work of fiction? ● Does life imitate art, when Perry Mason is cited in real-life courtroom arguments? ● How much trickery can be justified by loyalty to one’s client? ● Can evidence in murder trials be evaluated by probability theory? ● Perry Mason is officially a lawyer and unofficially a detective. But isn’t he really a historian and a psychgoanalayst? ● Della Street is a competent legal secretary, but is she something more? ● Mason often says that “Eye-witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence” and occasionally that “Circumstantial evidence is the best evidence we have.” Can these claims be defended?

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. Mason later defends the heiress on murder charges.

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!

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.

A man tells everyone that his wife has run away with his best friend, who seems to have a strange lack of enthusiasm about the affair. The case leads to murder, and a trial that hinges on multiple sets of footprints.

Does the perfect kiss exist? This smart and funny modern romance from the author of Flipped explores the pleasures and perils of love. Perfect for fans of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Evangeline Logan wants a kiss. Not just any kiss—a “crimson kiss,” like the one in a romance novel she’s become obsessed with. But the path to perfection is paved with many bad kisses—the smash mouth, the ear licker, the “misser,” the tentative tight lipper. The phrase “I don’t kiss and tell” means nothing to the boys in her school. And worse: someone starts writing her name and number on bathroom walls. And worst of all: the boy she’s just kissed turns out to be her best friend’s new crush. Kissing turns out to be way more complicated than the romance novels would have you believe. . . . “Evangeline’s strong, entertaining voice will pull plenty of readers, who will root for their heroine as she begins to piece together a grown-up life.” —Booklist “The pacing is near-perfect: readers realize, just when Evangeline does, that it is not a kiss she is [really] after. In the end, the playful title and premise are matched by tender and convincing storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly

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.