Résultats de "Erle Stanley Gardner" dans Toutes les catégories

The two women in Perry Mason's office were a cat-and-mouse combination. And at first glance it seemed that little Mrs. Davenport was the mouse. But her husband said she was trying to kill him...that she had already murdered once and would not hesitate to strike again. Mason's own curiosity made him take the case, and before long he was wanted for questioning by several different officers of the law. Question: was Myra Davenport a quiet little person, who enjoyed nothing better than pottering about in her garden? Or was she a poisoner, a minx, a modern Lucrezia Borgia?

Thanks to a bungled robbery at a fancy hotel, the already-married Eva Griffin has been caught in the company of a prominent congressman. To protect the politico, Eva's ready to pay the editor of a sleazy tabloid his hush money. But Perry Mason has other plans. He tracks down the phantom fat cat who secretly runs the blackmailing tabloid -only to discover a shocking scoop. By the time Mason's comely client finally comes clean, her husband has taken a bullet in the heart.

In his will, Peter Laxter guaranteed his faithful caretaker a job and a place to live...for life. But Laxter's grandson Sam says the deal doesn't include the caretaker's cat - and he wants the feline off the premises by hook, crook...or poison. When Perry Mason takes the case, he quickly finds there's much more at stake than an old man's cat - a million dollars or more to be exact....

Aspiring actress Stephane Olger just wants to be in pictures. But she may end up in mug shots instead when she gets herself caught up in a crime. Shortly after quitting her job and moving to Hollywood, she is picked up by a well-dressed man while hitchhiking. The man loses control of the car and they end up in a horrible accident. Both Stephane and the driver escape unscathed but the strange man flees the scene leaving Stephane to face a charge of manslaughter.

Engaged to a dynamic young go-getter on his way up the corporate ladder, secretary Mildred Crest was riding high. Until her prince charming embezzled company funds and skipped town, leaving Mildred with nothing but a ring on her finger and egg on her face. Now all she wants is to start life over again and when a fateful drive leads to the death of a lone hitchhiker, Mildred gets that chance.

When Mae Farr becomes the presumed stalking victim of wealthy playboy Penn Wentworth, she asks Perry Mason for help. Wentworth says he merely wants her for forging his name on a fat check. Farr claims he just wants her. Enter Harold Anders, a love-struck suitor from Mae's small hometown who's determined to ride to her rescue. But fatal gunplay leaves Wentworth dead, Mae a wanted woman, and Perry Mason in trouble....

Ellen Robb does more than just sing for her supper - she also dances and sells cigarettes in a two-bit gambling parlor in a one-horse town. But when she hits a sour note with her scheming employer by refusing to help fleece a fat-cat customer in a crooked card game, she finds herself out of all three jobs. That's when she sings her song of woe to Perry Mason, who promises to turn her blues into greenbacks with the help of his crack team, Della Street, and Paul Drake, and a hefty lawsuit.

Joan Kirby doesn't believe her husband's story about picking up a stranded woman in the middle of the night and dropping her off at a hotel. She asks Perry Mason to cross-examine him. Mason uncovers a much murkier trail involving murder, illegal adoption, stolen narcotics and blackmail.

Though some think they saw a ghost, it was a real, live woman in the (mostly exposed) flesh flitting through Sierra Vista Park. Eleanor Corbin has a taste for trouble - and a talent for getting out of it using the most outrageous means to cover her tracks. Now her scandalized half-sister, Olga, fears Eleanor may be using lascivious antics to camouflage more larcenous acts.

When Perry Mason and Paul Drake ran the ad, all they were hoping for was a clue to the identity of a hit-and-run driver. The first reply looked suspicious. It said that the license number of the wanted car was written down in the notebook of a woman who could be out of her apartment from two to five on a certain afternoon, and a key to the apartment was enclosed.

Wealthy Amelia Corning, owner of the Corning mine interests, might be an old lady in a wheelchair but she doesn't miss a trick. Secretary Susan Fisher has to call in Perry Mason when she finds her boss's seven-year-old son holding a shoebox stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. Miss Corning's life is at risk.

Poker-faced Nellie Conway, the nurses bed-ridden Elizabeth Bain, brings trouble when she calls on Perry Mason with a glass phial containing four pills which she suspects are poison. Her employer, Nathan Bain, she says, had promised her money to give them to his wife. But when Mason has one of the pills analyzed it is found to consist of acetylsalicylic - in other words good old-fashioned aspirin. Is Perry Mason's client a hoaxer, a psychopath, or something trickier?

Who was that masked woman? That was the question plaguing Perry Mason. No one loves a good mystery more than Mason - but being asked to represent a client who is concealing her identity, not to mention the particulars of her case, has given even the legendary legal eagle a case of ruffled feathers. Yet the intriguing cloak-and-dagger tactics have Perry hopelessly hooked. As for the silent siren behind the mask, is she heiress Byrl Gailord or penniless Adelle Hastings?

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. Certainly the bag full of cash she carries isn't shopping money.

"The Case of the Irate Witness," the mystery which is the star of this collection of 4 novelettes, is the only one that the incomparable Erle Stanley Gardner ever wrote featuring Perry Mason in short story form. Each of the stories revolves around the subject of stolen jewels and each story is a gem in itself.

In the dead of night, a thick fog lies over the black waters. You are aboard a fancy yacht full of fancy people who loathe one another. Suddenly you hear...A scream! A splash! A shot! The fateful cry, "Man Overboard!" And the next thing you know, you find yourself clutching a beautiful woman wearing only a flimsy nightgown. In her hands she holds a gun. That's the predicament in which Perry Mason suddenly finds himself. But that's only the beginning.

After her well-to-do Aunt Sarah is caught shoplifting, Virginia Trent is convinced she needs to seek psychiatric help for kleptomania. So why does Virginia turn to legal eagle Perry Mason? Because a cache of valuable diamonds - left in Sarah's care - has suddenly vanished into thin air. Virginia thinks Sarah swiped the stones, but gem dealer Austin Cullens begs to differ. In fact, he's prepared to forgive and forget - until he is mysteriously murdered and Sarah is caught running from the crime scene.

The voice on the phone was young and silky. The woman it belonged to touched something soft in Perry Mason's cool, legalistic mind. The offer she made was too intriguing to pass up. But what began as a request for a simple courtroom visit turned into an intrigue of baffling complexity...as well as one of the most cleverly rigged frame-ups of Perry's career.

A spanking-new tin can, secretly placed among the rows of Mrs. Florence Gentrie's preserves, contains not a speck of food - but it does carry one very damning clue to a murder that took place right next door. Such an unsavory discovery in such an unlikely place can't help but pique the curiosity of a dedicated mystery hunter like Perry Mason.

Julia Branner insists her marriage was sabotaged by her millionaire father-in-law, who forced her to give up her baby girl for adoption. Now, years later, a young woman appears, claiming to be Julia's long-lost daughter. But Julia insists the heir-apparent is a fake - and vows to keep the family fortune from falling into the wrong hands.