Battle of the Queens; The Case of the Counterfeit Eye; The Case of the Rolling Bones; The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink; The Case of the Burning Bequest

Okay, so I've been reading a lot and just been too lazy to log in and blog about it. My bad. I'll get caught up, and pinkie swear it will never happen again.
"Battle of the Queens" by Jean Plaidy was the fifth book in her Plantagenet series. Queen Isabella of England (John's widow) is delighted to be mentor to her young son, King Henry III. She marries her first lost love, Hugh, and has many children with him. Meanwhile, in France, Queen Blanche guides first her husband as king, and then, after his untimely death, her young son, Louis. Both of these women are strong willed and determined to get their way, and are often working at opposing sides. It was interesting to hear (even if it is fiction) that there were strong willed, forceful women, even in the 1200s.
Now the Perry Mason's by Erle Stanley Gardner. "Counterfeit Eye" has Perry skating on really thin ice, planting fake eyes as evidence at murder scenes. There are not one but two characters in this book with fake eyes. I'm assuming it was more common in the 1940s than it is today. There were some hilarious scenes in this one, including Perry and Paul running around a hotel dressed as window washers. I've also noticed that whenever Perry is called to a hotel by a client, he will inevitably find a dead body in the hotel room. Frankly, I'm surprised the D.A. never arrested him for suspicion of murder. Well, he probably has and I just haven't gotten to that particular book yet!
"Rolling Bones" confused the heck out of me. I reread scenes as I went along, hoping to better understand it, but it didn't help. The corpse (I think--see, this is how confused I am) used so many different aliases I'm not sure what his real identity was. Perry successfully uses one corpse to solve two murders in the end--I think. Exactly.
"Moth-Eaten Mink" was better. The police are hot to catch a man suspected of killing one of their own. The suspect has returned to town after a year of hiding, and Perry is defending his half-brother and girlfriend. D.A. Burger calls Perry as a witness for the prosecution, and there is an amazing surprise ending.
"Burning Bequest" was written by Thomas Chastain 20 years after Gardner's death. It was pretty good; he got Gardner's style down fairly well. The mystery wasn't all that clever: I had the right suspect nailed halfway through the book, and I can't do that with Gardner's books. The only other major problem was that Della really has a very minor role in this book; there's none of the wonderful word play and sly looks that I love in Gardner's books. It was still pretty good, and it had a nice, happy ending.