The Case of the Curious Bride; The Case of the Bigamous Spouse; The Case of the Fugitive Nurse

A couple of more Erle Stanley Gardner's. "Curious Bride" was a reread. I really liked this one. A newlywed woman suddenly discovers that her first husband, whom she believed to be dead, is actually alive and is now trying to blackmail her rich new husband. The first husband turns up dead--here's the kicker: the new husband was the one who killed him (or so Perry suspects), but he decides to try to pin it on his wife. He goes to the police to turn her in. He tries to get an annulment so he can testify against her in court. What a charmer! Since the bride is his client, Perry blocks the annulment and then tries to get the wife to divorce the new husband, so he can take his deposition in the divorce suit and sweat a confession out of him. The bride is so in love with her louse of a husband that she refuses at first, but eventually Perry persuades her and the truth comes out. I really like the courtroom scenes in this one: Perry pulls some fancy footwork with doorbells and alarm clocks.
"Bigamous Spouse" was also a reread. A young lady living with her friend and her friend's husband accidentally discovers that the husband has another wife just down the road. The husband actually tries to poison her, and she goes to Perry for advice (and his advice is the same as mine: get the hell out of the house!, which of course she ignores). The next day the husband turns up murdered. There are so many suspects in this case that it is easy to overlook the obvious one: the second wife.
"Fugitive Nurse" I hadn't read before (I don't think, anyway). A doctor is presumed dead when his plane crashes and a charcoaled beyond recognition body is found inside. His less than distraught widow comes to Perry and that's when things start to get complicated. The IRS was investigating the good doctor for embezzling $100,000. Then his nurse and presumed love interest goes missing, along with his best friend, his chauffeur...so if the body in the plane wasn't the doctor's (and the murder case against the wife is so preposterous--she spiked his whiskey with drugs so he would crash the plane), who was it? Who stole the money? Who was running the illegal drug cartel using the doctor's plane? There was a whole lot going on in this book.